eReader Buying Guide

Remember:

        Cassette vs. 8-Track
        VHS vs. Beta
        DVD+R vs. DVD-R
        Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD

Ah, the complicated old days when you had to gamble on a media format in the hopes that it wouldn’t be discontinued, leaving you with a small fortune in 8-track tapes that you can’t play any more? (I’m keeping mine, just in case…) Well, the bad old days are back:

        EPUB vs. PDF vs. AZW vs. at least a dozen more eBook formats

Looking at the table below, you might conclude that the format of choice is PDF, which is readable by most eReaders. A great format for static documents, PDF was never meant to "flow" between pages, a necessary feature to accomodate different screen and font sizes. Then there's the lack of dictionary and annotation support. It's just not designed for eBooks, although if a book is carefully encoded into PDF, it's quite readable.

What about EPUB? The majority of eBooks support EPUB, a format that has been optimized for eBooks. An excellent idea, except for the 900-pound gorilla in the room. That would be Amazon, which has decided that it will use a proprietary format called AZW. Since Amazon sells more eReaders and more eBooks than anyone else, it's kind of hard to make a universal standard without its participation.

You and I can but stand by as the war rages, hoping all the while that our $500 worth of eBooks in our chosen format doesn't become a casualty. What we can do today is to ensure that if you download a free eBook from BeBook or buy a hard-to-find title from a boutique seller, we get the right type to read on your device. So take a peek at the table below and download with confidence.

NOTE 1: I’m starting with only the most popular devices and formats, but if you want more or if you find errors, please click on the link at the bottom of this article.

NOTE 2: This list is about current or recent models. Trying to maintain a list of old models would require a level of sanity far beyond my precarious state.