A Can Opener For E-books – And Your New Best Friend

I had an interesting flurry of emails with a reader yesterday. She was explaining how much she loves Microsoft Reader formatted files (.lit files), and I was explaining how I can’t stand .lit format, or Microsoft Reader, and that my preference is for any format my Palm Pilot can handle (which is Word, PDF, Palm reader files, .txt, .rtf and some HTML).

We were very polite. <grin>

Once we had each had our say, she mentioned something that made my jaw drop a little.  She said that she was pretty much stuck with .lit (even though she loves Microsoft Reader, of course!), because she doesn’t own Microsoft Word, and therefore couldn’t use any of the text manipulating tricks she’d heard about to get a copy of her books in any other format.

Are you in this position? Forced to use a specific format (that of course, you just love!), because you can’t translate it?

A while ago, I mentioned the free Amber converters (ABCLit, ABCpdf and ABCPalm, etc.), which are one way to shift your books to another format.  One drawback of the converters is that they don’t allow you to edit the content in any way.  They simply convert.

But a text editor, like Microsoft Word, can be used like a can opener – there’s not too many formats (cans) they can’t open, and most fully-stocked text editors can save to more formats than they can open. (This’ll make sense in a minute. Bear with me.) Even if you never intend to compose a word of your own, having a general text editor to hand is incredibly useful for a number of computer file manipulations, and I use Microsoft Word all the time to convert to preferred formats, if Amber can’t do it for me.

I also use Amber converters and Word in combination — convert a PDF to .doc format with a converter, and open and edit in Word.  Or dump a .lit file to Word with the converter, and go from there.

What else can a text editor do?

Increase The Font Size

If you prefer easier reading, change the font size to 14 point font, and create your very own large-font book. Save to your preferred format, and voila!

Change The Font To Something More Reader-Friendly

A serif font like Times New Roman, say, that has the little hooks and curlicues on the ends of letters is easier on the eyes than a sans serif like Arial (this blog is in a san serif font — which, contratiwise, works better on a monitor). If the book you love is in Arial, try changing it to a serif font, and see what a difference it makes. (There’s a reason nearly all paperback novels use serif fonts).

Here’s another tip: If you have a favourite, favourite book, but it’s growing a bit stale from too many readings, try changing the font, changing the format and reading it on a different device or in a different way. You’ll be surprised by how fresh the story becomes. Different bits of dialogue and description will draw your attention, that never did before.

Change The Font To A Proportional Font

Non-porportional fonts, like Courier New, are absolutely deadly on the eyes. Change your book to a proportional font, where the “i” takes up just enough space, and the “m” takes up a little more. (Except for the last paragraph, this blog is displayed with a proportional font…unless you’ve pre-set your web browser to only display non-proportional by default).  Once you’ve changed the font, save to your preferred format.

(You may be interested to know that authors are generally required to write their manuscripts in a non-proportional font, Courier New. New York publishers traditionally expect to see manuscripts laid out this way because they can then calculated almost to the page how many pages the finished book will take up, depending upon the proportional font they use.)

Other Stuff A Text Editor Can Do For Your Electronic Library

I’ve used a number of text editors, apart from Word, and they can:

Open: .doc files (usually all versions), .txt files, .html files, and .rtf files, amongst others. If I can’t get my computer to open a file by double clicking on it, and I’m not familiar with the format, I’ll force MS Word to open the file (right click on the file and select “open with”)…and quite often, Word can open it. I’ll get the odd character in there, but I can read the text.

Adjust: margins, fonts, font colour, font size, page endings, ragged right margins or justified margins (this paragraph, for instance, is a justified paragraph, while all the others are ragged right).  Justified paragraphs, like in novels, force the line to space out so that each line ends at the same place.  It can create some “interesting” spaces in the line.  Dropping back to ragged right might help make things easier on your eyes.

Insert or delete: page numbers, headings and footings, cover images (so you remember which book it is when you open it, if you have trouble remembering a story’s title – and I always remember the cover, while the title can allude me!).

Add: Reader reviews, information on the author, links to the author’s webpage(s), your own notes about the book.

Save as: Most text editors can save a file to .doc, .txt, .html, .pdf (although versions of Word earlier than 2007 can’t), .rtf (rich text format). With additional widgets, macros or extensions, many text editors can also create Palm files (.pdb), .lit files, and other popular reader formats.

If you don’t have a text editor yet, and your e-book collection is growing, maybe it’s time you acquired one (along with a few converters for those stubborn formats like .lit that just won’t socialize with anyone but their own kind).

Yeah, but Microsoft Word is Expensive

I know exactly how expensive Word is. I’ve been keeping up with every release of Microsoft Word since the old days of Windows 3.2 (remember that?), and Word 6. I use to use WordStar before that (hands up anyone who can remember WordStar, and shout out if you actually used to use it!)

But you just want a can opener, not an expensive trademark. There’s an alternative. It’s fully-loaded, does everything Word does…and it’s free.

OpenOffice.org offer a free, open-source suite of office programs, including a text editor that has nearly all the same features as Word. “Open source” means that hackers and programmers can download the source code, and develop widgets, extensions and add-ons that build even more functionality into the programs. OpenOffice.org is a favourite of hackers everywhere, which is usually a good sign you’re dealing with a stable, well-developed program. There’s also a spreadsheet, presentation program, drawing program, and database program in the suite.

I have installed OOo (as they call it), and really like it. I won’t stop using Word just yet, because I’m still playing around with OOo. Besides, I just shelled out for Office 2007. But so far, so good.

What else do you do to your e-books to make them more user friendly?

Got any conversion tips?

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First appeared on Stories Rule, September, 2008

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© Tracy Cooper-Posey 2008. Cannot be copied or distributed without permission, or without this copyright notice attached.