An idea: Ebook versions of some people's written works?

[Sofox]

I was wondering if it would be a good idea for some of the writers of this forum to compile their written works into an eBook format file.

I think it would be great for quick downloading, and reading on other devices, from eBook readers to mobile devices. I was once reading through somebody's works, and it got exhausting continually clicking through the forum pages. When I was sick of the computer screen and I wanted to read the pages on a portable device I had, I had to continually copy and paste the story posts into a text file which was also tiresome and caused all the formating (bold, italics etc.) to be immediately removed.

Given how prominent devices for reading eBooks are, and how many here have written a great volume of work that would take quite some time to read through, I think it would be a good idea to have eBook file versions.

[Tapewolf]

Which format had you in mind?  I don't believe there is any one standard for it.
PDF would be the obvious choice except for such devices where you can only use purchased content and nothing of your own.

[Sofox]

I was thinking of ePub format, since it's an open book format, but .rtf could do aswell I suppose.

Incidentally, the Mobipocket is works on the Kindle, but not the Sony eReader: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats#Supporting_Hardware

Edit: Hmmm, this might be a good program to convert to ePub: http://www.juliansmart.com/ecub

[Mao]

Aside from individual concerns (i.e. The artist would rather you didn't do that, doesn't want to do it themselves, or doesn't mind as long as it isn't distributed and is only for personal use.. and so on), it doesn't sound like a bad idea.

[Lysander]

Yeah, that would be interesting to see. I enjoy loading a short story online before work for the less busy time. It would be cool to have some people's whole book-like stories to read too; it's usually difficult for me to read them otherwise.   

[Tapewolf]

I was thinking of ePub format, since it's an open book format, but .rtf could do aswell I suppose.

Edit: Hmmm, this might be a good program to convert to ePub: http://www.juliansmart.com/ecub

Mine are all ASCII files in BBcode at the moment, so they can be posted straight into the forum.  But it wouldn't be hard to convert them to something that program could import.

EDIT:
What I don't have is any kind of reader software, but I'm sure that could be fixed easy enough.

[GabrielsThoughts]

http://stores.lulu.com/gabrielsthoughts

more than 400 pages of mine are available for download in PDF format already. Although I suppose  could give away the B+W  pdf version of Badenoids Dexocardia for free I figure that would be kinda silly since my web-page already offers lower resolution color files and the amount of profit for me is less than if you were to donate something... I suppose I could cobble the 89 pages of  Abel's Friend, The Unholy and unofficial Radio Project, my guest strips for the front page, my alt text edits of actual amber comic, and the ever popular huggle hugged twice warning poster... hmm wow that's a lot of work. Tape should do it, I volunteer him for the job.

[RobbieThe1st]

Personally, I try to get my ebooks in txt or HTML/LIT format(as lit can be extracted to HTML) - I then run everything through a cleaner of my own devising, allowing me a clean Ascii file of my own preferred format(paragraphs/long lines with a single linebreak inbetween), which I can then read on my Rockboxed Iriver H320(with white text on black background, like 6-px-tall font).

That being said, so long as whatever format it is is convertible to txt reasonably easily, I'm happy.

[Tapewolf]

That being said, so long as whatever format it is is convertible to txt reasonably easily, I'm happy.

How does your reader thing handle bold, italics and centred text?  Or monospace vs variable-width text?

[RobbieThe1st]

That being said, so long as whatever format it is is convertible to txt reasonably easily, I'm happy.

How does your reader thing handle bold, italics and centred text?  Or monospace vs variable-width text?

Bold? Italics? Centered text? Bah!
All it seems to have is a word-wrap functionality, and be able to display (most) common Ascii characters.
Still, it does the job - it would be fairly hard to work that functionality(and make it easily readable) on a 220X176 display, while still maintaining a good text-density.

[Tapewolf]

Still, it does the job - it would be fairly hard to work that functionality(and make it easily readable) on a 220X176 display, while still maintaining a good text-density.

Palm Pilot?