Look! There is a thing!

 
All in the Romance genre. Happy reading!
 

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Okay, the Kindle was a bust. I was disenchanted with it out of the box -- the "bigger" screen was maybe a quarter-inch wider, but much longer than the original. I wanted something that was closer to squarish, like an iPad or a laptop. But I was prepared to put up with it... until it turned out that the new operating system automatically downloads all the books you buy, and there's no way to stop it!! I have to watch my data usage; couldn't afford to have all 116 books download in one gulp. And to add insult to injury -- increasing the font size in the book I downloaded as a test resulted in a jump of at least 5 size-steps, from slightly too small to way too large in one jump. So I packed it up and returned it as soon as I could get to a UPS center.

Then I went to the local Staples to look at their small tablets. I got a Samsung Galaxy Tab A with the assurance I could return it within two weeks if I didn't like it.

I almost gave up the first day, but then reset it to factory default and started over. I've managed to download and use Kindle on it, and to send one of my story documents to Kindle and read it there. The sticking point is saving stories from AO3 and reading them offline. It downloaded the epub versions just fine, but would only let me read them if I was connected to the internet. (Kind of defeats the purpose!) This afternoon, I spent an hour in email chat with Samsung support with absolutely 0 results -- the man would NOT get it through his head that I wanted to save a WEBPAGE on the device (not an SD card, thankyouverymuch, and not a Kindle book) and be able to read it OFFLINE!

I finally quit in disgust and drove to Hobbs to consult the "experts" at Staples. *sigh* The man tried, I'll give him that. We did manage to save AO3 stories to be read offline, and to make folders to store them. BUT I can't read from the folders -- the Tab says I have to be online. I can read offline from an app called 'playbook' or 'bookplay', or something like that, but there's no way to organize the files in there. I'd never find what I wanted to read with NCIS and SGA and TS all jumbled up together. The computer department manager spent two hours with me to figure it all out -- the last half hour searching for an app that would let me organize those files. No go.

On top of all that (or maybe under it, I don't know), the galaxy is so touchy that it takes several attempts to get Kindle to show me its menu, or whatever I want. I thought the Kindle response was irritating on the iPad -- it's at least 5 times worse on the Galaxy.

So, since I have the school iPad to experiment on, I thought I'd give that a try. If it works, I might get a mini-iPad; it's the right size, though the cost is a real sticking point. So, I went to AO3 and downloaded a story. The iPad told me I could read it in my iBooks... but I can't find it anywhere.

So if you use an iPad for reading, here are my questions:

1. What format should I download in for iPad -- HTML, ePub, PDF, or MOBI?

2. Once downloaded, how do I get it to show up in iBooks?

3. Once it shows up in iBooks, is there a way to organize the stories? I would like folders and sub-folders, but I'll settle for just basic author or fandom folders if that's all I can do.


I know -- I KNOW a reading-only device won't be as flexible as my PC. But I don't think being able to organize my files in folders or "collections" is too much to ask. And for all those idiot developers / programmers who think 100 stories (or way, way more) don't need to be organized... knock your own head with a hammer and join the real world!
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