We have had Kindles for a couple of years. When they first came out, they
were great. Now, we almost never use them for anything other than
downloading free books.
The concept was good. You could get books cheap and get them instantly. That
worked for a while. Then the book publishers got greedy.
Now, most of the book content is sold by Amazon and delivered by the
publishers. The result is that frequently, Kindle books are more expensive
than the hard copy version. The Kindle is not the only ebook reader that has
this problem.
Also, most of the Kindle book sales are charged tax. So you have content
that cost almost nothing to provide that is sold for more than content that
cost the publisher to produce and stock and they charge tax on the sale. :(
You couple that with the fact that book publisher's pay authors a smaller
percentage of the total price of the purchase for royalties and you can see
the reason for the outrage among the book community. Just to add salt to the
wound, the publishers now want to charge libraries every time an ebook is
checked out after the 26th time.
If you do a Google Search of "boycott eBooks," you get over 700K hits.
One Amazon reader wrote: "Kindle books are kinda like movie tickets. While
you can re-read the book, you cannot: donate it to a library, sell it to a
used book store, sell it on Amazons Used Marketplace, [or] trade it to a
friend The publisher does not need to pay for paper, glue, press time,
press employees, insurance, ink, boxes, or shipping. Amazon does not need to
stock its warehouse, pay staff to fulfill orders, or pay shipping. The price
needs to reflect these VERY important facts."
The only redeeming thing about eBooks is most of the ebook providers have
smart phone apps (Android and iPhone). This allows content to be read in
boring meetings, while waiting for concerts to start, etc. These apps are
free and easier to use than having to carry another piece of hardware. I use
the Gutenberg project to download free books to my Droid phone. Check out
the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars Series.
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: spridgets-bounces@autox.team.net
[mailto:spridgets-bounces@autox.team.net] On Behalf Of Jay
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2011 12:32 PMs
To: Spridgets
Subject: [Spridgets] Off Topic - Kindle
Anyone here have any practical advice they could offer on the Kindle reader?
My
daughter wants one for her birthday and I know nothing about them.
We are going to make a decision in the next couple of days and one of the
questions we have is whether the 3G is really necessary, and if you buy one
do
you have to also buy a data subscription or could you use the reader and
just
use it WiFi and possibly subscribe at a later time.
TIA,
jay
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