EBooks and digital audio It seems that everything in life these days comes to us through a screen, with pictures, sound, and even thinking, all done for us by some invisible programmer, who presents to us a world as he or she thinks you should see it. The good old book that served us so well in the past, now appears to be a forgotten entity and to many, unless it is a program manual or a hardcopy of instructions for some complex piece of IT hardware, books have lost their appeal, and it is easier to wait for the story to come out on DVD. To others however, the written word remains supreme, and the phenomenon of the eBook has seen the availability in digital form, of almost all the literary classics and an ever increasing number of the most recent books from modern authors in both fiction, and technical productions. The advent of Broadband has opened an area of opportunity to now read these books – either on line, or by downloading even quite large volumes to the hard disk for off line reading or printing. Many such books are in the adobe PDF format – necessitating a PDF reader. Such a reader may be downloaded from: www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html Microsoft has its own format and their reader may be downloaded from: http://www.microsoft.com/reader/downloads/pc.mspx Microsoft will require you to approve a Validation inspection before proceeding with the download, but this is a quick and easy process, and is only a bother to those with an illegal copy of windows on their computer. Microsoft Reader also recommends the inclusion of their “Text To Speech package”. This is handy for the lazy readers, as the computer will vocalize the story for you and will offer you the choice of a couple of reader voices to read your eBook. Unfortunately they sound a bit like the robot voice from “Lost in Space”, and the reading is devoid of any emphasis or feeling, but it is possible to get used to it and handy if you are shelling the peas or darning socks. Other file formats to be encountered are ‘exe’ – self extractable files you may read straight on screen – and ‘Zip’ files. These are no bother to Windows XP, but earlier versions of Windows may require an unzipping utility such as WinZip (www.winzip.com).
So let’s go bibliophiles !!
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Knowledge Rush: www.knowledgerush.com The Knowledgerush.com book directory is a catalog of free books available on the internet. It's a community effort and although you can contribute by helping to find and categorize books or submit your own stories and/or poems, the site primarily offers numerous links to free books, with the option to search by Book Title, Story Category, or author .Let’s download a story from the “Mystery” Category. Scroll down to Books By Category and click on Mystery.
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Download an eBook: A list of 45 books appears showing the Book’s title and hot links to the Author and various presentation options which – if single clicked will display the selected book on screen in a variety of formats. For the purpose of this exercise we’ll download a book to our hard disk and format and save it as a word or PDF file to be read or printed at our leisure.
Being a fan of E. C. Bentley (July 10, 1875 – March 30, 1956), a popular English novelist and humorist of the early twentieth century, and the inventor of the clerihew, an irregular form of humorous verse on biographical topics; I will add the Story ‘Trent’s Last Case’ to my Library
Do this by locating the Book “Trent’s Last Case” and then Right Clicking on [Text]. In the resultant Context Menu, click on Save Target as. I usually save these downloads to a “Dump” folder on my C:\ drive (C:\ Dump) which I can quickly relocate for subsequent reformatting.
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Formatting the download: The eBook is downloaded as a txt file and may be opened and read as such in both Notepad and MS Word. I like to open the file with MS Word by right clicking the file in Windows Explorer and selecting Open With from the Context Menu and choosing Word from the list of options. Select Windows Default if a File Conversion Dialogue window appears. And there is your Book – almost ready to read. The file is downloaded in Courier font and is in need of some formatting and pruning to assist the reading experience.
• • • • • • • Click Edit>Select All Change the Font to Arial Change Font size to 10 points Key in [Ctrl+J] for full line justification Click the Pilcrow Button (¶) to reveal that the download has placed an unnecessary paragraph ending at the end of each line. Click File|Page Setup|Margins Pages and scroll to Book Fold. Alter Top, Bottom & Inside Margins to 1 cm Alter Outside Margin to 2.15 cm
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Pruning Unnecessary Content: Examination of the text will indicate that the download has come from the Project Gutenberg process – which is explained in Item 8. Such Downloads usually have four to five pages of text, explaining the project Gutenberg phenomenon. With all due respect they are 5 pages your book may do without; so use the mouse to select all the text from “Project Gutenberg eText…” on page 1, down to “END The small Text…..” on page 5. Press the Delete button on the Keyboard, the superfluous text is removed and you are left with the story.
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Refinements in Formatting: We can reduce the number of pages and make the document easier to read by eliminating the unnecessary Paragraph marks mentioned in 3 above. To do this we Run Ron Yeates’ Macro: • Click Tools>Macro Macros>RemoveParaMarks • Click Run • Watch the Macro do its magic and wrap the text right across the page Final Touches: The find and replace process now renders the text into a well spaced series of paragraphs, providing a document that is comfortable and easy to read. All that remains is to fix up the jumble of sentences at the start of the document by: • Press Enter twice after the word CASE to isolate the Title of the book • Similarly isolate the Author and The first Chapter heading • Press the Pilcrow (¶) button on the toolbar to remove paragraph marks etc • Click on Insert>Page Numbers>Footer>Centre Alignment>OK. • Save as a Word .doc document For a further and final refinement, press Ctrl+End to take the cursor to the very end of the document, where you may wish to tidy up some final notes following the end of the story. The Book is now ready to read direct from the screen, convert to a PDF document, or print straight to your printer.
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More Free Books: www.gutenberg.net/index.php Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. Opportunities are available to search for books by title, by author or category. Books may be downloaded for offline reading on PCs or Palm organizers. Audio books are also available and free. Some are read by a human voice and others electronically from a robot voice. A recent service involves the downloading of an iso file which may be burnt to a DVD. These files have enormous numbers of books immediately available so that the single DVD is a virtual Library. Free Bookshop: www.free-ebooks.net The next place for electronic texts is Free Bookshop which offers both free and pay-for books. Some providers charge a fee for works such as Current Best Sellers. Click on the ‘Free eBooks List’ for complimentary works, or browse the other categories for price lists. Before Free Bookshop will download a book however, you will be required to go through a registration process, and tolerate one of their cookies on your system. Once registered you need to log in when visiting the site to obtain your registered users privileges.
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Free Tutorials are also available from Free Bookshop – this includes PC related tutorials, so it is possible to further your knowledge with the help of a document from this site downloaded to your hard disk. Just click the link and specify the format desired.
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Fictionwise: www.fictionwise.com Fictionwise is the top independent eBook seller in the world with tens of thousands of satisfied customers. We offer award-winning eBooks for all PDAs and PCs by top authors! Palm, PocketPC, Hiebook, eBookMan, Adobe, MS Reader, and WinCE eBooks. All new eBooks discounted each week! Click the ‘Register Link to open a free account and enjoy features such as ‘My Bookshelf’, where you may store electronic texts, download in baulk and receive personal discounts. As a Fictionwise member, you'll be entitled to free eBooks, discounts and specials, newsletters, prize eligibility and more.
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NetLibrary: www.netlibrary.org NetLibrary is a division of OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (www.oclc.org). Founded in 1967, OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs. More than 53,548 libraries in 96 countries and territories around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials. It claims to support the most content from leading publishers, the most types of media — including eBooks and eAudiobooks — the widest audience of users and the most types of libraries. NetLibrary takes you far beyond the world of eBooks to provide a flexible and stable eContent platform that is positioned for continual rapid content growth. Click the View Demo button for a comprehensive description of net library and its services. Microsoft Literature: www.mslit.com As to be expected, The Microsoft eBook library is a bulging and User friendly resource. There are oodles of links to search by Title, Category, and Author or even to access other libraries. Click on a work that interests and you’ll be taken to an online purchase outlet. There is also a Free EBook Category with a selection of approximately 1500 eBooks for consideration. Down loaded books find the Microsoft reader on your Hard Disk, so that when you open the reader, an icon for the book will be presented. Clicking on this icon will open the book for off-line reading. For example, click on Free Books>Univ-of- Virginia and scroll to book #90 on Page 9 of the list of over 1300 free books found in this library. Click on the title “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist” From eBook To (MS) Reader: Clicking the title takes you to the download page. To Download the book, double click on the University of Virginia Logo (under “Available From”). The book will be immediately loaded into your copy of MS Reader, ready for you to start Reading.
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Load Now: Read Later. If you don’t wish to make an immediate start on your book it will remain stored in the MS eBook Library, open MS Reader when you’re ready to start on the download. Page one of the Reader lists your MS eBooks - with the most recent download at the top of the list. Click on the book of your choice and start reading.
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Best Sellers: www.ebooks.com The digital bookstore at ebooks has a range of works from new releases and best sellers to reference works and classics. Enter a keyword or browse by category. Then click the title of the chosen text Click the “Buy eBook” link and choose your preferred format
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Amazon eBooks: www.amazon.com/edocs As well as the wide range of electronics, music, film and books, Amazon also present listings of a range of eBooks – which they refer to as eDocuments.
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Some Others To Try: http://www.e-book.com.au/freebooks.htm
Oodles of free books here via links to what are boldly described as the best digital libraries in Australia Similar to 9 above, but with an Australian slant Free-eBooks.net is the right place to visit if you're looking to download thousands of eBooks for free, A mixed collection of Fact and Fiction – including all the Australian classics in both novels and poetry. Download the TK3 Reader and an excellent Library of free eBooks becomes immediately available. A huge list of free books in the MS Reader Format
http://gutenberg.net.au/ http://www.free-ebooks.net/
http://www.freeread.com.au/
http://www.easymediabroadcast.com/ http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/cgibin/category.cgi?category=free_download
http://www.ebookmall.com/resources/freeebooks.htm http://www.manybooks.net/
Another big library of eBooks which may be searched according to the Reader of your choice A great site. No mucking about – just eBooks and audio Books, all free. More free books Go to:
www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadsSoft/ProductDetailsReader.asp
http://www.ebookmall.com/free-downloads/
http://mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/Search.asp?TypeSearch=Free
and download the eBook Reader to access lots of books in the .prc format. http://www.boomerangbooks.com/free-electronicbooks.htm http://manybooks.net/ A good selection of Australian Classics – including “The Magic Pudding” As the name says “Many Books” and they’re free.
That’s a bit of a taste of the immense amount of material available. Nearly all the URLs mentioned have links to other sites offering more books and further links. Most of the offerings mentioned here are for free eBooks, however many sites also provide opportunity to purchase downloads of the latest books at a fraction of the price from your bookstore. Rare books can be sourced and downloaded, and if you are sick of the screen or the bother of printing your downloads, many of the sites provide a link to audio books which you can download and playback through your computer, your MP3 player, your car radio and even the latest mobile phones.