About e-books
An e-book is like a book except that it is made of bytes instead of printed paper. When you buy an e-book, you can read it on your computer, on your handheld, on your iPhone, or on dedicated e-book readers such as the Sony Reader or the Amazon Kindle.
You can create your own private Universalis e-books for the days, weeks or months that you want. To do this, you need to install the Windows version of the Universalis download.
Formats available
Universalis can create your private e-books in two formats:
- ePub is an industry-wide standard used by the Sony Reader and other devices. You can download a sample of Universalis in the ePub format.
- Mobipocket is an older format used by the Amazon Kindle. You can download a sample of Universalis in the Mobipocket format.
There are many programs available that allow you to read both these formats on PCs, handhelds, and the iPhone.
Why we do it like this
An e-book is like a traditional book. What you see is exactly what was written. When you look at page 76 of a printed book, you are looking at what someone decided should be on page 76 long before you bought the book.
Universalis is different. When you read a Universalis page for 16 August 2009, Universalis synthesizes a page specially for you. It calculates that this is the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time of Year B, and gives you the psalms and readings for that day. If you have told Universalis that you are in England, it knows that in England the feast of the Assumption is transferred from 15 August to Sunday 16 August, and shows you the content for the Assumption instead.
By their nature, e-book readers aren't programmable, so they can't do this.
We could publish a Universalis e-book in annual volumes, so that you'd buy "Universalis - England - Westminster 2009" and the next year you'd buy "Universalis - England - Westminster 2010", but this seems unfair to you and a lot of trouble for us.
So instead, your single purchase of a registration code for the Universalis downloads will let you create your own private e-books for as long as you want.
Please note that the e-books you create are for your private use only and must not be given or distributed to other people.
