Name: Great Homeschool Conventions (Columbus)
Start: 2025-04-24T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-04-26T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Columbus, OH

Tagged: Laying Down the Rails

This topic has 9 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 13 years ago by MamaSnow.

Viewing 10 posts - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

Author
Posts
November 29, 2011 at 9:02 pm
rejoicevermore13
Participant
I was just wondering how those of you who have purchased the SCM books like them as ebooks??
I really would like to get Laying down the rails as an ebook to use on my kindle…but am unsure of spending that much if the format is not very easy to read on a kindle???
any thoughts?
do many of you use the SCM ebooks on your kindle??
thank you!
November 30, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Carolyn
Participant
bumping…since I am also interested in the responses.
November 30, 2011 at 2:24 pm
dmccall3
Participant
I have several SCM ebooks but the formatting makes them hard to read, so much so that I’ve been too frustrated by it to ever get through even one chapter. I live overseas so have to limit my real book collection. It’s a shame… They made one in a better format but I can’t remember which one.
HTH
Dana
November 30, 2011 at 4:08 pm
suzukimom
Participant
I am ok with the SCM books on Kindle – you have to rotate the Kindle to read them in landscape mode though because they are a PDF.
I think they are looking at doing new books in various ebook formats and yes, one of their latest ones you could get in various formats.

November 30, 2011 at 4:08 pm
suzukimom
Participant
You could download one of the book samples and try it out on whatever ereader you have, and see what you think…..
November 30, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Doug Smith
Keymaster
Yes, we do recommend trying the free sample. Our samples are formatted the same as the full book.
The problem with smaller screen e-book readers is that when an 8.5″ x 11″ PDF is shrunk down to screen size it’s usually too small to read. As suzukimom mentioned, you can turn your reader sideways because the screen is wider in that direction.
Some people have tried using a converter to change the PDF into the native Kindle format so the text can reflow. The results aren’t usually very good on many of the books, though, because it doesn’t know what to do with things like all the sidebar content. Laying Down the Rails has a lot of sidebar content so it would be difficult. Books that are mostly straight text (i.e., Jack’s Insects) would have better results.
I recently heard about a newer conversion tool that I haven’t tried yet. It’s k2pdfotp if you want to give it a try with the sample. If anyone does try it please let us know how it goes.
The one book we do have in all the formats is our free A Thinking Love e-book.
November 30, 2011 at 5:01 pm
dmccall3
Participant
Yes it’s the sidebar stuff that gets intermixed with the regular text for me and I can’t figure out what goes with what…if that makes sense. The sample idea is a great one!
November 30, 2011 at 5:21 pm
rejoicevermore13
Participant
well that is a great idea to try the sample first:) i dont know why i didnt think of that! thank you all
December 1, 2011 at 3:49 am
missceegee
Participant
I have many and read them on the iPad with great results. Highly recommended for iPad. I’ve no experience with the kindle though.
December 1, 2011 at 1:35 pm
MamaSnow
Participant
I don’t mind so much having to rotate my kindle screen to read them…this works fine for me with books that I want to read straight through. However, with something like Laying Down the Rails, which is more of a reference book that you want to flip back and forth through depending on what issues you are working on in your house at the time, using the Kindle is a little annoying because you have to click through the pages one at a time. I personally would love to see an active table of contents in books like this so I can easily jump to the section I want to read (or re-read). Because of this I bought the paper copy of LDTR, although I have and use many of the other SCM ebooks on my Kindle.
FWIW,
Jen