If you don't mind my asking, how do you find the Kindle? I'm seriously considering purchasing one. Do you load fic onto it? Do you have to cut and past fic into word, then upload it? Do you find it very easy buy books, or have you found places to get books for free?
Thanks in advance for your opinions--I really appreciate it!
I do load fic onto it, or rather on to an SD card that I can easily remove if I plan to show off the Kindle to non-slash-oriented folks!
I do generally cut and paste into Word, then e-mail the file off to Amazon, and for a dime, they format it and sent it straight to the Kindle. I tend to make massive collections of stories and send them in a bigass file, which is cheap, but not necessarily smart, since sometimes I forget which stories are where and the Kindle's search function is somewhat elementary.
Buying books from amazon couldn't be any simpler -- I can do it online or directly from the Kindle. I have purchased one MOBI-formatted ebook from another site and it downloaded fine and then I "pulled" it into the Kindle via the USB cord.
I haven't found many books for free, but then again, I haven't really been looking...there's a great site -- mobileread forums -- with a big Kindle forum and lots and lots (and LOTS) of free (ie. non copyrighted) books.
There's another way to format fic for the Kindle if you have a PC, and that's with MobiPocket Creator and Reader -- then Amazon's not involved in the process at all. You can format .pdf, .doc, or .txt files into unencrypted .prc files, which you can then load onto the Kindle via the USB cord. That idea was daunting to me, but I was pretty motivated, and though it's a multi-step process, I can do it easily now, and if I can do it, anyone can.
I use my Kindle for reading at the gym -- I put it on the treadmill or stair climber and just read the time away. It's *awesome*.
It's downsides are: it's black and white, the web interface is veeeerrrryyyyyy slow, and it's indexing is kind of a joke. The latter is something I hope will be improved with software upgrades. New releases are not *always* $9.99, at least not right away, which is annoying, but anything out in paperback is usually between $4 and $6, which is a plus.
The upside is a biggie, though, and that is that I'm reading more now than I have for probably six years, and I've got fic where I can get to it easily, anywhere. For me, it's absolutely ideal for reading fic (or anything else!)
There's an ebook fan fic library in the works; if you go to cesperanza's latest post, she links to it, I think. Those files are already formatted for ebook readers.
What else would you like to know? I'm pretty evangelical about the Kindle!
Wow, this is really helpful! The reason I'd be buying one is that I'm about to go overseas for a couple of years, and this seems like a good way to solve the lack of access to books issue. Since I'll be in southern Africa, I won't have access to the internets directly through the Kindle, as I understand it. So I really want to make sure hooking it up via USB and downloading that way is possible. What's an SD card? I like the idea of a removable slash library. :) And how many books can the Kindle hold? Have you felt like you needed to put some of your books on a card as well, to make more room on the Kindle itself?
Thanks for the info and I may ask more questions later. I really appreciate your feedback!
Much more tomorrow, when my brain is more awake, but very quickly, just wanted to say that the SD card is a memory card like the ones used in digital cameras. I have a 2GB card, of which I've used about 70 MB.
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zvi and 
no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-03 01:42 am (UTC)Thanks in advance for your opinions--I really appreciate it!
no subject
Date: 2008-07-03 02:52 am (UTC)I do load fic onto it, or rather on to an SD card that I can easily remove if I plan to show off the Kindle to non-slash-oriented folks!
I do generally cut and paste into Word, then e-mail the file off to Amazon, and for a dime, they format it and sent it straight to the Kindle. I tend to make massive collections of stories and send them in a bigass file, which is cheap, but not necessarily smart, since sometimes I forget which stories are where and the Kindle's search function is somewhat elementary.
Buying books from amazon couldn't be any simpler -- I can do it online or directly from the Kindle. I have purchased one MOBI-formatted ebook from another site and it downloaded fine and then I "pulled" it into the Kindle via the USB cord.
I haven't found many books for free, but then again, I haven't really been looking...there's a great site -- mobileread forums -- with a big Kindle forum and lots and lots (and LOTS) of free (ie. non copyrighted) books.
There's another way to format fic for the Kindle if you have a PC, and that's with MobiPocket Creator and Reader -- then Amazon's not involved in the process at all. You can format .pdf, .doc, or .txt files into unencrypted .prc files, which you can then load onto the Kindle via the USB cord. That idea was daunting to me, but I was pretty motivated, and though it's a multi-step process, I can do it easily now, and if I can do it, anyone can.
I use my Kindle for reading at the gym -- I put it on the treadmill or stair climber and just read the time away. It's *awesome*.
It's downsides are: it's black and white, the web interface is veeeerrrryyyyyy slow, and it's indexing is kind of a joke. The latter is something I hope will be improved with software upgrades. New releases are not *always* $9.99, at least not right away, which is annoying, but anything out in paperback is usually between $4 and $6, which is a plus.
The upside is a biggie, though, and that is that I'm reading more now than I have for probably six years, and I've got fic where I can get to it easily, anywhere. For me, it's absolutely ideal for reading fic (or anything else!)
There's an ebook fan fic library in the works; if you go to
What else would you like to know? I'm pretty evangelical about the Kindle!
no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 02:04 am (UTC)Thanks for the info and I may ask more questions later. I really appreciate your feedback!
no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 02:42 am (UTC)The Kindle holds 200 MB, or about 200 books. :)