"Some of the issue is that digital customers can't see how large the book actually is," he says.

And some of the issue is that digital publishers can't see that their customers are not stupid enough to believe it costs more to deliver those extra pixels.

I work in the pixel mines every day! Those pixels are heavy! SO HEAVY.

I threw out my back kerning one day. It's brutal.

t /woe is the editor

And the dread disease Serif Lung? Worst of all.

Beginner's questions from someone who recently got an iPad: How common are ebooks? I mean, if I want to download some books to read on vacation, am I going to be limited to recent bestsellers? Could I expect to get an ebook of a scholarly monograph published by a university press?

How far back can I expect to find ebooks? For example, if the book was published two or three years ago, can I expect an ebook version? Five or six? (I plan to visit Project Gutenberg and the like for Victorian novels and the like, so I'm covered that far back.)

Thanks for the advice, all.

Fred,

the thing with the ipad is that you can use various different apps to read ebooks. My main suggestion (and a strong one) is not to buy through ibooks. The Nook and Kindle have apps for ipad and I have purchased books through both B&N and Amazon and am able to read them on the ipad.

Second, I have Stanza for open access books (free books) that I have found through various websites, etc.

There are some scholarly books available on Amazon that I have bought through ebooks, but most of my reading (academic) is via pdf and there are a number of pdf readers you can use on the ipad.

let me know if you need more info.

I haven't much tried to get things from my phone to my kindle, but I have done vice-versa--go to "archived" and you find everything you've purchased, and can download any of it.

I don't see anything in my Archive when I use the app. But I have Archived items! This is weird.

I gave that same Kindle to a friend recently for her birthday and I hope she's not put off by the ads.

They're not too bad, although the "sponsored" screensaver is kind of obnoxious since it turns your Kindle into a giant ad. But it's not a huge deal, as long as there aren't ads popping up when I'm actually reading a book, which I don't think there are.

I charged the Kindle all night, and it never reached full. That was weird.

You can pay extra to get the ads removed from your Kindle.

the thing with the ipad is that you can use various different apps to read ebooks

Not just the iPad. I think a lot of people don't realise that B&N and Amazon make apps for PCs as well as the prominent phone OSs. You don't have to invest in special hardware (canny move) to be able to take advantage of their catalogue.

ita,

fred was asking because he just got an ipad, so I replied in kind.

I'm not criticising your answer. I'm just expanding on it.

There's also Google Books and Kobo and I had to get Overdrive to read library books on the iPad but I imagine that varies by library (I don't recommend it if you have other options). There's an app called eBook Search that is pretty handy if you are looking for something specific but don't know where it would be available, or for browsing various collections of free e-books. There's a lot out there and it's hard to say what will or won't be available in digital format.

You can open .pdfs in iBooks, too, which I have gotten used to. Why do you recommend against iBooks, le nubian?