15 Nov 2012
I've been disappointed with most books I've got for my Amazon Kindle (the one with the keyboard) because the books don't make used of the (limited) navigational ability of the reader. The great thing about regular hard-copy books is that one can easily 1) use Contents to find out what's in it, 2) thumb through it to peruse it, 3) open to a random page and know the location from a page number, 4) search using the index, 5) skip to the next chapter, 6) read footnotes at the bottom of the page with a glance (end notes are much harder!), and 7) make notes in the margins.
The down side of regular books is that the only "links" they have is usually to footnotes. If they want to link to endnotes or to other chapters, or to references in other books, all they can do it list the information. They have no "clicking on links" which is the power of an e-book. So if an e-book can fulfill all the 7 above criteria (and others important to you) then the e-book can be truly superior. Especially in the ability to have a large library all in you hand.
The Amazon Kindle goes a long way toward fulfilling all seven of the above requirements. The author of the e-book can provide a Table of Contents with links to the various chapters/parts. Unfortunately many books omit this. It is expected to read the novel straight through. But the Kindle has the linking ability. As for perusing, it has the feature that the left and right arrows (on 5-way control) can advance to the next chapter. Almost none of the books I've got use this feature, which is very disappointing and makes navigation too hard. The problem with no page numbers can be overcome by numbering paragraphs (common in technical literature) like numbering the verses in a Bible. The Kindle automatically produces a wonderful real index for every book, so that is far superior to a regular book. And it is adequate in its handling of footnotes and making notes.
With that introduction, my disappointment with the poor usage of the Kindle features led me to make my own edition of the King James version of the Bible. The main feature in my version is that the left- and right-arrows advance to the next chapter. Maybe some of the Amazon editions do that but I don't want to have to buy them to find out. The product descriptions need to say what features are included. Another feature of my version is that every verse includes the Book and Chapter. For example, 1Cor 13:2. That makes it so that search results, which only show a little snippet of text, often include the source so that it is not even necessary to go to the actual source. Other versions which include only verse numbers make it really tough to find out where it is even after going to the source. One must turn pages to discover the chapter and then the book can still be unknown.
There are three other books which to me are companions to the Bible. They are the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jasher, and The Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus. I have made Kindle editions of each of those also. I've written articles about why Enoch and Jasher appear to be authentic. Moreover, both Enoch and Jasher are also included in full here on my website.
I have also put them all together into one volume, called the Extended Linked Bible (EL Bible). Right now, my state of progress is that I have the volumes all collected into one large (4.5 MB) e-book in .mobi format for the Kindle. The hope, and the reason for combining them, is to now link quotes to sources, and various histories of the same events. For example, one should be able to read the history of the Exodus in the Bible, and then click to read the parallel accounts in Jasher and Josephus. If I do that project I'll update this page to note progress.