20120107

How to read PDFs on the Kindle (or smartphone, or any small-screen device)


Converting PDFs to the Amazon Kindle is not a straightforward affair. While there are many tools that can do the conversion to another format such as .MOBI, re-casting a typical PDF document into an ebook that works on a small screen requires more than mere change of format.
Formatting a PDF for the kindle can be done in two ways; the first is to CROP a PDF ebook then change it into a Kindle friendly file format. This allows for continuous text, uninterrupted with headers, footers, and page numbers, that is very much Kindle-friendly. 
The second way is to essentially do the same thing as described above, but in an automated way that takes all the manual intervention and decisions out of it, using a free program called K2PDFOpt. This software works by converting your PDF to bitmap images, identifying the viewable areas, then assembling these into smaller pages without excess margins. Not only does this automate the work, but is ideal for multiple column documents. It has both advantages and disadvantages as detailed below.

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