E-Readers and File Formats

[Outofin]

David, I never tried. I suppose the file contains some account info so it can be only opened in one Kindle. Every Kindle is registered with a Amazon account. I heard family members can share one account. But you can't lend books to friends.

I've been using it for a few days. Originally I said the screen was small. No, it turns out not a problem. When reading books, I don't even notice its size, except when there is a graph.

[kdavid]

After some more digging it appears that I can't buy Kindle books from China even through a proxy.

For those with a Kindle in China, how do you get books? Could I have someone download the book to their computer back home (in the States) and email it to me?

[chrix]

You can always download them through your Amazon account onto your computer and then transfer it to your Kindle by cable. That's what I do whenever I take my Kindle out of the US...

Edited January 24, 2010 at 10:22 PM by chrix

[kdavid]

You can always download them through your Amazon account onto your computer and then transfer it to your Kindle by cable. That's what I do whenever I take my Kindle out of the US...

I gave this a test drive just now and Amazon won't let me log onto my account at all.

I was able to log on through a proxy, but was kicked out after about 30 seconds.

Is there anyone who has done this recently? I'm very close to buying one, but if this is going to be a problem I need to look at another brand as I won't be leaving China anytime soon.

For the record, how big is a typical Kindle file?

[chrix]

Depends on whether it has graphics or not. Like the NY Times will be 2-3 MB, books without graphics typically less, I'd say around 1MB or less.

The best thing would be to ask Amazon whether they might have blocked you because you're in China and if there's a way to get you "whitelisted" as it were.

[kdavid]

The best thing would be to ask Amazon whether they might have blocked you because you're in China and if there's a way to get you "whitelisted" as it were.

I thought this was a great idea, so I wrote to Amazon:

I'm very interested in purchasing a Kindle. However, I've noticed that Amazon will not allow me to purchase Kindle books in China.

Is there any way around this?

I received the following reply:

Thanks for taking the time to write to us about this.

I'm afraid it's not a case of Amazon not allowing you to purchase books in China - since publishers give us eBook rights on a country by country basis, availability and pricing of titles from the Kindle Store can vary by your home country or region. We are actively working with publishers to get the rights to all titles for every country and adding selection every day.

To answer your question directly, no there isn't any way around this. Sorry for the disappointment.

Anyway, I can get around this by accessing the Kindle page via a proxy and downloading whatever file to my computer. However, I don't know if I can use this file on a Kindle. I'll research further and post the results when available.

[gato]

I thought that you could download from Kindle as long as you use a credit card with a US address. No?

The Kindle can't display Chinese out of the box. The Chinese-made e-readers, of course, can display Chinese without any modification. Both the Hanlin and Hanwang ereaders support the epub format, which is also used by the Sony ereader and the newly announced Apple iPad. Since Apple already has an agreement with 5 of the 6 largest publishers in the US, we should see a lot more books being made available in epub format soon.

Here is a nice feature comparison of variosu e-readers ("Hanvon" on this chart is the "international" name of Hanwang).

http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix

Compared to the Hanlin, the Hanwang has the advantage of handwriting recognition and built-in dictionary lookup.

You compare prices on the 360buy site:

http://www.360buy.com/products/652-828-1203-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-1-1-1.html

The Hanlin e-reader actually has gotten some attention outside of China. See this review in the Times of London.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/business/article6386980.ece

May 29, 2009

Review: Hanlin e-reader

Edited January 30, 2010 at 11:44 AM by gato

[Ed Log]

Format, format, format

What are the most common cross platform formats for ebooks?

EPUB,

LIT,

MOB,

PDF,

The problem with Kindle, Nook etc they are looking for recurring business so they don't read all formats. You can buy direct from Jinke or buy the BeBook (same thing) from Expansys or similar on-line retailers.

http://www.expansys.com.hk/laptops+netbooks/ebook-readers

[Long Pan]

Article from China daily promoting the hanvon (汉王) telling that it is a great tool for study (see extract below)

"If you are a Chinese learning English, or better yet, an expat learning Chinese, this could be a great tool. Load as many materials as you like, have the book read it out to you, repeat as many times as you want, check the embedded four dictionaries and encyclopedia, and move up the learning curve by testing what books fit your language proficiency."

Here is the annex article which comes with it

[in_lab]

If you find out where to download Chinese ebooks, let me know. I've been looking for websites to no avail (especially interested in Taiwanese books).

http://bookstore.green-ebook.com.tw/

They will be "open" for business on 3/1. Not much of a selection, but you might want to watch them as they expand.

http://www.ebooktaiwan.com/ebooktaiwan/

Even less of a selection, but you might want to take a look.

[chrix]

just wanted to report that with the pdf capability I'm now able to read Chinese books on my Kindle. The only problem is that the font size can be quite small, the only option you have is to use landscape view instead of portrait. The only thing you could try to do is to crop the page margins if you can.

So if you have a Word document, with let's say Ba Jin's "Jia", you would yank up the font size, crop the page margins and convert it to pdf. I'm quite satisfied with the results.

[in_lab]

Just noticed another ereader that supports Chinese. The greenbook.

NT$7988