Get started with e-books

I personally believe there’s something magic about books. Not magic in the hocus-pocus sense of the word, but in the feelings a book is sometimes able to invoke in you. I like going to bookshops or libraries and choosing a new book to read, touch its pages, breathe-in its scent. Something you can’t obviously do with e-books.

While I still prefer real books to read, I admit e-books are a great format for technical topics. They’re easier to search and faster to look up. It’s also an excellent way to save trees: imagine delivering user manuals for each software app in the world as an e-book – and not real paper leaflets.

If you too are curious about e-books, there are a few things you have to know. First of all, you’ll need an e-book reader. yBook is a great choice, a reader with support for several e-book formats, an embedded search tool, support for different text sizes and direct connection to the Gutenberg Project.

What? You don’t know what the Gutenberg Project is? Well, here’s something else you need to learn about e-books then. The Gutenberg Project is one of the largest e-book databases in the world, and it’s al open source. It features over 25,000 titles, specializing in classic authors like Dickens, Twain, Verne, Poe and others. Project Gutenberg though is not the only resource for free books online. You can also use FreeTechBooks to download e-books about computer, maths and other sciences, or the e-book search engine PDF Geni to look for specific titles.

One more thing: once you have downloaded your favorite e-books to your PC, you don’t have to leave them there. Use eBook to Images and you’ll be able to convert any e-book to images and therefore transfer it to any photo-enabled mobile device