BK, re your post LvMI Kindle editions, as I noted there, the Kindle app does not, as far as I know, natively support ePub files. However, the new iBooks format on iPad does. All you do is click on the ePub link for a given book (several are listed here)–or download the ePub file and then open it with iTunes, and iTunes automatically copies it into the Book section of your iTunes Library. Then you can sync you iPad and get whichever books you want. (I suspect iBooks is coming soon to the iPhone and iPod Touch, so you’ll be able to do it then very easily. Yes yes, I know some people use Stanza, Calibre, Bookworm, and all that jazz but it’s very buggy and complicated–italics don’t always carry over, Calibre is difficult to use, etc. ITunes makes it easy.)
I did this with 10 ePub books on Mises.org in about 30 seconds. Then I synced my iPad and got them all. They look great–full color covers, etc. I captured on the iPad the iBooks library’s bookshelf, and a few shots from Guido Hulsmann’s Mises biography in both portrait and landscape mode, some in the middle of page-turns. Enjoy! (My review of the iPad on LRC is here: Thoughts on iPad from a Slightly Disappointed Fanboi.)
{ 7 comments }
The ePub format converts seamlessly to Mobipocket (aka Kindle format). The usefulness of having access to ePub files extends far beyond the iPad and it’s a much more versatile ebook format than PDF. I would love to see more ePub files on Mises.org.
Spider, I agree. However I often see ePub files that were not done correctly–italics is stripped out. This basically ruins a book
Regardless of which eBook format one prefers, if this is where digital readers are going I’m getting excited. It looks great! Stuff like the Kindle or Nook are nice gadgets, but the screen and font remind me of old Apple or Macintosh computers from the eighties, early nineties. But stuff like this and HP’s upcoming version of a “pad” have me thinking optimistically about the future of eBook publishing.
I’d love to be able to actually purchase the books, thus supporting Mises.org, through the iBooks store. But for now it’s great that we can put these wonderful pieces of literature in our iPad (which I absolutely LOVE by the way).
Thanks for the tips on getting them into the iPad!
Last night, after reading this, I saw that Kindle released their app for the iPad. I didn’t think it was available yet, but it is! So I downloaded it and was able to see in the Kindle store books by Mises, Rothbard, etc. So that’s cool, you can now get those books onto your iPad via the Kindle app. And they look great, just as good as the iBookStore books!
The Kindle app is free, by the way.
With readdledocs you can actually just click on the pub file and read it without going into iBooks straight from safari (I’m on an iPad right now)
Manuel, I’m unable to get that to work. It tries to open in ReaddleDocs but then Readdledocs fails when it tries to open it. I guess it’s jsut a bug that needs worked out.
Comments on this entry are closed.