Kindle Downloads Guide
In my first post I said, "I do not have a Kindle reader as of yet, but it's on my wish list. I really wonder if reading "arts & crafts" books on the size of a hand held device will really be practical. I think it will work for novels, etc. But, instruction books and manuals, like most crafting books are? Hmmmm?" I do want to find out and when I finally buy one and download some of the arts & crafts books I like that are available, or some of the other books that I like, I'll let you know what I think. It will be interesting to see if the idea of Kindle takes off. One thing that I know right now is that Kindle can never replace or replicate the joy of "bookstore" shopping that I have with my Mom and which I've posted about many, many times."
In my 2nd post I said, "I do not have a Kindle reader as of yet, but it's definitely on my wish list. I really wonder if reading "arts & crafts" books on the size of a hand held device will really be practical. I think it will work for novels, manuals, etc. but, I'm not sure it would work for e-patterns and patterns. However, I do want to find out and when I finally buy one and download some of the arts & crafts books I like that are available I'll let you know what I think. If you have a Kindle reader and have downloaded some arts & crafts related books I'd love to know what you think."
I don't know if you've been watching the explosion of popularity for the Kindle and other eReaders (like the NOOKcolor eBook Tablet this year, but if you have, then you know there have been more eBooks sold this year than actual hard copy books.
As a lover of hard copy books I'm not surprised by the popularity of the eReaders. What I'm surprised at is how quickly the eBooks have surpassed the print copies. In fact, it's really kind of sad. There's just something to holding a book in your hands and flipping through all the pages that is lost with an electronic device. However, you can certainly take thousands of books with you with one eReader tucked into your pocketbook and that is not something you can easily do with 1,000 print books. Plus, eReaders can read e-patterns (like my .PDFLinda Walsh Originals E-Patterns so that is a BIG PLUS for crafters. Just think of having an eReader right next to your sewing machine or on your craft table. How great would that be?
In fact, this year I'm determined to get an eReader to not only see see how my e-patterns would look on it, but to see how some of the craft eBooks look on it. I'm not sure which one I'll get as of yet. That will be a surprise. It seems that many, many craft books are now being converted to eBooks. So many so that's it's hard to keep up with all of them."
In a recent
Linda's Blog post entitled
"The Pro's and Cons of E-Patterns" my pro comment #9 in favor of e-patterns was as follows: "Because they are in .PDF format this means they can be read by most e-readers like: Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, Apple's IPad, Sony Reader, etc. In my opinion this is a wonderful benefit to e-patterns for the future. Most of us who sew keep the e-patterns right next to us while we are sewing. With an e-reader you could download the e-pattern to your e-reader and keep the it right next to you while you are sewing so as to easily scroll through the pages. Of course, you'd either have to print the pattern piece sheets out before downloading your e-pattern to your e-reader or connect it in such a manner as to allow you to print the pattern pieces.
Well, as you know from my
Linda's Blog post entitled "
After Ten Long Months I'm Finally Finished! I finally finished revising all 270+ of my patterns. Since my massive pattern revision project was done I finally took the plunge and bought a Kindle DX with free 3G and graphite 9.7" display with new E Ink Pearl Technology. I had decided to buy the largest version as I thought the larger size would be better for my "tired, old eyes" and would be more comparable to reading a book than the smaller versions.
My Kindle came in a nice, neat package and I was able to use it right out of the box. There was no set-up involved and my device had already been registered for me at the Kindle store so I was all set to go. It took me a few minutes to learn how to maneuver my way around it, but I finally got the hang of it and have to tell you that I love it. The screen REALLY does look like the pages of a book and the black/white gray-scale coloring is amazing.
The joystick took a little getting used to, but I finally got the hang of that as well. The buttons on the bottom are a little small for my "tired, old eyes" to see, but are unobtrusive and don't take away from the smooth looks of the Kindle.
I loved the way the Kindle could easily switch from portrait to landscape viewing just by turning the Kindle in your hands. The zoom in feature and font size feature is also very nice for "tired, old eyes." And, I could see how the search, bookmark, note, and highlight features could come in very handy. Plus, the Go To feature does come in handy as well.
Since I knew I had so many of my own items to download to my Kindle I decided I would set up collections for my e-patterns, e-books, my sister's e-patterns, and other books, magazines, etc. that I might wish to download. With a lot of items on the Kindle the collections and go-to capabilities comes in very handy.
In order to download my e-patterns and e-books, which are in .PDF format, I had to connect my Kindle to my computer via the USB cord, which was included with my Kindle. The USB cord is a combination electrical cord and USB cord all in one. The electrical cord end is actually an adapter that comes off to reveal a USB end underneath, which is really kinda cool.
So, I connected my Kindle and then set about to download and organize all my e-patterns and e-books. It took a little while to organize them, as I had so many, but once they were downloaded and organized it was easy to find what I wanted.
Here's what my organized by collection "Home" page looked like:
So, if I want to view one of my e-patterns I would go to Linda's Patterns and click the joystick to select that collection.
The next screen shows a list of the items in my "Lindas Patterns' collection. The Kindle sorted the e-patterns initially by "most recent first" which I changed to sorting "by title" within each collection so I could easily find the e-pattern I wanted.
I decided to view one of my free e-patterns. The cover page came in exactly as I had it set up in my .PDF which is two-page booklet to simulate a typical front and back page pattern cover.
Next came the instructions page which were all very easy to read.
Then, my diagrams pages, which were also very easy to read.
And, finally, the pattern piece sheets which were also very easy to read.
I wanted to see how color might be affected by the grey scale Kindle version so I decided to view some of my e-books which had more color in them to see if it made a difference. Here's how the cover page of my free "Linda's How-Do-I Series? How To Create Fast and Easy Cloth, Paper and E-Printable Ornaments" which has a lot of color looked:
Then the instructions pages:
The pattern pieces pages:
And, the colored e-printables pages:
The grey-scale differentiated the colors so you were able to see that one was a little different than another. Since the colored e-printable would be printed on a color printer viewing them in grey-scale on the Kindle was no problem.
Despite the remarkable differentiation of the grey-scale picture mode, I can see how viewing arts & crafts books or magazines that have a lot of color pictures might suffer a bit on the grey-scale version of the Kindle. For e-patterns, however, which are created mainly in black and white to cut-down on the toner usage when printing the pattern, viewing them on the Kindle is fine.
I very quickly decided that I would like having all my e-patterns and other e-patterns I'd purchased stored on the Kindle right next to my sewing machine as that would come in very handy indeed. I could download e-patterns or e-books I wanted to my computer, print off the pattern piece sheets I needed for making the item in the pattern, and then download the entire e-pattern to my Kindle.
I would no longer need to store boxes upon boxes of patterns. Of course, if I still wanted a printed version I could easily print the whole e-pattern that I had saved on my computer or connect my Kindle to my computer via the USB post, select the Kindle, select the .PDF e-pattern I wanted and print from there.
All in all I was very pleased with the way my e-patterns downloaded to the Kindle. It was very easy to do and all the e-patterns were easily view-able. While I could view all my e-patterns in landscape mode on the Kindle since they were created as a .PDF to be printed in portrait the portrait viewing was preferable.
Kindle has a new color version called
"Kindle Fire" which is coming out next week. It's 7.5" x 4.7" which makes it a lot smaller than the version I currently have which is 10.4" x 7.2".
A color version of the Kindle might be nice. However, while I do think that viewing in color would enhance the viewing pleasure of a lot of crafts books or magazines loaded with color pages I'm going to stick with my Kindle DX for now.
I like the size of it.
It's just right for my "tired, old eyes.
