I'm thinking of getting a Kindle (or similar) for my dad, but I have no idea of which file formats are available for ebooks, and more importantly which are best?
Are they open or proprietary? If it's the later how do you move them between different branded devices etc etc.

Does anyone have any advice on the matter?

IIRC the Kindle won't play nicely with common e-book formats such as EPUB.

Yeah, I had a quick google. Places like Waterstones sell either EPUB of PDF's (Not sure if you choose which), but Kindles won't read EPUB's. But then the format Amazon sell ebooks in is their own, so can others use them....nope?
Plus I don't know much about the DRM. Can you move the books between devices etc?

So just a few things to get my head round. I need to work out which is best. Normally I go towards open standards, but I'm not sure this time.
Why can't amazon get teh Kindle to read EPUB's? That would almost guarantee I buy their hardware.

Google for Calibre, think that's how you spell it, converts into just about every format, though I haven't tried it with an Amazon file I don't think.

It's free so fire a PDF at it or something (acts as a reader too IIRC), it works every time and gets around epub meaning books from anywhere!

You can get a 'Kindle app' for most platforms which will allow you to read Kindle books on pretty much anything. IIRC Kindles will also display PDF's, as long as they have no DRM on them.


IIRC you can read the book on any device you've signed into with your account, either a kindle or using the app. But you can't loan or give the book to another account.


Because then there's no guarantee you'd buy their content, which is where they actually make all the profit. You don't think they're making much selling you an e-reader for 80 quid do you?

Jon

Hmmm. Maybe I should delay it a bit. Apple have their retina display now and there's plenty of talk about other manufacturers using them soon.
Do you think I should wait until there's a high res version available? I think I'd maybe want him to have something just a little bit sharper than the current E Ink.

I gave my Dad (86) my old iPad1 and he reads very happily on that - he prefers it to his Kindle. At a certain point, I think it becomes less about the sharpness of the screen, and more about the size of the words

EPUB may be an 'open' standard, but the DRM isn't (e.g. ePubs from Waterstones use Adobe Digital Editions DRM, ePubs from iBooks use Apple's FairPlay DRM etc..) Yes you can strip the DRM, but does your Dad (or you) really want to do that with every book? Amazon's Kindle format is based on the old MobiPocket, btw - Mobi was far and away the most popular DRM'd eBook format around when Amazon was introducing the Kindle, and Amazon bought them out around 6 or 7 years ago.

+1 for the most flexible option being a tablet of some kind, as there are almost certainly apps available for whichever flavour of format and DRM you can think of - my wife used to use a Sony Reader, and can still access her library of ADE ePubs using the BlueFire App on her iPad, for example. But eink readers, albeit less flexible all round, are the cheaper option.

HTH Pete