I *may* be getting a kindle for Christmas this year – or a different ereader, still not completely decided – and I was wondering if the SCM books can be read on a kindle? I own a few printed books, but am interested in several of the others and would love to save $$ by buying the ebooks.
They can, but the formatting (pdf) makes it rather difficult to see the type, because it shows up rather small on mine. They’d probably work better on a DX than the regular Kindle.
Yes, I know you CAN view pdfs directly, but you can also still have it converted to Kindle format as well – and I was wondering if you had converted it, as it might make a difference on how it looks?
Oh, I see what you’re saying 🙂 I converted it, to make it easier to read. The way SCM lays out their books, with the two columns, made it a little tricky, but I found the conversion was much more pleasant to read than the original pdf.
Btw, I love my Kindle! Actually reading CM’s original series on it right now 🙂
From what I’ve read, the Kindle does have some limitations when you view PDF files directly that have not been converted to Kindle format. Most of the articles I’ve seen might be a little old so things may have changed, but here is what I’ve seen:
Hyperlinks do not work, such as the links we put in our table of contents to jump directly to sections.
You can’t change the font sizes.
I think older Kindles could not pan or zoom a PDF for a closer view. It looks like the new model can and I don’t know if they updated the software on older models to add this capability too.
It can’t read password protected PDF files. That’s not an issue for books from SCM, though.
There are also some limitations in converting PDFs to Kindle format. The software does a pretty good job, but it’s not perfect and can leave some of the formatting messed up.
Hopefully some of you with a Kindle can jump in and let us know if these things are still true and how SCM books work out after being converted to Kindle format. Thanks.
I have a Kindle on order so we can test our books and give better answers, but it’s backordered for a couple weeks.
Oh my – what do you all mean by needing to convert files? That sounds really complicated! Is that software that I will have to buy if I get a Kindle? Hmmm…
As mentioned, you can read PDF files directly…. however, if you have a PDF file that you feel might look better if converted to Kindle format, all you do is email it to your Kindle email address (which you setup on “Manage my Kindle” on amazon. You get 2 email addresses, one with “free” in the address….
so, you email your pdf to [name]@free.kindle.com where name is what you named the Kindle….