I have two eBook readers, a Kindle Fire and a Nook Touch.<\/p>\n
Why two? File formats. The Kindle handles MOBI files and things bought from Amazon. The Nook handles EPUB files. An EPUB will do me no good on a Kindle, a MOBI is useless on a Nook.<\/p>\n
Unless…<\/p>\n
What if I sideloaded an EPUB-compatible eBook program on the Kindle? Then I would have a single reader that could handle all of my eBook needs.<\/p>\n
And this weekend, that’s exactly what I did.<\/p>\n
The program I installed? Readmill<\/a>.<\/p>\n Why Readmill? Because The Atlantic<\/i> recommended it and said that Readmill is “the best-designed e-reading system out there<\/a>.” And: “Above all, I\u2019m nearly certain it has the best digital typography among e-reading software today. On Readmill, digital books look like books, not text files foisted into an extensible reading enviromnent.”<\/p>\n Oh, Readmill, you had me at “typography.”<\/p>\n Because, I’m going to be blunt here, the Kindle’s typography is awful<\/i>. And typography on the Nook Touch? Oh, don’t make me laugh.<\/p>\n At least the Nook handles chapter breaks decently. The Kindle has a kind of typographic seizure depending on how you reach a chapter break; sometimes it knows it’s reached a chapter heading and formats appropriately, while other times it spazs out and formats the chapter heading as body text.<\/p>\n But there had to be a better way.<\/p>\n I downloaded the APK for Readmill on Friday. Saturday I loaded it onto the Kindle through the USB cable and, using the ES File Manager, I exectued the file and installed it. (I learned this trick because I needed the latest version of WordPress for Android, and the version in the Kindle Store is several versions out of date.)<\/p>\n I loaded several unprotected EPUBS (The Great Gatsby<\/i> and Ulysses<\/i> among them) onto my Kindle, at first into the Books directory where the Kindle stores its books, then I had Readmill search the Kindle and import them. (Later, I found the correct path and put new files there. No search and import needed.)<\/p>\n Readmill’s typography is great, and books are easy to read. I experimented with several different EPUBS, and the only feature I found that it didn’t handle was hyperlinks within a document (like, say, for footnotes). The spastic behavior of the Kindle environment with chapter breaks? Readmill handled chapter breaks like a dream.<\/p>\n Readmill is also a social media platform, where you can have friends and show off your library. My profile<\/a> is a bit dull at the moment; I have no reading friends.<\/p>\n Now I have a single machine that can handle both MOBI and EPUB files. To be honest, I think it’s likely that, given a choice on a book, I’ll get the EPUB file and read it on my Kindle using Readmill.<\/p>\n If you’re at all interested, it’s worth at least experimenting with. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have two eBook readers, a Kindle Fire and a Nook Touch. Why two? File formats. The Kindle handles MOBI files and things bought from Amazon. The Nook handles EPUB files. An EPUB will do me no good on a Kindle, a MOBI is useless on a Nook. Unless… What if I sideloaded an EPUB-compatibleContinue reading “Giving Readmill a Try as an eBook Reader”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[1158,3908,3909,3910],"class_list":["post-28495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reading","tag-ebooks","tag-kindle","tag-nook","tag-readmill","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}