Dorothy Marley's Journal

I am looking at e-readers, and am intrigued by the new Kindle, both for its smallness and its (relative) cheapness. My main purpose in buying an e-reader is to read fanfic without having to lug my laptop around, so my main concern is the ability to transfer TXT, PDF and HTML files to the device and be able to read them.

As I looked more deeply into the nuts and bolts of the Kindle tranfser process, though, I saw a big snag, and want to ask Kindle users if I'm reading the help files correctly about PDF and HTML files. Here is what the Amazon help files say about the types of files Kindle recognizes when connected by USB:

Here's a list of the directories and the file types recognized by Kindle:

* Documents: Kindle (.AZW, .AZW1). Text (.TXT), Unprotected Mobipocket (.MOBI, .PRC)
* Audible: Audible (.AA, .AAX)
* Music: MP3 (.MP3)

[Blah blah DRM blah]

Personal Documents

Kindle's Personal Document Service allows you to e-mail the following approved file types to your Kindle's e-mail address:

* Microsoft Word (.DOC)
* HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
* RTF (.RTF)
* JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG)
* GIF (.GIF)
* PNG (.PNG)
* BMP (.BMP)
* PDF (.PDF): See below for details.
* Microsoft Word (.DOCX) is supported in our experimental category.


Okay. If I am reading this and the section on transferring files by e-mail correctly, I will not be able to transfer PDF or HTML files directly to my Kindle via USB. Instead, I will have to e-mail PDF and HTML files to a special e-mail address, and they will then be sent via wireless to my Kindle.

So, my question for current Kindle users is this: Am I reading this right? Do I have to jump through e-mail hoops and wireless just to send a PDF or HTML file I've saved on my own computer to the Kindle? Really?

This is close to being a serious deal-breaker for me. Nearly all of what I read is saved in TXT format, but more and more authors are offering longer stories in single-file PDFs. If anyone reads PDFs on their Kindle, I'd be interested in your experiences and advice. Including if the wireless process is actually very easy and painless. :)

One thing I forgot to share in the previous post was the issue I had with the beginning and end notes on AO3, and how I got around them. This is a known issue, but I hadn't seen any information on this particular workaround and thought I would share my experiences.

I discovered that if I added a note to the end of a story, the interface would then refuse thereafter to add a note at the beginning. I thought at first that this was a shortcoming of the interface and that you just couldn't do both, but then I tried it again on another story and figured out the workarounds. For those who experienced the same issue, here's what I did:

First, if you are going to add notes both to the end and beginning, select the beginning option first. If you do this, you can then add the end note without, as far as I could tell, any problem.

If you've already added a end note and want to add a beginning note, you'll need to go to the edit mode and delete the end note. You can't deselect the ticky box (yet), so you have to select the text and remove it, then save the story. Once you've done that, you can edit the story again with a clean slate on the notes option. At that point, just make sure to select the beginning note option first before reconstructing your end note.

I'm not sure if this is specific to my system/browser, but if you're running OSX and Firefox and ran into this, give it a try.