Ebooks on S60 3rd Edition

Mobipocket Reader _does_ actually support text (.txt) files. It also supports the Palm Doc (.pdb) format - you can find a bunch of free eBooks on http://memoware.com/. Otherwise a good article.

krisse - you'll amend the piece?

Steve

OpenReader does in fact allow for DRM, but encourages flexibilty and a better user experience. From their website, "Existing forms of proprietary DRM are inconvenient, too restrictive, and cost too much." In the end they suggest that DRM be standardized, hopefully by an objective group. They do offer DRM support in the format standard, and in the short run, the site includes information on at least one low-cost option.

Raven,

I couldn't find any option in Mobipocket Reader for S60 3rd Edition that lets you open TXT text files which you've downloaded onto your phone. I just checked again and still can't find such an option. I had exactly the same problem with PDB files.

As far as I could tell (and I explored every menu) the only way to get books straight onto MobiReader without using a PC was a link to the Mobipocket online store. The software seemed entirely locked down and geared towards selling Mobipocket ebooks.

It may be a different situation on MobiReader for other systems, but the article was just concentrating on the S60 3rd Edition version.

If you can let me know how to do that within the S60 3rd Edition reader without using PC-based software, I'll amend the article to say it supports TXT and PDB.

Jack B Nimble,

I'll remove the DRM reference from the OpenReader part of the article.

krisse wrote:I couldn't find any option in Mobipocket Reader for S60 3rd Edition that lets you open TXT text files which you've downloaded onto your phone. I just checked again and still can't find such an option. I had exactly the same problem with PDB files.

As far as I could tell (and I explored every menu) the only way to get books straight onto MobiReader without using a PC was a link to the Mobipocket online store. The software seemed entirely locked down and geared towards selling Mobipocket ebooks.

The MobiReader software is not 'locked down' (Symbian OS 9.1 and S60 3rd Edition is, but that is another discussion...).

I'm a big fan of the software and have used it on all my devices (including the E61) for the past 5-6 years. You just have to place the .txt or .pdb or .prc files in the ebooks folder on either your memory card or the internal memory (you can do this on the phone itself by simply using a file manager) and the eBooks will then appear in MobiReader in either 'eBooks' or 'eDocs'.

Aha, that does work Raven, you're right, I'll alter the article straight away. It does still SEEM locked down though, if you'll let me explain:

There's absolutely nothing in the software that tells you to put files in a particular folder, there's not even a file explorer of the kind used by the freeware QReader (which can open files wherever they are on the phone). Either they've deliberately left this important bit of advice out, or it was an oversight.

I'd tend towards it being a deliberate omission though, because here's what the "help" menu says in answer to "How do I open an ebook?":

"The library of the Reader lists all ebooks you currently have on your device. They can be either in main memory or on a memory card."

...so no mention of /ebooks/ at all.

And here's what it says about "How do I download an ebook to my device?"

"You can buy and download ebooks directly from your device. Go to Mobipocket (link). Search for a book by title or browse the categories. You have to have a Mobipocket account to buy and download ebooks."

A new user reading that would assume that the only way to get ebooks onto MobiReader is by buying them from the Mobipocket website.

The main Mobipocket website reinforces this impression, I didn't see anything on there that didn't relate to using Mobipocket Reader for buying books from Mobipocket. This may be a result of Amazon purchasing Mobipocket last year of course, they're in the business of selling books rather than making freeware.

Maybe so... I've never thought about it like that before. The Mobipocket Reader has always worked in the same way when it comes to downloading/uploading files onto the device. You've always had to place the files in a specific folder the software creates. I'm just so used to it being that way, I never realized it wasn't obvious to new users...

I guess I was also used to doing things a particular way. Most S60 readers and emulators I've used have a system explorer to choose files from instead of requiring files to be in a particular place. When there was no option on MobiReader, and the help menu said nothing about non-mobipocket files, I assumed it couldn't use other files.

Fortunately I was wrong. 😊

It's sort of similar to how S60 3rd Edition supports internet radio if you download the realplayer stream addresses into the "videos" folder of the phone memory, but none of the phone's documentation mentions this. It works really well, it's easy to do, and it's a very very useful feature, but for some reason Nokia seems to want to hide it away.

I do still think QReader is more flexible for using TXT files though, especially the intelligent CR remover, but as they're both free we can all have them both.

It's just occurred to me that this thread of corrections and errors has proved Socrates completely right: if you trust written articles without being able to exchange words with the author, you can't be sure of getting to the truth.

Fortunately nowadays we have the option of leaving comments for authors to read, so maybe it's now safe for us to rely on writing.

Good article. I give my vote to Mobipocket as I have been using it for years on Sony Clie's and now my E61.

All I do is bluetooth the file from my Mac to the E61, open the message and voila Mobipocket pics it up and places it into the correct folder.

In the article I valued readers that worked with no PC support, as I thought its better if you can get hold of books wherever you are, rather than having to pre-prepare things at home.

I was a bit harsh on its text file handling, but I did also say MobiReader was the best way of buying ebooks while on the move: they have ebook versions of popular mainstream titles that most people would want to read, the mobile website is fast and easy to navigate, there's free demos of most books, and the integration with the S60 browser is seamless.

Fair point, thought didn't use a PC either 😊

Another great source of Sc-Fi ebooks is The Baen Free Library. Lots of formats and lots of books.

I've added the Baen Free Library to the article, looks like a very interesting marketing idea indeed to give away the first books of series and get people interested in buying the sequels.

I don't know if I agree with the "say no to DRM" utopian vision of Eric Flint though. It's true that people borrowing from libraries and friends probably doesn't generate lost sales, but that's partly because you're unlikely to know any libraries or friends that have limitless free copies of every book ever published. Pirate ebook sites have practically no limit on the number of ebook copies they can dispense or the range of titles they can serve, and book files are so small that you could store thousands of books on a single memory card, or millions of books on the latest computer HDDs.

In the old days when I used to exchange cassette mix tapes with friends, that did generate album sales because we'd hear bands we liked on each other's tapes and go out to buy the bands' albums. But if I could download the entire album of any band for free at high quality, I don't think that's going to drive me to buy the real thing the way mix tapes did.

I don't think Flint appreciates the sheer scale and scope of piracy sites, there's virtually everything on there, available to everyone, everywhere, instantly, for free. Of course an ebook can't rival a real book, and to some extent a downloaded album can't rival a real CD, but that might change. The more we enter the digital-only age with things like iPods, video-on-demand and Sony Readers, the less attractive the legal option will seem because it will be identical to the illegal option but will cost more.

Sure, a minority of fans will always buy physical copies of everything, but there's a chance that most of the market will shift towards being satisfied with downloads. At that point it's very difficult to make cheap legal downloads competitive with free illegal downloads, unless you have some kind of DRM or copyright law enforcement.

krisse wrote:... unless you have some kind of DRM or copyright law enforcement.

"But in real life, any form of copy protection only annoys the legitimate users, pirates will always find a way to get their fix 😊"

I've heard this said very often but I just don't buy this argument at all. It's like saying that every lock can be picked, so there's no point in having a lock on your home because it means you have to carry a key.

In real life, most people don't know how to pick a lock, and even those who can pick some locks don't know every lock, so a lock drastically reduces the number of people who can break in.

It's not about total protection which is impossible, it's a question of making it as difficult as possible to do something bad. Some will find a way in, but most people will just give up. The more difficult it is, the more people will give up.

It's also not true to say copy protection always annoys legitimate users, does anyone get annoyed by the copy protection on console games for example? Region coding is an annoyance, but copy protection on its own doesn't affect a legitimate console gamer at all.

Eric Flint went beyond just knocking DRM though, he seemed to imply that it would be good for business if they just didn't worry about piracy at all. Is that true though? Would it really do no harm to album sales if music magazines gave away pirated copies of all the month's hit albums on a cover disc? Would there be no reduction in DVD sales if newspapers gave away the latest films every week, with free downloads also available from their website? Would PC games suffer no overall losses if Google gave them all away as free downloads and advertised the service on their front page?

Of course these things would harm sales, because they'd make piracy more convenient than legal purchases and put popular pirated material in the hands of anyone who wants it no matter how little technical knowledge they have or effort they expend. Very few people would buy legal material if it was so easy to obtain pirated material that they want.

The one reason why most newspapers and websites don't do all that is because they would end up in court facing heavy fines and possibly jail. If these threats of action didn't exist no one would respect copyright, so copyright would become worthless and most of the money that goes on content creation would disappear.

That's why pirate sites have to keep hopping from server to server, or operate through non-web channels, because the ISPs keep shutting them down if they try to run a download service at a constant and advertised website.

None of that wipes out piracy, but it does reduce it to a level where it's not threatening to destroy entire industries.