Amazon Kindle (ebook thingy)

“We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.”

God, what bitches. OH HORRORS, THEY HAVE A MONOPOLY ON PRODUCTS THEY THEMSELVES DEVELOPED AND PRODUCED? QUICK SOMEBODY CALL THE ANTI-TRUST COMMITTEE.

I believe that is what's known as "selling a product". Not "having a monopoly". And amazon.com is known as "a whiny baby".

hahah that is so ridiculous. pot -> kettle

I think part of the rationale for the $15 pricing is to protect the print book sales area, ie making the ebooks closer to them in price and maybe not offering the ebook for sale when an original hardcover first is released.

Also consider that for any smaller or less-known authors, the profit made on an ebook edition could make a giant difference in the P&L, enough to allow the editor to justify acquiring the project in the first place. Yes, CEOs just want to make money, but editors actually want to discover new authors and publish good books, so they have a lot of incentive to find ways to make the $$ work.

I think part of the rationale for the $15 pricing is to protect the print book sales area, ie making the ebooks closer to them in price and maybe not offering the ebook for sale when an original hardcover first is released.

Sorry, that doesn't read right but you can probably extrapolate: pricing ebooks higher protects the print book market, as does delaying ebook releases until the shine is off the hardcover -- probably only by a month or two, though -- not nearly as long as you'd have to wait for a paperback edition of the same title.

Instead of thinking of ebook sales as cream on top of the publisher already making a profit on the print sales of a book, think about the print sales as not making enough to justify bring out a new author.

As pubs are getting more and more consolidated and "big media" and shareholder expectations keep expanding above and beyond what a respectable "literary" house used to be required to do, ebooks might be what keeps young/new authors in print in some fashion...

I'm sure I'm like person number 45,678,934,583 to suggest this.

Anyway, we distro our ebooks through the Sony Reader.

I don't plan on getting an e-reader any time soon (I'm too cheap and the technology doesn't seem great yet) but something I wonder about is: you know all those stories about how easy access to mp3s of music have reduced the listener's attention span and they don't give new music as much of a chance to sink in before moving on to the next thing? I don't know if that's a b.s. trend or what but if I had an e-reader and e-books were cheap or easy to illegally download, I wonder if I would read much more superficially? I already get most of my books for free from the library and I think I already tend to give up on books that don't hold my interest because I didn't pay for them, but just the fact that I have to travel to the library and return them and find something else to read maybe keeps me reading longer than I would if all I had to do was download something new.

that is a great point

Well, if the bar to getting a book produced & distributed becomes lower and there's an extremely broad range of stuff avail for no or little cost...you could say that ditching out early on a book that doesn't suit you is a valid approach to a greater variety...? At least you gave something different a try.

Dependent on the reader's individual selectivity of course.

Yeah, I don't think ditching out early is necessarily a bad thing but also some books just require a little more work and concentration.

how long b4 people are uploading kindle books to ysi

I mean you probably could scan over Elementary Aeronautics for 10 minutes and learn something you didn't know, even if you immediately forgot the other 94% of the material. If it didn't cost you anything, so what if you ditched out? xp to self

xp to Nick: Yeah, I dunno? I still am not reading the Gormenghast Trilogy whether it sits on my shelf being overdue or not.

i feel like i go through phases in my reading. sometimes i finish everything i start, not because i feel like it, but because i feel genuinely engaged with the material. sometimes i can't stick with anything beyond a few pages. and it's all basically the same stuff. i don't know if i'll ever get an e-reader until the technology itself (not the e-books) goes down in price. if i had one, who knows, i'd probably go crazy downloading stuff

Yeah I just find myself on some conceptual level being really annoyed by the price of the devices themselves more than the books. The great thing about books has always been (to me) the universal availability of other worlds to live in/experience, assuming basic literacy. Anyone who can read can partake.

The basic set-up that goes "anyone who has $300-400 for some fancy electronics and doesn't mind replacing it after a trip to the beach/bath tub/public transit can enjoy these unique ideas...isn't it great that knowledge is free & shared?!" just rubs me the wrong way. Creating a higher-tier class of readers, maybe? And that doesn't have anything to do with content or literary value or difficulty of the ideas, simply expendable income, which feels like an even more fake distinction.

Yeah, I don't think ditching out early is necessarily a bad thing but also some books just require a little more work and concentration.

― congratulations (n/a), Monday, February 1, 2010 11:25 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ya but do u find (as i do) that mp3ing has given u access to all sorts of weird music u would have never heard, some of which u now love?

yes

QED imo

Kindle app for Mac is here

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2010/03/hands-on-with-kindle-for-mac.ars

time for me to go try it out

Interface blows, Amazon can't design a desktop app worth anything. The iPhone one is marginally better.

man, i am with you on the interface O_O

at this point, i'm just glad that the thing exists, but i definitely won't be buying too much from the Kindle store as things are

nice to see the whole internet thinks this kindle thing sucks :D

― DG, Tuesday, November 20, 2007 3:02 PM

My parents just bought me a kindle and I have no idea what to do with it.

read things!

can't u get magazines on it or something?

I just got a Kindle. Got a subscription to the Atlantic. $1.25 a month. Lots of free classics too.

Thinking about getting one of these (just released in UK for £110) but I haven't played around with one yet, so I was wondering:
do anyone use one for reading a lot of journal article pdfs? It seems like with a 6" screen, even in landscape mode you would have to zoom and scroll a lot considering the usual format of said pdfs.

I've got a bunch of work pdfs on mine, mostly text stuff. It's okay for reading them with just paginating.

anyone here have both a kindle AND an ipad and wish to comment on what is better for reading? i think i want an e-reader.

am i wrong to suspect these will be at pocket calculator prices in a few years?

If the retail big box I work at is any indication, you are VERY wrong. These things fly off the shelves still, we can barely keep them in stock.

cutty, I know two people with both - they both prefer reading on the iPad, but use the Kindle app on it.

Why e-readers will soon cost less than $100.
http://www.slate.com/id/2263787/

REAL BOOKS ARE STILL BETTER.

this is seriously my only hold-out— i won't ever fucking buy one of these things. books belong on paper.

how much do books cost on these things? What are the selections like?

http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Books/b/ref=sa_menu_kbo3?ie=UTF8&node=1286228011

And Jaq - I think your friends are lying. No way would I rather read on an iPad.

friend of mine is thinking of getting one since he's gonna be going to africa for a few months and wants to bring hell of books with him

― i like to fart and i am crazy (gbx), Friday, May 8, 2009 2:33 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

still think travel is the A#1 selling point on these things---def gonna get one if/when i'm abroad for any substantial amount of time again

And Jaq - I think your friends are lying. No way would I rather read on an iPad.

I think so too - I held an iPad the other day, so much bulkier and heavier. The Kindle is light, easy to turn pages or hold w/ one hand, no glare problems, etc.

I checked out the B&N Nook the other day - pretty cool except the contrast really sucks, everything you read feels like it's printed on cheap grayish recycled paper, like standardized test paper. wonder how much improved the new Kindle is.

I like my iPad just fine for longform reading, especially cause in landscape mode it gives you the full 'spread'. but yeah it's kind of heavy and only good for at home etc.

No way would I rather read on an iPad.

― Kindle hardware designer, Thursday, August 12, 2010 6:49 PM

haha

I totally see the appeal of a Kindle. I've never seen an iPad though

http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/hsc1792l.jpg

downloaded a few free books from project gutenberg for plane ride tomorrow to test it out. kindle has two flights to win me over.

I've been using PDAs for reading books since 2003, going from a Franklin eBookman to a Palm Zire to an iPod Touch, and I'm really not sure why people think they need dedicated hardware for this sort of thing.

reading on an iphone is the absolute worst

I like it. Even better with iPhone 4.

Massively so. Text on the retina display looks like its on glowing paper. No jaggies, nothing.

REAL BOOKS ARE STILL BETTER.

this is seriously my only hold-out— i won't ever fucking buy one of these things. books belong on paper.

― a repulsive person and/or a repulsive sphincter (the table is the table), Friday, 13 August 2010 08:33 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I thought ebooks were the stupidest thing ever until two weeks ago when I got my iPhone 4 and actually tried reading one. Now I'm so impressed that I'm about to buy a dedicated ebook reader.

Can you explain the appeal?

What kind of reading habits do you have?

What do you read?