The Nintendo DS seems like it would make the perfect eBook reader. It's more compact than the Sony Reader or the Kindle, is shaped like a book, and is hundreds of dollars cheaper. While Nintendo hasn't quite caught on to how awesome this is, the DS homebrew community has and now anyone can turn their DS into an eReader as good as any Kindle.

Once you have switched to eBooks, you won't want to go back to paper. I have been using my DS as an eBook reader for months, and I love it. I carry it with me everywhere. The DS is smaller than the smallest paperback, and can hold hundreds of novels. My wife owns a copy of the book I am currently reading on my DS (The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley). Her copy weighs over a pound. Mine is tiny and fits in my pocket.

Seriously, give this a try.

This Youtube video might give you a sense of what the experience will be like. It demonstrates several pieces of software, the first of which is DSLibris, the subject of this tutorial. My apologies for the German - it was the only video I could find.

Follow up:

If you already have the DS, this will cost you between twenty and sixty dollars, depending on the type of DS Flash card you buy.

1. Get a DS Flash Card

This is easily the hardest part of the process. DS Flash Cards let you run homebrew software such as an eBook reader on your DS, but they also let you run commercial games and Nintendo naturally does not appreciate that. You load the programs, ebooks, and some firmware onto a memory card, such as MicroSD, plug it into the Flash Card and then plug that into your DS. I've seen them sell for as little as ten dollars and as much as sixty. There are versions of the cards for the new DSi and versions for the old DS Lites and Phats, which are unfortunately incompatible. You can read more about them at the source of all lies.

You can't buy them on eBay and Amazon since such a product that allows you violate copyright laws (like a VCR or a cassette tape) is beneath them. A lot of the companies out there that do sell them can be sketch. The company I bought mine from no longer sells them, so I cannot provide you with a recommendation. All I can say is that they are out there and just about all of them will work with this tutorial.

2. Download DSLibris

There are many eBook reading programs for the Nintendo DS, and which one you want to use will depend on your preferences and whether or not the program will be compatible with your card.

I tried out DS Reader, but didn't like it's horizontal layout. The DS is shaped like a book, damn it, and if I'm going to read a book on it, I'm going to read it like a book! It does have the advantage of using plain .txt files and true type fonts, but I couldn't get over the shape.

I also tried ReadMore Alpha. It also reads .txt's and uses the DS's book layout, but unfortunately doesn't work properly on my Flash Card. If you bought an R4 SDHC, do not bother with this program.

I settled on DSLibris. This is fine, well-polished program with a lot of display options. You can change the screen brightness, switch between a black or white background, and set as many bookmarks as you want (the other two programs are limited to three per book) simply by clicking the select button on whatever page you are on.

It has the slight disadvantage of requiring .xhtml files only. You aren't going to find very many eBook files out there in this format, but thankfully there is an easy way to fix that (more on that later).

I love this program, and trust me, you will love it to.

3. Get some eBooks

Many Web sites offer free eBooks for download, some legally and some not so much. First and foremost is Project Gutenberg. Named after the inventor of the printing press, they offer thousands of public domain books in a variety of formats, including the format we are going to need: plain old-fashioned .txt files.

I would also pay a visit to truly-free.org. It's bloody embarrassing how many books this guy is giving away for free. Most of these works are still under copyright, but the proprietor of this site claims he is "loaning" these files to you and expects you to delete them from your computer after 5 weeks (yeah right). I haven't checked all of his files, but most of them seem to be .txt as well.

Lastly, if you are into sci-fi and fantasy and not afraid of BitTorrent, there is a torrent (NSFW ads at this link, just a warning) floating around out there with a few hundred sci-fi/fantasy eBooks by some of the best authors in the genres. Again, most of these works are still under copyright. A good number of the books are .pdf's and other weird files, but you will still be able to convert most of them to xhtml, and those you can't are probably available at truly-free.org above.

4. Format the eBooks for DSLibris

First go get yourself OpenOffice.org. This is a free office suite comparable to Microsoft Office that honestly deserves its own article, but I'll keep it short and just say it is awesome. Download the version for your operating system. Open up the file you want to convert to xhtml. If you get a bunch of annoying gremlins (text artifacts that clearly are not part of the book) try opening it in a plain text editor such as Notepad, Gedit or TextEdit and copying all the text (ctrl+a, then ctrl+c) and pasting it (ctrl+v) into a blank OpenOffice.org document.

Now here's the fun part: under the file menu, select export.

Next tell it to export as xhtml, select a file name and so on.

And you are done! You can open it up in a web browser to make sure everything looks alright, but chances are you have a file that DSLibris will play well with.

5. Load everything up into your flash card and read some books

Once you have the right firmware loaded on your memory card, stick DSLibris and its associated files into the root folder of the card. If you don't have one already, create a folder titled "book" in the root directory and put all the books you want to read in there.

Boot up your DS and start up DSLibris. You should either see a list of books or get booted into the tutorial. Read the tutorial, its worth it. It's titled "dslibris Quick Start" in the book menu if you just ignored me and find yourself lost.

Now you are reading eBooks! Welcome to the future!