eReaders...

[Gob]

Hmm... trip to the UK coming up, $Au at 65p, able to claim back VAT on leaving, I'll take two....

[BoSoxGal]

FYI Kindle owners/considerers:

http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/407 ... le_Lending

http://www.booklending.com/

articles:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ne ... wers_a.php

http://www.fastcompany.com/1748782/amaz ... ocal-libra

http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/ ... -notes.ars

One very cool thing about the Kindle's participation in borrowing library books that will be different from all other eReaders, is that you will be able to make notes in the margins of your borrowed eBooks and when you borrow the book again, or purchase it for your collection, those notes will still be in your Kindle and can be re-synced with the new or re-borrowed copy of the book. That's pretty nifty, no?

[thestoat]

If you have a pukka book for your Kindle and you start reading and then switch to, say, Kindle for the Mac, you will have the option of having the Kindle software automatically send you to the current page rather than finding it again, which I do like. Recently Amazon announced that it sold more eBooks than paperbacks and hardbacks together - I do believe eBooks are here to stay. Though until they start a proper pricing strategy for the eBooks I'm rooting for the hackers. (Apparently publishers set the book price, not Amazon, so can't blame them)

[thestoat]

By the way, BSG - thanks for the links!!!! Top stuff.

[Gob]

What's the advantage (and extra cost) of a "3G" Kindle?

[thestoat]

The "advantage" is that you can buy books potentially whilst sitting on the beach, or sitting in the car being driven home one evening. I didn't go for 3G because

1. it costs about £50 extra, which would buy a lot of wifi access if I was really desperate that I needed to by a book "right now"
2. I have an Android phone with a data plan. If I need my iPad (and, by extension, Kindle, though I have never needed that) to access the internet and I am not near a wifi hotspot I simply press a button on my phone and my phone becomes a 3G wifi hotspot

As you can tell, I'm not a big fan of the 3G Kindle (or 3G iPad)

[Reality Bytes]

I didn't bother with the 3G either couldnt see when I'd ever feel like downloading a book when I wasn't home - the basic Kindle has wifi access which connects to hotspots or other peoples networks so I can get online away from home anyway.

Oh yeah I should also mention that the Kindle browser isn't bad I've been able to connetc to BBC news, Twitter, facebook and a couple of forums with it though its odd seeing the net in black & white.

As for illegal downloading and DRM removal I'm afraid I side totally with those doing it - long may they continue, its a different issue to music and dvds and its entirely caused by the publishers greed the quickest and easiest way to kill illegal downloading is charge a FAIR price for ebooks.

[thestoat]

As for illegal downloading and DRM removal I'm afraid I side totally with those doing it - long may they continue, its a different issue to music and dvds and its entirely caused by the publishers greed the quickest and easiest way to kill illegal downloading is charge a FAIR price for ebooks.

Absolutely!

[Gob]

Thanks for the info both...

[Guinevere]

As for illegal downloading and DRM removal I'm afraid I side totally with those doing it - long may they continue, its a different issue to music and dvds and its entirely caused by the publishers greed the quickest and easiest way to kill illegal downloading is charge a FAIR price for ebooks.

Absolutely!

Exactly how is it different that DVDs and music? In both instances it is still the intellectual property of an individual being stolen, and the owner of the intellectual property is being denied his or her fair benefit from the work.

[thestoat]

The difference is that a music download does not (from what I have seen) cost a lot more than buying a CD off the shelf. Also, when you buy a music download, you are usually allowed to play that on any player you wish (I think Apple have curtailed the DRM now?). Don't forget that ebooks are already more restictive than normal books (eg you can't sell them on) so to charge more for them is an insult imo.

[Guinevere]

If you don't like the pricing, don't buy them. But that isn't license to steal the intellectual property. If people *didn't* buy them, it would force the publishers to change the price/process.

[thestoat]

That is true, and I personally won't buy them. But the herd, unfortunately, isn't that clever. Thus I can entirely sympathise with the pirates. The music industry has learned the lesson and music prices reduced because of it.

[Reality Bytes]

When I buy a book the publisher and the author get paid, there are no restrictions on how I read the book or where I read it, moreover I can lend it to someone else to read and I can sell it on at any time or even donate it to a charity shop who then sell it on, or even give it away for free - all those things are legal and aside from the first initial cost of my purchase neither the publisher nor the author see another penny from the book. A physical book has a far greater production cost in real terms and environmental terms than a digital edition yet publishers and authors have never tried to restrict anyone from being able to do any of those things with their product. Indeed an author hopes that books are shared in order that they might attaract new readers to their work who might go on to become repeat purchasers of their future works.

Ebooks cost a considerable amount less to produce than a hardcopy book, the production costs do not increase very much whether 1 copy is made or 1000 copies and a heck of a lot less trees are needed, thus the profit margin on an ebook is vastly greater than a pysical copy of the same product yet the price charged for a digital edition is the same or more than the cost of a physical copy. DRM and format restriction attempts to restrict what I the reader and owner of the product can actually do with it, it attempts to prevent me from reading MY book on whatever medium I choose to read it, it attempts to restrict me from giving the book to someone else to read, and it attempts to prevent me from disposing of the book in any way I see fit once I'm done with it. Moreover, DRM can also be used to take the book I have bought and paid for away from me at the whim of the publisher. Any ereader will have a finite lifespan at the end of such time with DRM in place I would end up losing books I had previously bought and paid for simply because I wouldn't be able to transfer them to a new device.

If I buy a book from a charity shop or boot sale for 50p or am given it for free by a friend neither the author or publisher make any money, if I were to download it from the torrents they still don't make any money - yet I would be engaging in an illegal activity. If they continue to try and stifle filesharing without addressing their own attemps at profiteering then the authors will ultimately pay a far higher price, if ebooks start to replace real books, and if DRM gets tougher to crack, people will no longer be able to share authors work and authors will find it harder and harder to find new readers and when that happens its the authors who will be dropped by the publishers long before the publishers drop their over inflated prices.

As for the difference between music and dvds in general I can buy a legal download of a music track or film cheaper than if I were to buy the hard copy of it and I can play them wherever I want and can even make legal copies of them the same does not apply to ebooks.

[oldr_n_wsr]

I have no clue what this thread is about.
eReaders? Robots that read a book to you?

[thestoat]

Actually, here's the thing. The Kindle can read books to you! And it does sound like a pretty unemotional robot when it does. But a lot of the time the publishers have insisted Amazon turn this feature off for their books since they want to gain more profit with audio books.

[thestoat]

Ha!

An e-book that costs the same as a printed book doesn't feel right. No trees died to make it. No heavy machinery ran to print it. No planes flew to ship it. You might need to buy one of those new $139 Barnes & Noble Nooks, announced this week, to be able to read it. So why should you have to spend as much as you would for a heavy hardcover book to own it?
...
On the Kindle Store page for the book, scroll some two-thirds of the way down to the "Tags Customers Associate with This Product" section, and you'll notice that nine out of the top ten tags for this book have nothing to do with its page-turning storytelling. The book, last time I looked, had 105 tags for "too expensive for Kindle," 85 tags for "9 99 boycott", 65 tags for "overpriced-kindle-version," and so on. People don't like the price.

I did some research for a UK magazine a couple of weeks ago, and found that in the Amazon top 20 best sellers, 2 books were not available in the Kindle, 2 Kindle books were cheaper than paperbacks with a whapping 16 books MORE EXPENSIVE than paperbacks - and 3 were MORE EXPENSIVE than hardbacks!

Full article ... http://www.cio.com/article/683021/E_Boo ... ireless%29

[Crackpot]

Fix your link it's giving me WASS and I can't read your post

[thestoat]

I just tried and it worked okay - anyone else have troubles?
Here is a shortened version of the link

http://bit.ly/jSc8Cy

[Crackpot]

the long version with all of it's gobbledygook (no spaces/periods) is running all of your text past the margin in the absolution skin.