How To Build An ePub eBook Library For Your iPad

As everyone’s anticipation to own an iPad increases, I’ve discovered that some Mac owners have never dipped into the ePub eBook pool.

This post is a brief guide to building a library of DRM-free and legally-free ePub eBooks.

Apple And eBooks: A Horror Story

This is the most difficult post I’ve ever had to write.

Steve Jobs hates ePub. He hates eBooks.

How can anyone with his refined sense of taste not hate them?

They’re an abomination. A tasteless — and incompetent — techie committee solution to electronic books.

Seriously, can any of you see Apple creating ePub? (If you can, leave now. You don’t know Jobs or Apple.)

And iBooks? iBooks?!!!?

From the company that gave us the delightful CoverFlow …

… we now get shelves?!

Barnes & Noble Nook: LCD Trueview

A major selling point of the Barnes & Noble Nook is that color LCD screen.

Look at how sharp those cover thumbnails look!

In person, it’s less than fantastic.

This is a reduction of a large JPEG provided by Barnes & Noble, to make it just about the same size as the Nook’s true-life LCD display:

Even that would be pretty good.

However, this is what that Nook LCD really displays:

So, even if you can get color cover thumbnails, don’t expect them to be all sharp and pretty as the simulated pictures have been leading everyone to believe!

Multi eInk eBook Device Fondle Report

Note: Crappy graphic for illustrative purposes only. Devices are not to relative sizes.

Last weekend I was frustrated in my attempt to fondle a live Barnes & Noble Nook. The only working unit was still locked away in an office and the person with the key wouldn’t arrive until 2PM that day (I was there at 10AM!).

This weekend, I went back to the same Barnes & Noble. What the hell, let’s see.

And they had two live Nooks.

After fondling the Nook, I went on to fondle three other eInk eBook devices and have drawn some conclusions some of you will find surprising.

IDPF Screws Up ePub eBook Covers For Everyone!

In an earlier post, Barnes & Noble Nook Vs. Archos 5 Internet Tablet: Round Two, I closed with this:

One flaw in that video: Aldiko did not create a thumbnail of the cover; it’s using a generic placeholder. I will ask about that and report back.

I doubt anyone but me would have even noticed that. But I did and it bugged me.

I had to know what was going on here.

Barnes & Noble Nook Vs. Archos 5 Internet Tablet: Round Two

For research purposes only, I, um, massaged an ePub eBook edition of a newly-released Michael Jackson biography so it could be tested on Judie Lipsett’s Nook to judge its ability to handle ePub.

This is a muthah of an ePub file: over 4MBs with lots of pictures in it.

Let that sink in a moment.

This is a book about Michael frikkin Jackson, OK?

It’s not an atlas or some niche specialty book.

It’s not a forgotten book like Jack London’s The People of the Abyss.

It’s an eBook the average reader would buy!

Can you guess what the results of this challenge were?

Barnes & Noble Nook: CoverFAIL!

UPDATE: Barnes & Noble is blameless. See this post about how the IDPF screwed up everything for everybody!

I heard this first from Judie Lipsett of Gear Diary.

I sent her a commercial-grade ePub to test on her Nook. I also sent her a Calibre-made ePub that was a PDB format-shift of an eBook she owned to investigate preserving her eReader eBook investment.

Harlequin 451

New Title: You Never Know With People Who Have A Different Gender

Previously here:

Future Staffing At Harlequin
Harlequin: Saving Readers From Writers
Writer James Hadley Chase eBooks Coming!

It’s Like A Party With Women All Wearing The Same Dress!

I learned of this via Dear Author:

Reusable Cover Art in Historical Novels: A Gallery

One of them was recycled eight times!

Click = big

And lest you think this is happening with so-called low-end publishers, look carefully at the publisher names!

Book Covers Turn To Bleh

Via a tweet from Maud Newton, I wound up at Alison Bechdel‘s blog and eventually came upon this post.

But since her Flickr item was designated All Rights Reserved, I had to go steal the covers from elsewhere. Which was better, as I came upon a third one.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think the most recent cover lacks character and is very generic. How many other covers sort of, kind of resemble that? Too many, I think! Some cover designs are just too full of themselves, imparting a gravitas that might not exist in the book itself (note that I don’t mean this book, which I haven’t read and didn’t know of til now).