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I fell into a phase of reading free e-books (I love amateur authors and fan-fiction generally) on my phone and that lasted about a year but the constant chargin
by willvarfar 5y ago
I fell into a phase of reading free e-books (I love amateur authors and fan-fiction generally) on my phone and that lasted about a year but the constant charging and eye strain was a pain.
So I finally got an e-reader (the cheapest simplest Kobo) and I've had it nine months now. Oh what a difference the screen makes! Completely transformed how much I read and for how long I read.
The software on the Kobo sucks, and even with a builtin web-browser there is no good way to get free e-books onto the device without a cable to a laptop with Calibre. But once you have your books on the reader, it's super easy and nice.
I still love browsing old second hand book shops (they are dying) but I'm thinking there really isn't much future for commercial fiction generally. The chances of authors 'making it' is so slender and when its accepted it isn't a job, it can be unleashed as a hobby and they'll reach bigger audiences and get more interaction with readers by giving their work away. And that's what you see when there are over 800k Harry Potter books on fanfiction.org, and perhaps 50k are fantastic and fun to find. The 50k I like might not be the same 50k you'd choose, but its there.
Any leads on where to find similar other sources of amateur fiction appreciated.
- severine 5y agoDefinitely install Koreader! http://koreader.rocks/ http://koreader.rocks/ I can't even begin enumerating the features. It really rocks!
- mooncakes_ooohh 5y agoCame into this thread looking for anything to make my Kobo more tolerable. Gladly going to give this a go. I had an original Kindle and it felt just seamless at the time. I broke the screen and had to migrate to a Kobo Touch. It does the job but it's not nearly as responsive and the battery life is abhorrent.
- alasano 5y agoGonna install this just to get screen rotation on my Clara HD. Thanks!
- JetSetWilly 5y ago> The software on the Kobo sucks The best thing to do with a kobo (if you have a modicum of technical interest) is to install koreader and use it instead of the default. koreader is pretty great specifically for reading epubs. It lets you specify almost anything about how they are rendered even letting you easily create your own css modifications, and lets you fairly easily get books on and off whether by opds or even ssh or whatnot. If you are a bit anal and like your margins just so and paragraph indent just so and line spacing just so and you want it to left justify and do word breaks just so then koreader is pretty hard to beat.
- dsign 5y agoThe Kobo reader is fantastic for writing amateur fiction, or at least for self-editing it, because amateurs can only pay one or two editors instead of the small army that "professional" books require. You could head to the free section of Smashwords.com to get some free ebooks, but I know there are quite a few platforms. Also tons of people are always asking for beta readers in goodreads (check the forum section), there you have a chance to get close and personal with the authors while doing a great service to the community.
- fullstop 5y ago> I fell into a phase of reading free e-books (I love amateur authors and fan-fiction generally) on my phone and that lasted about a year but the constant charging and eye strain was a pain. Have you read Worm? [1] There are tools available to convert the whole thing to an eReader format, and it was the best work of fiction I've read in a long time. 1. https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ https://parahumans.wordpress.com/