eBook Reader Guide

The first thing to say is that the Sony Reader range of eBook Readers don’t need to have external power supplies, as they will charge up via the USB cable when connected to your computer, but they are useful accessories for a number of reasons.
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When looking for eBooks for your device, the first thing that you need to know is what format your device supports. There’s a description of the popular formats in the “Guide to eBook Formats” article, but the common choice will be between EPUB, supported by the majority of the more recent Readers, and MobiPocket, supported by SmartPhones, CyBooks and Iliad Readers.
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• EPUB – The new industry-standard reflowable format. Supported by almost all the new Readers, excluding the Amazon Kindle, as well as by desktop software that you can run on your PC or Mac. The ‘reflowable’ part means that it’s not tied to any particular page size/line length but rather, the text will reflow without odd lines appearing if the user wants to change to a different font size to read with. EBUB books are available from most device-independent stores, e.g. WHSmith, Waterstones, BooksOnBoard, Fictionwise, etc.
• PDF – Supported to some extent by most readers, but the problem is that this is a page-based format, which means that when the title was created, the publisher will have had to have set the expected page size of the reading device. As a result, unless the title was specifically targeted a particular screen size that matches your Reader (which is extremely rare) you should expect the title to have been created with a PC reader in mind and will appear extremely small on an eBook Reader. They will try and display the result such that it’s readable, but it’s normally worth trying to avoid this format if at all possible.
• MobiPocket – This is a very common format and is readable on a wide range of devices, including many SmartPhones, but appears to be being superseded by the EPUB format. The Cybook and the Illiad Readers use this as their ‘native’ format’.
• BBEB – This is one of the Sony Reader’s ‘native’ formats, which they support in parallel with EPUB. This is also known as LRF/LRX formats, but while it’s not completely superseded, most eBook sources will now be using EPUB instead.
• eReader – This is a format that used to be popular on Palm handheld devices but should not be confused with anything for the modern generations of eBook Readers – it won’t display on them!
• AZW – This is the Kindle format, which is only displayable on a Kindle (although there is an announcement that there will be a “Kindle for PC” desktop application available in the future). Only available from the Amazon Store.
  

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