If you’ve been looking at one of these beasties, take note. The price has fallen.
kindle, nook, etc price war…
by CJ | Jun 22, 2010 | Journal | 30 comments
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Look around carefully, too. Prices on most readers have come down. Nook and Kindle started a price war yesterday, but Sony dropped its prices a little while ago; and Borders is about to release the Kobo which was supposed to be a budget, few-frills reader at $150. Well, it can’t compete with a wifi only Nook at $150. Of course, now you can get a 3G Kindle for $189. New Kindle is to be announced in August, presumably for a late fall release.
I have a nook. I like it 🙂 Probably more than the average person would because I work for Barnes & Noble and I can use the read in store feature on my lunch break every day… and the free tall coffee coupons are good to.
I’m going to wait for a K3 (or whatever it is) from Amazon. My K1 is showing its age.
Which is easiest to download and use with Closed Circle selections? I haven’t had any luck downloading to read on my PC.
Really, empty nest? It should just pop right up. Have you downloaded the PC-friendly readers for Windows, over in E-BOOK FREE READERS on our left sidebar? And there are more over on Closed Circle. If you are having trouble reading on your computer, at very least the PDF ought to behave for you: just about all computers have that. Let’s work with this and get you able to read the files!
But in answer to the general questions, we have about 9 different formats in the FULL download, and we hope we cover most everything. If I were buying, I’d go first for something that reads either ePub format or Mobi format, which is either the Nook or the Kindle. Either one is good. There will be procedures between you and getting a CC book onto a Kindle, as I recall: download the file and take it across to the Kindle with a USB connection as if it were a hard drive or flash drive.
And if anybody has difficulties with this process, we’re very willing to help figure it out. We’ve got a lot of people with these devices now, and somewhere in Wave, there is somebody who knows how to get your book to your device in a proper way.
I would LOVE the convenience of an e-reader, especially since I hate to read for more than an hour or so on a monitor, but have a few reservations. What do you do when the battery eventually wears out? I’ve heard that no e-reader is user-friendly when it comes to replacing the battery (and you thought an iPod was rough!) I’m also thinking about what happens when I inevitably decide to change formats or get a new reader — how easy is it to move an e-book from platform to platform? Even secondhand Kindle 1s are expensive, and so far, no e-reader outperforms a book 😀
With a Kindle you have to wait until Amazon (or someone provides a hack) gets rid of DRM before its books are transferable. I buy a lot of things in MOBI and PRC without DRM and NOT from Amazon. I have a K1 with an easily removable battery. I also have a spare battery. Some of the K1’s (mine for instance) don’t last as long as they should without recharging. One of the reasons there are problems with some K1’s is the SD card interface seems to bleed off power. When I travel I take 2 fully charged batteries and a neat little gizmo with 4 AA batteries which will recharge my K1. When I’m at the airport you’ll find me sitting next to the power outlet; doesn’t stop me reading, however.
Some of them do have replaceable batteries that are fairly easy to change.
Mine’s easy to change. I’ve done it in the galley of an aircraft (rest of plane was trying to sleep) and had lots of kibitzing from the stewards.
@emptynest One of the slickest read on comp combinations is Mozilla Firefox browser
with the added ePub reader
gadget.
Firefox is free, so is the extra gadgetry to do neat things with your comp.
The ePub keeps a record of all your epubs so you just click to start reading
one and it gives you the TOC in a sidebar which is also clickable to go to
that chapter.
I read using Acrobat in pdf because I can go up to 400% in size quite easily.
There’s a lot of free files to experiment with at gutenberg.org so you can
try different formats before buying anything. then you can save up your
allowance to snag Jane’s Ring books.
It doesn’t take much effort to get up to speed. I’m picking up the blanks
to burn dual layer DVDs of gutenberg books, if your system will read the
format it has 27000+ ebooks on one DVD.
The single layer DVD has 17000+ ebooks on it. There is also a science fiction
CD for people with older systems. The volunteer network will get you what
fits your system all you have to do is ask.
For the fairly savvy, you can get the ISO files using torrents and make your
own thanks to one of the cousins. Just scroll down the gutenberg home page
until you see DVD CD project.
There’s a bit of buzz about ebook price wars going on, so maybe the
publishing dinosaurs have noticed that their policies are out of line
with the new business models.
Google seems to have punched the tarbaby with various policies that
stepped over the line of legality, it will be interesting to see how
they fare under assaults from various governments. They might have to
get back into the search engine business.
Ooops, almost forgot, firefox can be set to work offline so you don’t need
the Net active to read an ebook.
@Chondrite – The Hanlin-made readers have user replaceable batteries. The 6″ V3 uses a pretty standard Nokia battery. The Hanlins are available from a number or retailers: Astak and Endless Ideas come immediately to mind, there are others. Actually, the Hanlins may be the only readers that can read most of the formats that CC supplies. Check out the forums over at http://www.mobileread.com for a lot more info on pretty near every reader available around the world. Their wiki has a large comparison chart, too.
@Chrondrite – I have a nook, which I love, and the battery is easily accessible. Also books bought from BN stay in your library so you can download them to a different device, you can also download them to any BN ereader for various devices, so if you start reading on a computer or on your IPhone they are still accessible. You can also directly transfer them to your computer using the USB cord and there is a microSD slot which I’m guessing you could use to transfer though I haven’t used mine yet.
I put a micro SD card in mine but it’ll be a long time yet before I even need it.
I found that there is a way to check out e-books through the library with nook also.
I don’t have a Kindle, but I have the Kindle for iPod app for my iPhone and I prefer the Kindle for PC software for my laptop.
I’ve tried, and really enjoyed, several ebooks through Amazon this way, and they are accessible on both devices. So portability and keeping them when you move to a new device shouldn’t be a problem.
I’ve ordered ebboks from Closed Circle (yay, yay, yay!) and will be reading those after I’ve finished a couple more actual print books. 😉 — I love real books; I’ve quickly come to love ebooks. I can take ’em with me wherever. Cherryh or other scifi authors, great literature, pulp paperbacks, whatever it might be, with no bulky book to weigh me down or lose track of, or to get sadly damaged in transport or wear from use. (I still love real books too. Always will.)
I’m hoping the next Kindle or next iPad, or some competing touch tablet laptop will fill the bill for me without breaking the budget. Not right now, though. Gotta replace the desktop computer. Mostly happy with my laptop, though I felt my laptop of a few years back was easier to read, screen-wise and use keyboard-wise. Surely the next iterations will be better. (One hopes.)
I feel we’re still in the infancy of ebooks, despite that they’ve been around a few years. Here’s hoping things improve.
And where is that magical storage drive that lets me take absolutely all my audio and video and books and my own created content with me, wherever I go?
BlueCatShip: “And where is that magical storage drive that lets me take absolutely all my audio and video and books and my own created content with me, wherever I go?”
#
Blue, anything you can reduce to bits ought to fit on one pen drive–I think they are up to 32GB, for Pete’s sake. Do you need more space than that?
It is a sad and humbling fact that my entire life’s work can fit on one dvd.
I don’t know, I’m still stuck in the past. Reading is my comfort/relaxing passtime and I find something endlessly comforting about the smell and sound of paper. Maybe when I have libraries as extensive as some others’ I’ve seen, or have to ship them very far, I might reconsider. Husband recently asked me if I wanted some type of ereader, and I told him I’d rather buy the physical books (which I did. The Chanur omnibus, the Morgain omnibus and the Faded Sun trilogy…lol 2 pages into the Pride of Chanur I remembered why I liked that series so much!)
Buggers. Of course I bought one about 1.5 months ago. Figures. Timing is everything and mine is usually lousy.
The biggest problem I have with e-books right now? Not having the books I dearly want to read in e-book format! My wife doesn’t want me to buy any more physical books (they *were* kind of taking up all space in the house! 🙂 )
@CJ – you are a bad offender! Only ONE of your wonderful Foreigner series is available as an e-book!!! I really want to read Deceiver… which means I have to choose between p*ssing off my wife, or waiting… years? (I’ll probably end up choosing option #1…) You aren’t alone in this, unfortunately, I’ve also been bugging Julie Czerneda and Lynn Flewelling about getting some of their books available electronically (but in their cases, all their recent books *are* available, the problem is just earlier books
in some of their series)
About different eReaders… My favorite currently is the iPod Touch or iPhone (I’d dearly love to get an iPhone 4 today!), because I like to be able to hold it in one hand, just use my thumb to quickly go from page to page, and always have a whole library
in my pocket…
My wife prefers her iPad… she likes having something the size of a hardcover book to read… we use the B&N eReader app, the eReader/Fictionwise app, the Stanza app, the Amazon app, and now also Apple’s iBook app…
I also read books on my Motorola Droid… but the ereader apps are not as good yet as on the iPod/iPhone/iPad… but I think it will catch up soon…
Although the iPad is more expensive… it can do *soooooo* much more, and you can save money on books, by being able to pick from various electronic bookstores… (Fictionwise used to be the best, until March, with their discount club and MicroPay rebates, but since the new publishing model started this spring, they’ve discontinued the discount club, and most of the books are no longer available from them 🙁 I still have 2 year subscriptions to Analog and Asimov’s from Fictionwise though, which is nice). If you like having the dictionary on-line while reading (my wife loves that when reading in English [she’s from Spain]), DON’T get books from Amazon… although the Kindle itself has a dictionary, and even text-to-speech, those features are NOT available in their Kindle apps for the iPod/iPad/iPhone! Last night I had to buy the same book a second time (this time on Apple’s iBook store), so she’d be able to read it with a dictionary [she’s become spoiled by that feature of e-books].
It’s not my choice. Problem 1. Publishers have demanded e-rights from long before there were computers. Never mind most publishers don’t know how to build an e-book, and entrust the job to their IT people, who don’t know books.
2. Some of my books were sold to a company, which proceeded to go belly up while convincing several other companies they had bought the rights, which were not transferable. These have been in litigation.
3. The over-arching company, Penguin, which distributes DAW, first maintained it wanted to do e-books, fouled it up, quit, then re-started, informing DAW it wants to do all e-books.
4. Certain of my publishers have stories just as complex, and have decided to sue Amazon and vice versa. Some of these are now settled. Not all. Some of these publishers want to retain e-rights though they don’t publish e-books.
5. I have some titles which I am trying to get out there, but it takes over a hundred man-hours of work to do it. Some are out there. Others are coming. These are books to which I have always retained rights, or for which all rights have been reverted to me.
6. I am meditating doing some original work, which may be connected to books the e-rights of which I can’t liberate.
7. Books are not sold to a publisher: rights to print are leased. SOME publishers are now trying to take the position that e-pub counts as publication in the original sense of the contract, thus extending their possession of the title whether or not actually selling—to all eternity. This will be litigated sooner or later. But writers don’t have the funds to do it.
8. I don’t know what other mischief the failing industry will concoct, but I would be surprised to see many publishers still in business in the US by 2050.
Ouch! That sounds depressing! I did end up giving in and buying Deceiver yesterday (and my wife has already forgiven me! 🙂 ) and am enjoying it greatly (even though I’d like it better if I had it as an e-book, because then I could read it in bed (I know I could get one of those book night lights, but they put out too much light, my wife is *very* sensitive to lights when she sleeps… kind of like the Princess and the Pea!)
As a reader, naturally, I want all those books available as ebooks or in print, and I’d love to have them available on my laptop or i*Thingamajig.
But as a wannabe writer and an artist’s son and someone who’s done desktop publishing the old way, and as a current web editor/writer — I know that authors’ livelihoods depend on book sales and on retaining rights to their work, including for ebooks. So, I just have to hope that good things can happen that will lead to getting my favorite books and authors available in ebboks, while still retaining their rights to their own work in perpetuity.
It’s frustrating, though. Right now, I’ve been carrying around three books, alternating, because they aren’t in ebook formats and I want to read them, gods rot it. 🙂 I hope the publishers will eventually see that everyone can gain by setting up a sane policy on ebboks. The writers can win, the publishers can win, the readers (who buy those books) can win…if the policies are fair to all parties (their customers and the creative writers/artists, for instance).
Also, as someone who’s done desktop publishing and web work — I cringe at how badly done some ebooks look. There’s no reason I know of why they can’t look as good as a basic galley printout or a basic web page… or a properly done, handsome printed book or web page. The format may have limitations I don’t know of, but we’ve had the web since the early 90’s and computer publishing files since the mid- to late 80’s. (Decides to stop hyperventilating and climb down off his soapbox.)
Somehow I am amazed how publishing manages to survive. I suspect it is very much in-spite of the publishers and just because of the dedication of writers and a dedicated cadre of editors and others who see publishing as something more than just a tax shelter.
Oh in the UK ebooks are subject to a 20pct sales tax but the printed versions are exempted.
CJ, I remmeber a bit ago folks were helping with scanning a few books. I’d be willing to help with that too, but as far as I know it will only generate a jpeg file. Not terribly sure how helpful that would be for you. But if you need more volunteers, I’m more than willing to help out!
As much as I like my Kindle [the dictionary is very cool, especially when travelling and I like being able to annotate], I don’t think I’ll ever get past the love of having a book in hand. But there comes a time where there is just no more space! and I’m pretty fed up with all the dusting. Basically, I don’t have much trouble with buying either print or ebook, but the deciding factor was you, Jane and Lynn — and a potential wave of the future — that ebooks would be the only way to get new wonderful tales from favorite authors. Really, I don’t care how you send them out, I’ll snap ’em up anyway you offer them.
Just ACK! to all the issues authors have with publishers and ebook rights.
PLus of course, that each of those problems occurs in each territory around the world. UK ebook rights are not US ebook rights, even though a web-brouser doen’t care where you are.
A DVD can store about 4.7 GB, which I think works out to about 800 million words or, um, 8000 books.