Electronic book copies for E-readers.

[jkd2572]

For those of you out there that have written bonsai books or know someone who has. Why don't you guys release e-reader and iTune copies of your books. The only quality author I have seen is Harry Harrington with bonsai inspirations one and two. I would probably rebuy all the books I have just to have a copy I can carry around on my iPad. I did that with Harry's books. He is now richer for it. The electronic version is a lot cheaper to make.

 

[ffkml1981]

Books

I like reading on my Nook but also enjoy having a paper copy. Two sales for one book not a bad incentive. Also I like the quote "Killing trees is the tuition you pay for learning bonsai" Where is that so I can show people that yes I am learning he says as he looks at his pitiful little tree I need all the help I can get and those books are my only source so far.

 

[jeanluc83]

The electronic version is a lot cheaper to make.

You have to remember that the printing of a book is only one part of the price. There is still proof reading, editing and layout work. It seems like there is a view point that ebooks are not real books so they should be cheap to produce. Just as much effort goes into producing an ebook as a paper book.

For books that are not available as ebooks I have gone as far as scanning them myself. It takes some time but is not all that bad. It probably takes about an hour or so to scan a 200 page book.

I've had the best luck with pdf files. You end up with a series of pictures in one file. The files tend to be big though. Some scanning software allows you to do text recognition to create a much smaller text file. I have done this with spotty results. It is usually more effort than its worth.

 

[jkd2572]

Actually producing an ebook is a lot cheaper. The large production run to print books is expensive comparatively. So is the distribution costs.

 

[KennedyMarx]

Harrington's books are good and the formatting on the ebooks is good. It's something I didn't think about until I bought the ebook, Tropical Bonsai, by Pedro Morales. That one is almost unreadable because of the formatting. Sentences begin and end out of nowhere along with illustrations.