I have a Kindle but I completely agree with this, I buy the cheapest version or wait for the Kindle price to come down.Originally Posted by Neely
What also annoys me is that when a Kindle book is reduced in price its by a massive amount, I bought the Life of PI on 24th December for £2.39, its now £0.20
Amazon insist that the price is set by the publisher, not by them. This is fine, but why then am I going to order a kindle book for £12.99, when I can get it for £4.99 brand new including postage or such thing. Seriously they have got to sort this out as it is ridiculous. For the last three months my kindle has sat with one book for interest on it and it is all down to the market prices.I have a Kindle but I completely agree with this, I buy the cheapest version or wait for the Kindle price to come down.
What also annoys me is that when a Kindle book is reduced in price its by a massive amount, I bought the Life of PI on 24th December for £2.39, its now £0.20
Can you not download books from your library onto your Kindle?
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
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It's a national problem. I live in a country where piracy is the norm, so I fear nothing. There is no law or custom here that discourages me from stealing these books, or acquiring them, in the illegal sense in most countries. The economist Harold Innis wrote a great deal of how Americans exploited their lack of defined copyright for international books to build up a market. This is something similar. It is even easier to steal than to buy, as more books exist in scanned or self-made digital copies than amazon has available in Ebook.
Either way, that will change soon, the kindle is hardly the only reader out there, and there will be an influx of cheaper Chinese equivalents that will break down Amazon's grip on the industry.
To be honest, the book was probably printed with a speculative sales amount, and failed to sell, so they merely are cutting back on their losses. It's a common technique - I purchased a brand new 150$ coffeetable sized book from Princeton for 11$ plus shipping.
In Canada we mostly can do that onto the Kobo, when I left the kindle was restricted by various forces that made the Kobo the gadget of choice. But we still could upload from the public library, yes.
Last edited by qimissung; 01-06-2013 at 03:56 AM.
so I should Kindle? I am a bookgeek, and I want to know what should I use for my tab.
Last edited by bookgeeks; 03-24-2013 at 02:12 AM.
I have a nook. I haven't bought any books for it, but have downloaded from Gutenberg instead.
I now have an Archos 80 Titanium as well. I bought it for weird reasons but its good for reading on.
Well my nook is sitting on a tv stand charging, it's been there for a couple of months! I in turn have been going to discount stores and finding great books for about 1.50 - 2.50 some hard covers ,,,, in my case the nook will be used for traveling , that is what makes the most sense to me right now,I can take a bunch of books and not take up a bunch of space???
it depends on your budget.
I'd wait for the iPad Mini retina display.
Right now I have an iPad. I had a Kindle Fire but I ended up giving it away because i just found it to be horrible. One thing that annoys me about Kindle is that the books don't have page numbers. With the iPad the books have page numbers and on the bottom of the screen it will tell you how many pages are left in the chapter you're reading.
If you're going to be using the tablet for more than reading (email, web browsing etc) stay as far away from the Kindle as possible.
The Kindle fire was just an awful idea - the whole point of the ereader was that the screen doesn't burn your eyes - though the fire did. The whole thing is designed like a downgraded ipad.
Still, if one uses a kindle, or any other device for that matter, the most practical use is to sideload the thing with the books you want. You can put almost anything on here in txt format, or in Word format, or Mobi format, and the majority of books are available for free anyway. If one wants to read 19th century fiction, or whatever this is the best method, as you can read the entire pre 1923 canon for free without difficulty.
When it comes to paying for books though, the kindle is a bit ridiculous. Who is going to pay 12.00$ for a book that normally costs 6$. Seriously, the production costs on a kindle book are virtually zero, they have some nerve. Still publishers know, if the Kindle price is bellow the print price, the print run will not sell. The best seller lists are all based on print media, therefore the book will also not generate publicity.
Not all Kindle books are overpriced. I usually read only the project Guttenberg books, but I recently bought Catch 22 for just $3 something, Wodehouse is about 2.50 or something - but Faulkner is quite expensive - it's all rather erratic.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
Most people in my part of the world do read pirated versions and one of my friends downloads many books which are otherwise inaccessible generally.I myself being a writer often feel empathetic since the writer who works hard has to deprive himself of the royalty he could get through sales of his books.
It's the fault of all those impatient, rich Londoners who "want it now" and don't care about paying twice as much. Do you think the publishers haven't got this sorted out? They don't want to sort it out to suit you, they have it sorted out so they can buy a bigger yacht.
I don't really see any pattern to Kindle VS Book pricing. Most of the Kindle prices for Penguin and Oxford editions of the classics are either lower than or equivalent to their Book versions, so it really becomes about which format you prefer since the price is usually equivalent. OTOH, there are definitely books where the Kindle version is either significantly pricier or significantly cheaper, so it does seem to depend on the publisher. I think many publishers think that because ebooks are becoming the dominant format they can afford to charge a premium, while other publishers are thinking that because it costs so little to produce them they have no reason to charge more. So it's really just about whatever the market ends up telling the publisher. Personally, I'll usually buy the Kindle version (for my iPad) as long as it's not too much more. But if, eg, the Kindle is $12 and the book is $6, then I'll go with the book all day. I'm not going to pay double for the various conveniences of the ereader format.
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I bought myself a Kindle Touch about 1,5 years ago, but I've only read about 5-10 books on there, as I can't help but preferring reading actual paper books. I will keep my Kindle and I might bring it when I go on longer trips, or when actual books won't fit into my bags. But until then, I'll keep reading my beloved paper books. Also, if I want to read Swedish books, in Swedish, there are hardly any at all that I've found for the Kindle.
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