Kobo eReader For Dummies

Introduction

I have a serious case of bibliophilia. Been that way for all my life. Thomas Jefferson, one of the greatest minds to occupy a chair in American government, said, I cannot live without books. The great Roman philosopher Cicero wrote this more than 2,000 years ago: A room without books is like a body without a soul. I know, I know: enough with the philosophical discourse. You want to know how to make the most use out of the Kobo eReader, the latest in a cascade of amazing high-tech devices that have made their way into our consciousness in our ever-quickening modern times.

But here in this introduction I wanted to make one important point: forget for a moment about the technology. The Kobo eReader is merely another way to read the printed word and absorb its content into our souls. In some ways it is inferior to ink on paper. But in other ways it has some remarkable advantages.

As I write this, I am preparing to head out on an international trip. Between my wife and I, we were prepared to pack nearly ten pounds of ink, paper, and cardboard. But that was yesterday; today I loaded all ten pounds onto a Kobo eReader. The device is about the size of an opened passport and weighs slightly less than eight ounces.

tip.eps Oh, and by the way, the eReader comes from the factory with 100 classic works of literature and can hold nearly one thousand titles before you have to consider using its built-in expansion slot. Cicero would be pleased, as am I.

About This Book

I have written more than 160 books, but this particular one marks my very first completely electronic book: no trees were sacrificed in its creation. And though this title is part of the wondrously successful For Dummies collection, it is also one of the first of that series to be published first as an e-book.

Kobo eReader For Dummies follows the same proven formula of the other For Dummies books. It is meant for people who are smart enough to know they could use a bit of extra explanation, tips, and hints to get the most out of their new device. And also for people who enjoy a bit of humor, or at least light-hearted writing, as they boldly go where they have not gone before.

I wrote it in what newspapers (remember them?) used to call inverted pyramid style. I start out with the broadest, most general information and then get more and more specific. As an electronic book, you can start at the beginning and read through to the end, or you can jump from chapter to chapter with a few well-chosen clicks. You can even read it from back to front.

Conventions Used in This Book

You need no special instruction to make your way through the book. I use standard book style to help make certain bits of information easier to find and simpler to use:

Numbered lists: Start at number 1 and proceed to the last one in the list, in order, to accomplish a particular task.

Bulleted lists: Bulleted lists (you’re in the middle of one right now) represent things you should know about or do, but that don’t demand being performed in a particular order.

Web addresses: The Kobo eReader doesn’t include a Web browser or direct access to the Internet. In a few places in the book I mention addresses you may want to visit using your personal computer or smartphone. When I do, it will be in a form like this: www.borders.com or Borders.com. Just enter that into the Internet browser to visit a location. If the address happens to be at the end of the sentence, like the one I listed above, do not include the period. That’s just one of the places where old typesetting styles and new technologies intersect, and no one has yet figured out how to finish a written sentence without a period, except perhaps for the author James Joyce

When I tell you to select a menu item, that means use the Kobo eReader’s navigation pad to move the onscreen highlight bars to surround something you want to change or set, and then press the center of the pad. If I suggest you move the pad to the left, that means press the left side of the navigation pad. To move right or up or down: I’ll let you guess.

Foolish Assumptions

This book isn’t intended as a buying guide, nor does it go into a great deal of detail about how to turn on the Kobo eReader and perform the very simple setup and registration steps it requires. They’re all presented right there on the screen and in the Quick Start guide that comes with the device.

I assume that you have a Kobo eReader in your hands and are reading this text on its screen.

Another assumption: Kobo introduced its first eReader in mid 2010, and fewer than six months later it came out with an improved and more advanced model; that model is called the Kobo eReader Wi-Fi (or the Kobo wireless eReader) and it is this version that the company expects to sell as hard as they can. The two models are very similar in design and function, and so I concentrate on the newer version here; where the two models diverge a bit, I point that out.

My final assumptions are that you have access to a personal computer, that it has access to the Internet, and that you have at least a basic understanding of how to get about on the Internet. You can make your connection to that computer using a USB cable (supplied in the box) or by wireless connection. Other than the 100 free classic books that come with the Kobo eReader, the only way to add new titles — from bestsellers to obscure titles to daily newspapers — is to make a connection between your eReader and the Internet. It’s not that hard to do, and I’ll do my best to make it easy.

Icons Used in This Book

Kobo eReader For Dummies uses a handful of special graphic elements called icons to get your attention. Here they are:

warning_bomb.eps Here be dragons. Watch out. Be careful.

remember.eps In case you missed something earlier on, here’s a reminder of important stuff.

tip.eps Let me tell you something you might not realize about how to use your Kobo eReader.

technicalstuff.eps Not that you absolutely need to know this sort of information, but some of us like to understand a bit about how things work. That’s the kind of guy I am. Ask me how to get to the post office, and I’ll tell you how a GPS system works.

How This Book Is Organized

In Chapter 1, I give you a guided tour of the Kobo eReader and explain how its designers chose to concentrate on just one thing: allowing you to read a book or document or publication.

Chapter 2 explains how to read a book on an eReader. It’s not all that different from a paper-and-ink book, except that there is no paper and no ink and you turn the pages with clicks of a navigation pad. Things like that.

In Chapter 3, you go shopping for books and other publications. I explain the basics of using an online electronic bookstore and I also show how to find free books and how to convert your own files to display on the Kobo eReader.

Chapter 4 is the home of tips and tricks and troubleshooting. There is much more of the first thing, a modest amount of the second, and just enough of the third. And if things really go awry, I explain how to wipe the slate clean and start all over as if your Kobo eReader had never been used before.

In Chapter 5 I share some ways to extend and expand your Kobo eReader.

The appendix lists and explains a bit about the 100 free classic books included with your device.

Where to Go from Here

You go reading, of course. And you go out of the house and take your book collection with you. You go on planes, trains, and automobiles (as long as you’re not the pilot, engineer, or driver). And you enjoy this newest version of a way to present one of humankind’s greatest inventions: the written word.

Chapter 1

Go Go Kobo! Getting Started

Congratulations. You are the proud owner of a Kobo eReader. You and I know its purpose, although not everyone else does. So let me help you answer the inevitable question, A what?

A Kobo is not a cut of beef. That’s a Kobe, meat taken from Wagyu cattle raised according to ancient traditions in Japan. Tastes great, but is of no use whatsoever when you want to carry a few hundred bestselling books with you to the beach or aboard a transcontinental flight.

And no, it isn’t a six-foot-six-inch NBA shooting guard. That Kobe earns tens of millions of dollars per year playing basketball, but he is not known for ordinarily delivering you a daily newspaper or this week’s bestselling book.

Nor is it a Japanese artist’s workspace, the only actual definition I could find for the letters K O B O.

So here’s the answer: a Kobo eReader is an electronic device that can download and store thousands of full-length books, magazines, newspapers, and other publications. This very same Kobo eReader can display the material a page at a time, on a sharp screen roughly the size of a paperback book page, using a technology