Here is one for $59.95. It is overpowered for reading eBooks, but does not have a memory slot. Unfortunately, there was never a market for cheap (<$100) PDAs. Instead of selling the older models cheaper, they just kept releasing and retiring them. Now, there are very few PDAs even made thanks to smart phones. You can download books onto your smart phone or blackberry, but I like the larger screen on my PDA (that and my work BB is locked to prevent third party apps).
Jonathan
Out of curiosity, what have you tried to read on? An old fashioned black and white reflective PDA has no flicker and fairly sharp text. The newer color active matrix displays are also quite nice and better than most LCD monitors to read off. Plus, with MobiPocket reader, you can set the color of both your test and background. I personally prefer a black background with white text in bright light and dark red text for reading in the dark.
Jonathan
I think for now the biggest demand would be any book that does not have enough demand to justify a full publishing run, but that someone, somewhere wants on occasion. You could also do vanity publishing, or print up your novel to give to an agent.
Jonathan
I simply don’t like to read lengthy items on a screen. I’ll happily interact through them all day, editing, coding, web surfing, reading email, and so on. It’s not an issue of eye strain. It’s an issue of the mechanism not being appropriate to the task of reading something that’s going to take some time to go through, either for pleasure or study. It’s simply annoying.
Plus, it’s hard to fall asleep with the screen over your face like a opened book. Also, it doesn’t hurt the book to fall on the floor or get rolled over on when I do that. At least not enough to make it unreadable. And think of the people who read in the bathtub. Dropping a $7 paperback in the tub is a minor annoyance, but your $350 kindle?
Products don’t thrive for technical or monetary reasons. They thrive because people like them. Some people like eBooks, and some don’t.
The question I was responding to was what to do if you find yourself in possession of a stripped book. Rather than reporting it to the authorities, I recommended just tossing it in the trash. Then you’ve hurt nobody.
Print on Demand is a publishing system where the books are stored in the memory of a giant press, as opposed to in boxes in a warehouse. It’s frequently used by vanity presses (“send us $600 and we’ll print your deathless prose without proofing, copyediting, fact-checking, or any other editing”) and for highly specialized books. A POD press is automated, and can print just what’s been ordered that day: five of these, two of those, six of the other thing. They cost a lot of money (last I checked they ran $500,000 and up), and are used by publishers with a lot of different titles–not the Web site dude with one title.
No, those are “remainders.” When sales of a book start winding down, the publisher may be left with thousands of copies taking up warehouse space that would be better dedicated to newer products (this frequently happens with hardbacks when the paperback comes out). Instead of tossing them, they’ll discount them heavily, selling the books to a “remainder house” for a buck or so. Booksellers then buy them from the remainder houses for $2 or $3, and sell them to you for $5 to $7.
Remainders frequently have a slash through the barcode, or a colored dot on the cover or the edge of the pages. This indicates the book is not returnable. The reason for the large markup is that if it doesn’t sell, the bookseller has to throw it away.
Another type of bargain book to be found at my local Border’s is a “hurt”.
It’s got a remainder mark, but it’s not in good enough condition to actually be “new” even though it’s not used.
They show up with a light blue price tag sticker on them, rather than one of the red or yellow ones.
“Web site dudes” can certainly publish their own titles and have a company with the big expensive presses print them for them. That can be cost effective for as low as one title. The “dude” can either go through a company that acts as a middleman to prep the materials so they work on the big POD press (and has other add ons like ISBNs) or, if they are up on the tech details enough, save money and deal with the printer directly.
Yes, I worked for Dalton’s (or was it Waldens?) decades ago, and my freind & I were taking the stripped books to the local “old Folks Home” where many of the residents were and a small fixed income. We got in trouble for it, and had to stop.
Recently, I worked for Borders, and we were supposed to throw out the stripped books, but they also had a policy to follow local law, and San Jose requires recycling (there’s no real penalty yet, mind you). So I put the books into the recycle bin instead, and the Manager agreed with me. But she said “Let’s not make a big deal about this either way. We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t, so let’s just quietly recycle.”
chorpler Umm, how does one read even a paper book in the shower?
And if we’re talking the bargain area of big chain stores, besides the remainders and hurts there are also ones that the chain store itself publishes on the cheap hoping to sell them with very little mark up but in high volume. Some of these store-published are priced like normal books by other publishers and go in the main part of the store, but some are specifically intended to be straight-to-discount titles.
This is still too rich for me. I usually don’t take $60 books to all the places mentioned by InvisibleWombat for fear of losing or damaging them. For that I want something whose price is low enough that loss or damage amounts to nothing more than “Eh, that’s annoying, but I’ll just get another one at the 7-11” – certainly less than $15, and probably more likely in the $3-$7 range.
Of course. That’s how the POD companies make their money. They don’t come up with these titles themselves. It’s the web site dude, and the woman with her memoirs, and the guy who finally wrote that novel, and so on and so on.
The post I was replying to implied that people could buy their own presses to do this, and that generally doesn’t make sense, mostly because “do it yourself” binding options just aren’t as clean and professional looking as the perfect binding the POD places do.
I could do that with my PDA if I wanted, but I have never had the urge to. I have known people who read and drive at the same time, but showering while holding a book would be awkward.
I carry my PDA everywhere. It is in the the lower front pocket of my cargo pants right now. I treat it about the same as my wallet. It comes out of my pocket to use or when I get home, otherwise it is always in there. BTW, do you carry a cell phone? Is it worth more than $60?
Jonathan
I get my cell phone free with my service plan. I certainly don’t use it while in the bath or a hot tub. I leave my laptop and iPod safe at home when going on an international trip. I don’t want yet another valuable item to carry around and worry about losing or damaging.
Since most of my international travel has been business, I have usually needed my laptop. As for my PDA, I did break my first one by dropping it. Since then I have gotten a metal protective case. My last PDA lasted four years. I did need to replace the case due to breaking the hinge, but it wasn’t the best case and it did keep the PDA safe. As I look at it I got a lot more than $200 dollars use out of that PDA (it was a Palm Tungsten E). Since I read a lot of the free or cheap books (Baen and Project Gutenberg were my primary sources), I probably saved money. Sure I would have gone to the library more, but I can’t take five library books on the plane. Before I switched to eBooks I would end up buying books in airports and then leaving them in the hotel room.
Jonathan
ETA: You may have gotten your current phone free, but most plans only allow you to get a new one every two years unless you pay for the protection plan.
You average a lost or broken phone more often than once every two years?
And my plan apparently does let you get a new one even more frequently, provided you extend your contract another two years.
No, but I have replaced three PDAs in eight years. My point was that my phone would cost me as much to replace as my PDA. Actually, my current PDA would cost more the my current phone, although less than an iPhone.
Sprint(me) and Verizon(my wife) both give you a discount with a contract extension, but you have to have a certain amount of the contract gone first. They would not be able to sale the $3 a month equipment protection plan if you could just get a new low end phone every two months.
Jonathan
But do I hurt the author if I read it and then toss it in the trash?
Thus far, only on my monitor, which is a 22" LCD, purchased last year. I can read anything, including really tiny print on paper (e.g., the pocket-size full Bibles, which I think is around 5 or 6 points) and for a considerable length of time without my glasses (extremely near-sighted), and without eyestrain. But on the monitor, I stay at 1024 x 768. And I enlarge the font.
When Kindles get (lots) cheaper, I may try one, or whatever seems to have the highest quality several years down the road, when they’ve all improved greatly and gotten much cheaper. But other than - possibly - e-paper, I have serious doubts that any kind of electronic text will remain much harder on my eyes than real paper.
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You hurt the author if you read your free copy instead of buying a copy.