Last week, while I was doing some research for a personal project that took advantage of Wordle, I found a great little service called Feedbooks.  I’ll go into more of the Feedbooks features below, but the upshot for me and scribkin is that I could have them convert my site feed into a PDF or e-book free of charge!

However, for some reason Feedbooks was having trouble with my RSS feed for a while, so I dutifully flagged it for consideration and waited.  I checked every day.  And today, I can proudly say that the problem has been resolved!

The upshot of all of this is here, a little widget I can display in my sidebar. →

More About Feedbooks

Ok, so probably the most publicized feature of Feedbooks is its ability to take an RSS feed and convert it into a number of other eBook formats as well as a customizable PDF format.  Obviously, that is what I am using the service for.

But I believe this is a side business for them.. perhaps what you would call a loss-leader.  They know, smart marketers that they are, that if they provide a unique service for free to potentially millions of blogs out there, their name gets out there.

E-Books

And their name isn’t feed-to-PDF.  It’s Feedbooks.  Think e-books.  They are working hard to be your first stop for electronic books from any source.. public domain, news, RSS feeds.   In fact, here is the quote from their front page:

“Feedbooks is a universal e-paper platform compatible with all e-paper devices where you can download thousands of free e-books, publish and share your own content, and create customized newspapers from RSS feeds and widgets.”

So they are in the e-book business, pretty much.  Download them, read them, share them.  If you have written a book online perhaps, submit it to Feedbooks to have them convert it into an e-book, quickly and stylishly.

Newspapers

Basically, this takes individual feeds (like mine linked above) and aggregates them together into one, larger e-book format.  A good example is the BBC News Full Content Newspaper, which mashes together 4 different BBC feeds to bring you the news of the day.

Subscriptions

Once a newspaper, or single-feed e-book has been created, Feedbooks allows people to subscribe to the paper as well, invaluable if you are using a e-paper reading platform like the Kindle or the Sony e-book reader (or maybe their very own e-ink reader!).  This means when an updated newspaper is created, you are always on top of it.  Great for those devices that have less-than-stellar native RSS readers built in to them.

Conclusion

Feedbooks has neatly filled a niche that was lacking (either from the newness of the technology, the ineptness of the hardware manufacturers, or some deliberate oversight) in getting RSS feeds on your electronic reading platform.  They also have a nice platform for searching for great public domain books.  Definitely worth a look.

Besides, you should go and download the PDF version of my feed.  It’s simply gorgeous, it makes me feel like a real writer! The link is here: