VitalSource Bookshelf
I’m trying a new software called VitalSource BookShelf. VitalSource Bookshelf is a software that allows you to purchase ebooks online just like the way you buy music. This software is like “iTunes music store for Books”.
The Bookshelf software is available for both Windows and Mac OS X. The online store is powered by Ruby on Rails.
You can purchase and download digital version of your books from the embedded store. From the VitalSource Store, you can browse the book catalogs, and when you find the book that you like you can purchase them and download them.
I downloaded a few free books from the store. Once I finished downloading the book, it is now available in the VitalSource Library. There are also some folders that allows you to sort the book by subjects, date, location, etc.
The software also includes a book reader. The book reader is very nice and simple. There are some useful features such as highlighter and notes. It allows you to add notes/highlight sentences or paragraphs.
You can have more than one colors of highlighters, the included colors are cyan, green, orange, peach, pink, purple, silver, sky blue, and yellow. You can also label a particular color.
There is one problem with this product though, the books are school textbooks. Unfortunately, I am not interested in most of the books sold on VitalSource. They need to sell more books, sell fictional books such as Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code, etc. Even better, sell computer books from O’Reilly. Popular business books would be nice too.
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