Kindle owner for the past 1.5 years here and please don’t hate me but I love the dang thing. I was afraid I would not like the interface or would miss the actual holding in my hand the paper thing. NOT at all. My kindle weighs less and fits in a smaller space than any of the books I would want to read.
I travel a lot and read a lot, mostly trash, sue me. By the end of my travels I always ended up with a suitcase full of books. Several times we had to re-arrange suitcases to get under the airline suitcase weight restrictions, bleh. With the Kindle no problems.
Also I’m the type of person that needs a primary book, a back-up book, and another back up-back up book while taking long flights, no sleep for sinjin. With the Kindle they are all on one light-weight device. I can’t tell you how many times in the past 1.5 years I’ve downloaded 2 or 3 books while airplane boarding was taking place just in case the original BU books were bad.
As far as price goes, I rarely pay more than the 9.99 price for Amazon hardbacks. I basically boycott the more expensive versions pushed on Amazon by publishers and Steve Jobs’ idiotical agreement. I can’t tell you how many books I’ve gotten for free (not just public domain) or for a greatly reduced prices. There are new ones everyday.
One of the things I like the most is the ability to increase the font size. As an aging adult this is a boon. Any book I buy has the ability to be a large font text Yeah I’m old, so what I can increase the font size as my eyes need as the day goes by. Not a big deal for youngsters, but great for old ladies.
Oh and it’s great at the beach in brilliant sunshine. Nuf said.
That’d be understandable if they were offering dual-pricing depending on how the user wants to get the book, but they aren’t. And more importantly, don’t Kindles have Wi-Fi in them? The user is paying the costs (or accessing from a free public source) using Wi-Fi to download a book, not Amazon.
And as far as I know, the books are all US edition; but like I said, I don’t actually know anybody here who has one.
I’m currently on a multi-week trip by way of Indonesia and Japan and my Kindle DX has been a lifesaver. Especially as I speak barely enough Indonesian to find the bathroom and no practical Japanese.
**sinjin **mentioned 3 books on his travels. Piker. I accumulated a stock of 24 books to read on the trip beforehand, and I think I tore through nearly half of them on the YVR-NRT leg alone. I’m now heroically preventing myself from reading the last 3 until I’m on the long haul back to the US by going back through already-read ebooks. And I bought 2 more ebooks (It’s all John Ringo’s fault) a few days ago into the bargain.
Historically I’ve brought four books with me on trips and been bored out of my gourd after I got through with only the ballast to show for it. Now I can shuffle through my DX for a bit of light reading anywhere without having to juggle finite, physical books that run very definitively counter to the objective of traveling light.
Well, since there’s no way the Amazon 3G wireless would work in this country without being run through one of the major phone companies (of which there are basically only four), any of whom would be touting Kindle compatibility as a major selling point for why you should A) Buy a Kindle and B) Use their Wireless Broadband, the only conclusion I can readily draw is that Amazon don’t like Australia for some reason.
At this time I cannot think of a number that would convince me to buy an e-reader of any type. I like books. I doesn’t solve any problem that I am currently experiencing. If I thought I needed one, I would just buy it - I can afford one.
Previous thread on this specific subject. What you call price gouging is the publishers trying to establish a fair royalty payment for the authors. I know a fair number of published writers - they all have day jobs, despite good reviews, strong sales, established fan base. I don’t think either side in this dispute is wearing a white hat.
Maybe I’m a tad cynical, but I really doubt that the publishers actually are putting the authors’ interests ahead of their own. That is, I’m fairly sure that the publishers are looking out after their own interests first, and then they’ll take care of the authors if there’s any way to do so without inconveniencing themselves too much.
Perhaps a better way of putting it is to say the publishers want someone else to pay a fair royalty for their authors, whether that’s the reader or the retailer.
Publishers do have a stake in keeping their writers happy, however, and literary agents don’t (generally) get to influence a big retailer like Amazon directly.
It’s all in an interesting flux right now, rather like the music industry 20 years ago.
I remember that thread, and but i find your benevolent view of the publishers as advocates for the authors to be highly suspect.
Publishers already pay different percentages to authors for hardbound versus trade paperback versus mass paperback editions. Clearly a new standard percentage needs to be established for electronic editions.
So the only way that the publishers’ arguments would make sense would be if the electronic publication prices were so close to the publishers’ actual costs that there simply wasn’t any $$ left over to pay a decent percentage the authors. But, the truth is that the Amazon target price of $9.99 is higher than the cost of the paperback by about $2.00. And the costs to the publishers (in large lots) is smaller. So, if the publishers’ real concern was with the royalty rates to authors, there’s a good $2.00 per book above the paperback price that they could swing out to the authors above and beyond the current paperback royalty rates. I really don’t see the publishing houses as being all that concerned with the authors in this dispute. It seems to me that they are the ones putting the squeeze on the authors.
Now, I know it’s not quite that simple - the publishers have fixed costs that need to be amortized out over the entire publishing history of a book, so price per unit isn’t the whole story. But the relative sales numbers of paperback versus hardcover suggest to me that, most of the time, the bulk of that amortization is in the paperback run, so I doubt that my analysis is completely unrealistic.
I honestly think that the incomes of those author friends of your are far more endangered by public libraries and by used bookstores than by Amazon. But it’s pretty clear from this thread that support for public libraries and used bookstores runs pretty strong in the SDMB community. Hey, I love my public library, but I do feel guilty sometimes when I realize that I’ve never actually paid a dime to some of my favorite authors.
I used to be in the same camp as many of you, until a friend of mine let me play with her Kindle. I was hooked by the clarity of the text, the ability to change font sizes on the fly, and the fact that I would no longer have to decide which books to leave home when I go on a trip. I ordered one the next day.
As mentioned in the other threads, I love my Kindle. I don’t get overwrought about the price of the books because I download many for free, or 99 cents. Yeah, I’ll pay the occasional $9.99 for a book, and have paid up to $14 in one case, but I’m averaging less than $2 per book, and I now have a little under 300 books on my Kindle.
I’ve had my Kindle for a little over a year now and, for me, it makes sense.
I forgot to mention an important factor in favor of ereaders in general, which is convenience. I have been frustrated many times by traipsing all the way down to the bookstore, only to find the book I want out of stock. What’s worse is when I call to verify availability, go to the store, and be told the last one was just sold…yeah, right.
If a book is available for my Kindle, it will never be out of stock. Not only that, I can have the book within 2 minutes of desiring it, and without having to leave my house. That’s big for me.
Some others have said this, but I doubt I’d ever buy one.
I just downloaded the free Kindle reader from Amazon to my smart phone and netbook. I also use mobi-pocket on both. Works well. I sure don’t need another device.
I’d buy one if you got a free electronic version of any physical book you bought. I like the idea of being able to read the book on a nice portable e-reader - but I want the book, dammit. And I’m not buying it twice.
Woah - the software is freely available? So all you’re buying is just another gadget to run the software? That makes it even less likely for me. I already own too many rectangular objects with screens. I’d much rather just put the software on one of those.
To anybody who says they can comfortably read books on a backlit screen and eInk doesn’t provide any value then I definitely recommend against the Kindle and installing an ebook reader on your preferred platform.
Personally, eInk is 90% of the reason for me reading ebooks at all so the software being free for the iPad is useless to me.
I visited my mom over the weekend, and I read a book on her new Kindle. I was surprised at how much I liked it. I don’t like reading a lot of text on a computer screen, but the Kindle was perfectly comfortable. It did take me a little while to get used to the page transitions - the way the screen turns black for an instant when you turn the page.
I love books, especially hardcovers, but I’m also a gadget person, so I’ll probably buy a Kindle soon. It’s already within my price range for a reader, but I agree with those who say that the ebooks prices are too high. I think I might buy a Kindle book rather than a paperback, but if the ebook price is over $10 then I’d rather splurge a few more bucks and buy the hardback. Or wait a year and buy it used for much cheaper.
This is an important point. I have both the iPad and Kindle, and there is a world of difference between both platforms when it comes to eye strain. The e-ink technology is simply superior than a standard, backlit screen that refreshes so many times per second. I would never read a book on my iPad …unless, of course, I really needed that migraine I was missing.
I am only interested in an e-book reader if it has voice activated page turns. I don’t understand why this feature isn’t available; surely it would increase the device’s accessibility for the disabled.
I also read (sorry, no link) that early Kindles had a text-to-speech function, which publishers lobbied Amazon to disable, as it would eat into their audiobook sales…
I accumulated a stock of 24 books to read on the trip beforehand, and I think I tore through nearly half of them on the YVR-NRT leg alone. I’m now heroically preventing myself from reading the last 3 until I’m on the long haul back to the US by going back through already-read ebooks. And I bought 2 more ebooks (It’s all John Ringo’s fault) a few days ago into the bargain.
