In the United States and Canada, the sales of eBooks now exceeds the sales of traditional books. Europe is not far behind in the growth of eBook sales. Slowly, eBooks are spreading to the rest of the world. We commonly associate eBooks with eBook readers, such as the Barns&Noble Nook, or the Amazon Kindle. The eBook reader has a screen size about the size of a paperback book, and can store as many as 5,000 books, one huge library, on one small device. The untold story is that many eBook readers (such as the Barns&Noble Nook Color, Barnes&Noble Touch, and the Amazon Kindle Fire) are nothing more than customized Android tablets. In actuality, any smartphone, tablet, laptop, or PC can become an eBook reader.

My love of books started when I was a child. At one time, I had a library of over 5,000 books. It took a lot of space, and moving was a nightmare. After several moves, I have trimmed my library down to around 2,000 books. I love the smell of books. I love the feel of books. Yet, I no longer purchase traditional books. I buy eBooks. An eBook not only saves paper, it is available anytime. On a recent trip to Paso Canoas, my wife and I took a late bus. I read an eBook during the long ride. I have my library with me wherever I go. So much easier than moving boxes of books.

The world of eBooks has it crazy side. Rather than one eBook standard format, there are 29 formats. Eighteen of the formats are open standards, and eleven are proprietary standards. To make life more interesting, not all eBook reader applications support every format. The real challenge is finding eBook sellers that allow downloading of eBooks to Costa Rica. There is a way to navigate through this craziness to create an great eBook library that works in Costa Rica on Android devices.

The Aldiko Book Reader is available in a free and paid version ($2.99 USD). The Aldiko Book Reader only supports two formats: EPUB and PDF. You are not tied to a single eBook vendor. Rather, you can purchase books from Feedbooks, Books on Board, All Romance eBooks, Smashwords, or O’Reilly eBooks. With Aldiko, you can import other eBooks in EPUB or PDF format. I was able to import books that I had downloaded from Project Gutenberg. However, you can only import books stored on the SD card. To share books across multiple devices, you need Aldiko Sync.

The Amazon Kindle app gives you full access to the Amazon Kindle book store, which contains over a million titles. While the Amazon Kindle Fire keeps your purchases in Amazon’s cloud, the Amazon Kindle app downloads the books to your machine. All books are in their format, which is not readable by any other eBook reader. If you have multiple devices, you can sync your books across all devices that support Amazon Kindle. While the Amazon Kindle app supports a number of different formats, there is no way to import books from other sources into its library. It is purely Amazon centric, and you must have an Amazon account to purchase a Kindle book.

Nook for Android B&N (USA and Canada) and Google Play Books (USA only) require a physical address and credit card from the USA, or Canada. To install these apps, you need a VPN, with a network address in the USA. If you are lucky, you will be able to directly download the apps from Google Play. If not, you will need to install AppBrain App Market, find the apps using AppBrain, and then install them. Unless you already have books from these sellers, it is not worth the effort.

While Barnes&Noble, and Google Play Books serve a limited market, Kobo eBooks serves the international market, with over 2.5 million eBooks. Any book in EPUB or PDF format can be shared across all devices, including PCs. Kobo’s goal is to have all eBooks available to all devices, anywhere in the world. However, some publishers set market limits. The credit, or debit, card that you use determines, which eBooks are available to your market. The Kobo eBooks app can import all books on your device in EPUB or PDF formats. While it will import DRM protected books, it cannot open them. When importing eBooks, the lack of a front cover is a clue that the eBook is DRM protected. Don’t import the book, as there is no way to delete it.

TiTiOnline does not have an Android app, but it is a good local source of ebooks, music, and videos. Their Web site is mobile device aware, so you can purchase and downloaded eBooks directly to your mobile device. This is a Spanish bookstore, which is hard to find in the eBook world.

Every eBook seller offers free eBooks. However, 100,000 Free Books Wattpad only offers free eBooks. Wattpad is a source for many eBooks from aspiring authors. You can also download eBooks directly from Project Gutenberg, other sources. Get creative and look around online.

When I lived in the USA, Barenes&Noble and Amazon were my major sources for eBooks. In Costa Rica, I use Kobo as the primary source. I get my free eBooks from Wattpad, Project Gutenberg, and even NASA. My library goes with me everywhere, and my tablet still weighs the same, even though it now contains several hundred eBooks.