How to Buy an Ebook

 Two weeks ago off I went to the sophisticated Digital Book World conference, in which I learned the glittering state of the ebook market. A wonderful future for all of us! Fantastic success stories! A good time had by all!

And then I came back to what I laughingly call my market. The one in which customers are still struggling to figure out which version of an ebook to buy, and how to open it.  That is, those who are buying directly from publishers like us instead of Amazon or another etailer.  Those buyers (the ones at the big boxes) have already selected ereaders and are buying books specifically for them. But there are lots of  other people who want to read ebooks on their computers or phones and don’t know how. Also, there are lovely people who do have ereaders, yet are kind enough to want to buy directly from  the publisher.

So I thought it might help if I outlined a few basics. We (meaning booksBnimble) sell three kinds of files, which I expect is what most publishers offer—one for Kindle, one for iPad, and one for everything else. This is because iPad is the only platform that supports video and Kindle does not support the format everyone else uses. To further complicate things, a) that format  (the all-purpose one) is called ePub, which sounds so generic I get the impression plenty of people think it just means “ebook” and b) there are several names for  Kindle-friendly files. These are  mobi, prc, and azw .

Sufficiently confused?  Really there’s nothing to it—Kindle, iPad, or Everything Else, aka ePub. But there’s another wrinkle. If you buy a book from a publisher, you’ll have to “sideload” it to your ereader, since it’s not synced to it like books from the etailers. Probably the best deal there is to get in touch with the publisher you bought it from (for us, info@booksBnimble.com ) , or  just Google it. You’d be amazed how much info’s online about this. A quick example of sideloading: You can get a mobi file on your Kindle the same way you do a Word document or pdf --by emailing it to your Kindle address.

If you have no ereader,  no problem! There’s an app for that. (A free one.) You download the Kindle app first, then save your file anywhere on your computer, click on it twice, and magic occurs. Or if the file’s ePub, Firefox has an add-on called ePubreader that works the same say. Really and truly, this can be done and done easily—by the most tech-tarded person in America, with no more than a click or three. (But happy to hold your hand  if you run into problems.)