It seems that this would have already been discussed, but I did a search of titles in the General Discussion forum for ebook and the results came up empty.
Has anyone found a great place to buy ebooks? I saw a site (ebooktrial.com) that seems to have an incredible collection (like “Henri Poincare - Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse”)
. but I don’t trust sites with which I’m not familiar.
I hope this doesn’t attract solicitors. It just seems that this is a good group of people to ask. FWIW, I have a Kindle and really like it except that it is not good for books/articles full of pictures or diagrams (like astronomy books). For regular text books, it is quite nice.
Other than Amazon (Kindle) I have not found any site that has the breadth of offerings at ebooktrial.com. Thanks for the link. How much does it cost to sign up?
Other than Amazon (Kindle) I have not found any site that has the breadth of offerings at ebooktrial.com. Thanks for the link. How much does it cost to sign up?
Oh I haven’t signed up. I want to know more about it first. A monthly subscription is $39 but I don’t know if you get to keep what you download. I agree that the selection looks great - but it seems too good to be true, so I wait. I mean after all, they have an encyclopedia of astronomy worth $650 that is free to subscribers. But I don’t know if the download self-destructs after cancelling a subscription or not.
According to the FAQ the default format is PDF. I doubt they have a self-destruct mechanism built into PDFs. If so I have Acrobat Pro, so saving the file with a different name will be trivial.
According to the FAQ the default format is PDF. I doubt they have a self-destruct mechanism built into PDFs. If so I have Acrobat Pro, so saving the file with a different name will be trivial.
Good to know. See, that’s the kind of smarts I knew I’d find here.
Plenty of people say they like or dislike some particular book but don’t do that good a job of explaining why. I have read books and formed an opinion and then read a lot of reviews and I can usually find someone with an opinion similar to mine. But I have yet to see how I can find them before I read the book.
With all of this complaining about education and its cost one would think creating a great list of public domain books for kids would be a high priority.
Plenty of people say they like or dislike some particular book but don’t do that good a job of explaining why. I have read books and formed an opinion and then read a lot of reviews and I can usually find someone with an opinion similar to mine. But I have yet to see how I can find them before I read the book.
With all of this complaining about education and its cost one would think creating a great list of public domain books for kids would be a high priority.
psik
I know what you mean, psik. BTW, do you recommend/use inkmesh???
According to the FAQ the default format is PDF. I doubt they have a self-destruct mechanism built into PDFs. If so I have Acrobat Pro, so saving the file with a different name will be trivial.
There is actually a way for the publisher or online book store to make those .pdf e-books unreadable/ unusable after you cancel your subscription with them or after a certain amount of time.
Last spring I bought an academic ebook/pdf book from a publisher that had an “expiration date”. As hard as I tried to save that book under a different name or file format, it still expired. The only way for me to keep that book was to print it out.
According to the FAQ the default format is PDF. I doubt they have a self-destruct mechanism built into PDFs. If so I have Acrobat Pro, so saving the file with a different name will be trivial.
There is actually a way for the publisher or online book store to make those .pdf e-books unreadable/ unusable after you cancel your subscription with them or after a certain amount of time.
Last spring I bought an academic ebook/pdf book from a publisher that had an “expiration date”. As hard as I tried to save that book under a different name or file format, it still expired. The only way for me to keep that book was to print it out.
I wish I could be of more help! I have tried hard to circumvent the “Digital Rights Management” technology but it is tough. It seems a person needs to be a hacker to get around it. I think asking questions about that issue directly with the potential ebook store might be helpful in deciding whether or not you want to buy from them. Hopeful they will be helpful and upfront about it.
Keep us abreast on what you find. I am interested in buying ebooks too.
I would not recommend going to the down load/ file sharing sites like Rapid Share, ect. You can get nasty bugs from those sites.
I find many books to read in the bibliography of the books I am reading. I do have a reader however I am still purchasing most of my books hard cover through the various discount flyers I recieve ie. Edward Hamilton, I find it cheaper and am often surprised at the quality of books they offer (along with the ususal romance novels.)
