Kindle

[jfk06]

I saw a post in my feed lamenting the lack of updates.  Since I've been thinking about posting, I figured I'd finally do it :-)

A few months ago, I decided to try out our Kindle for real.  Saeed has been using it to read articles, etc while traveling, but I never did.  So, since I had some free time, I bought The Hunger Games and settled in to read

Comments

[flaggday]

Re: Ebook cost, Charles Stross wrote several blog entries about the process and economics of publishing in general with some details of how it relates to Ebooks. This is just the first one in the series I get from Google:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/05/cmap-9-ebooks.html

I think the short answer is that the actual physical cost of a book is essentially zero for paperback or hardcover, and the price is just a magical abstraction tying together other stuff in a way that may or may no be accurate.

But I strongly agree with your point that giving away can will lead to buying (at least my personal experience supports that), and all of Stross's arguments are based on working within the existing publishing system, which at least a few authors are working out side of quite successfully right now.

Re: actual devices- I read the second Hunger Games book using the copy that Maria Duaime lent me through the Nook reader on my iPad. One handed reading = huuuuuuge win, backlight = huge win for reading in bed in the dark. I'm not sure exactly how it works with scaling text size, but the Nook reader at least on the iPad does show you page numbers, which I appreciated. And I was perfectly happy with the iPad resolution, but I have no problems reading lengthy text on my laptop either.

Re: Nook loaning- It's limited (you can loan a book to one person for up to 14 days, and you're done. You can never loan that book again). And it's buggy (it took two days between choosing to accept the loan and the book actually showing up in my library, and on the Windows Nook reader I was never able to get it to work).

Re: getting books quickly- I haven't tried it, but for some items if I'm ordering early in the day Amazon will offer to get it to me *that afternoon* for a few dollars more than next-day shipping. Amazon Prime has changed my life.

[jfk06]

Huh, that's interesting... I didn't know that! It would be nice if the extra money went to the authors though.

And I have Amazon Prime, too. I love it! But it still doesn't get the book into my hands within 5 minutes ;-)