Buying ebooks

[moshez]

I live in Israel. Like the rest of Europe, it is beyond the Atlantic ocean from the United States. Therefore, shipping costs to Israel are astronomical -- buying a few books often means shelling 20% on shipment for *SLOW* shipment. With fast, it can easily reach daylight-robbery levels. This is annoying, because like all people, I like my goddamn satisfaction here and now. Bookstores are not open on Saturday (except one, which is far away and suckular), and close on 15:00-17:00 on Friday. This means buying books is an ordeal. Ordering online is too expensive and slow. Going to a bookstore is a project needing advance planning. Today, I was sitting at home (parents' place, actually, just before driving off to mine, but that's neither here nor there) when I was browsing on Holly Lisle's site, and saw some interesting books about writing. The physical version costs twice as much, then further exasberated by a shipping cost that is way too high and by having to wait for a few days (best case scenario). The electronic version? Well, let's just say I pulled out my wallet, and 30 minutes later (downloading them all plus the various freebies took time and I was doing stuff in the middle of it all) I had them all, backed up to the places I usually back up things. Holly Lisle, thank the lords, is not one of the DRM fascists, so I can actually read the books on an Ubuntu laptop which is not the laptop I bought it from.

And just like that, I get to read them everywhere.

Yes, yes, I know, I cannot curl up with them (although a laptop works just as well in bed -- so I can read it until a couple of minutes I fall asleep). I cannot throw them if they're stupid. And so on and so forth, irrelevancies as opposed to the fact that I can read them. Right. Now. As soon as I finish posting this...