Ebooks and ebook readers explained

How it works
Now you know what books you can read, how do you get ebooks and start reading them? If you can find free ebooks online, you simply download them like any other file from the internet.

If you are buying ebooks from a store such as Waterstones, you shop in the usual way, adding books to your basket, and when you have paid there is a download button for each one. Click the button and a small file will be downloaded. When you open the file, Adobe Digital Editions starts on your PC and fetches the book itself from the server.

Then, you just plug your reader into the computer with a USB cable and use Digital Editions to copy the book to the reader. Some readers come with their own programs, or you can transfer a book by copying it to a memory card and then plugging that into the reader.

In the case of Amazon’s Kindle and the new Apple iPad, you can even access their respective bookstores directly from the reader, and the book will transfer wirelessly. It’s a neat idea, especially if you want to buy a book immediately but, as we are about to see, books bought on the Kindle and iPad cannot necessarily be used elsewhere.

Not all equal
You might be thinking by now that ebooks and readers are a great idea. You would be right but never underestimate the ability of companies to create confusion where there is none. In the world of ebooks, you need to be aware of the different formats or different types of ebook file they use.

There are two main formats used for ebooks: Kindle ‘AZW’ and epub. The AZW format is used on Amazon’s Kindle and you can only buy books in that format from Amazon. There is a Kindle application for the iPhone and iPad, so you can read your Kindle books on those devices too.

Many other readers, including the Sony models, use the industry-standard epub format. That means you can buy books from any store that uses epub, such as Waterstones, WH Smith, Fictionwise and many others, and read them on just about any device. And if you change to a new epub-compliant reader in the future you can copy purchased books to it.

Even that is not quite the whole story, though. Many ebooks are protected by a technology called digital rights management (DRM), which prevents buyers making a copy of a file and passing it to a friend or sharing it online.

Most of the stores and devices that use the epub format use the same DRM standard called Adobe Digital Edition (Adept or just Digital Editions). As long as a reader supports this, then it will work with epub books bought online or borrowed ebooks from libraries that use Digital Editions. A single account can have up to six devices authorised to read the books it owns.

Most readers that are compatible with epub are also compatible with the Adobe DRM system, though some cheaper models are not, so make sure you ask before buying. There is one massive fly in the ointment, though, and that is the Apple iPad.

Apple has made a big song and dance about the iPad using epub. What the company did not say so loudly is that it will not use Adobe’s DRM and will instead use its own. That means if you buy a book from Apple’s iBookstore on the iPad, you can only read it on the iPad, even if you have another reader that is compatible with epub books.

And, if you have already invested in epub books for, say, a Sony Reader, and decide to treat yourself to an iPad, you will not be able to read any purchased books on the iPad that use Digital Editions.

You can find websites that explain how to remove DRM from epub files but as the law stands it would be illegal to do so. As such, we cannot condone that action but we do think it’s stupid of Apple to cause such unnecessary confusion for potential customers.

Besides the two popular formats, there are also a few others. Many readers allow you to view PDF files, so they are handy for things like instruction manuals, while a few support HTML and can read Microsoft Word or RTF word processing files. Mobipocket was one of the first ebook formats and there are reader programs for electronic organisers, mobile phones and desktop computers, too.

However, since Mobipocket was bought by Amazon, and used as the basis of Kindle, many people feel it is being sidelined. Similarly, Sony’s LRF ebook format is no more, as all the latest Sony Readers and the company’s bookstore use epub with Adobe DRM. Owners of Sony’s first model, the PRS-500, have to send them to Sony for an update, so be careful if you see any at bargain prices on sites like Ebay.