kindle2 - some thoughts on ebook reading

[Stewie]

I honestly wouldn't care if the Kindle's format became the standard. If it became common enough there would soon enough be good conversion software and I could then switch them to epubs (or whatever) and then use them in my non drm'd Sony reader.   This is what I am doing with .lit, .doc and .rtf files now. Although my readers uses some of these I find the epub to look the best.

[Numtini]

I suspect somewhere there's a de-drm plugin for calibre, I just haven't found it.

[naum]

Stanza is a bloated piece of trash with a crap interface made for Moms that think their iPhones are just so spiffy.

Calibre is 900x more utilitarian and does fantastic device management for a plethora of eReaders.

I assume you use Stanza for the iPod/iPhone, because there's no other reason to use it. I deleted it 5 minutes after I installed it.

/yes, the iPhone e-reader is the best I've seen, the desktop app is, as you colorfully allude to, is crude but it does perform conversion tasks.

/shuffles off to install Calibre

[Stewie]

I just replaced my Sony 505 with the prs 600b.

I like it well enough the finish on it is much better than the 505. The 505 had slightly better contrast. This is because the 600 series has a touch screen. The dictionary feature is pretty cool, just double tap a word and a small dictionary definition comes up at the bottom of the page. You can also hit another button to get a pull dictionary entry on it.

It has the ability to highlight, or write notes right on the screen. A stylus is included.

The Sony E-reader library software has not worked at all for me, keeps crashing out to desktop or freezing and Calibre doesn't recognize the device yet. Although I was on the Mobileread forums and the guy who created Calibre said that he will have updated drivers today or tomorrow for the prs 600. 

Once that is done I don't think I will ever use the Sony library software as Calibre is just soo much better.

Overall I am pretty happy with it. Just the fact that I can get pretty much any book I want and have them all with me wherever I go is handy.

[Jherad]

I hadn't realised that the 700 had been replaced.

Side by side:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/24/video-sony-prs-600-touch-is-fast-but-too-dim-to-satisfy-prs-505

Looks like it still has big glare and contrast issues, compared to the 505. Sigh. Still waiting.

[Numtini]

To necro, I just got an update and the Kindle now does PDF natively and there's something about screen rotation that I haven't had a chance to monkey with on mine.

[Nija]

It's half-assed PDF support. It's like saying Wordpad is able to edit word documents.

On the kindle, if the pdf document has these embedded features, you won't be able to take advantage of them:

- text selection for dictionary lookups and text string searches
- left/right arrows to skip chapters
- in-document links to jump to various sections of the book, like a table of contents or a reference chapter

[Quinton]

Lack of zoom makes the on device PDF support pretty much useless for a lot of documents.  If your PDF has small text, multicolumn text, etc, it's likely going to be unreadable on a kindle2 (probably not as bad on the DX).

[Nija]

It's not that bad now on the DX because they're auto-cropping the PDFs to remove most of the margin whitespace.

In landscape mode it's very readable, but the page turns take so long that it's very annoying, and you're doubling the number of page turns required when you go landscape.

[HaemishM]

WHORE ALERT:

You can get the ebook versions of my novel, Under the Amoral Bridge on the Kindle for .99 cents from now until Christmas. Buy it, read it, review it and give me any feedback you want, no matter how savage.

Whoring completed.

[Engels]

Hahhah, purchased. Can't promise I'll read it soon. In the middle of Girl who Played with Fire.

[Salamok]

Currently looking at a Kindle DX, should I be comparing it to anything else?  If so what?

P.S. - Yeah I'll use the f13 referral link, so I guess schilds opinion becomes immediately biased.

[Trippy]

If you need a display that large that's your only choice ATM AFAIK. There are a bazillion devices now that use the 6" display.

[caladein]

If you're looking at the DX because you want a large(r) display, that's your only option for the foreseeable future.  If you're in the market for a Kindle2-sized device and aren't a fan of it/Amazon for whatever reason, next year is looking to be pretty neat on the ebook reader front.

[schild]

Currently looking at a Kindle DX, should I be comparing it to anything else?  If so what?

P.S. - Yeah I'll use the f13 referral link, so I guess schilds opinion becomes immediately biased.

I'm not a fan of any eReader atm (including the nook, having seen it just yesterday at BN). Frankly, I'd hold off. But that's me. Having handled a Kindle though, I still prefer my last-gen Sony with that software with Calibre.

[Tmon]

I got myself a nook for Christmas, I'm happy enough with it.  I passed on the Kindle because I wasn't a fan of the keyboard and because of the proprietary file format.  I've mostly been checking e-books out of the local library and reading stuff I've downloaded from Project Gutenberg and google books.  I was kind of surprised at how natural it feels to read on it, since I hate reading anything longer than a page or two on my PC.  My biggest gripe was that page turn was kinda slow but this morning's software update made that better.

[Morat20]

My wife got a Kindle for Christmas (she LOVES the keyboard -- but she teaches English, and wants to write in books all the time -- so she uses it to annotate somehow).

I broke down and just bought one. I'm hoping to collapse a few shelves into a single Kindle. Or several large shelves. My house is packed with books. Most of them aren't available on kindle, but enough are there already that I expect the others will follow sooner or later.

Playing with hers made me really like the e-paper.

[Draegan]

I've been toying with the idea of buying one, but the books aren't any cheaper on the Kindle.

Right now I'm reading "Use of Weapons" by Ian Banks.

Amazon Kindle Version: $9.99

The paperback version on Amazon is twenty cents more expensive.

I still like the handiness of it, and the instant delivery.  The DX is $450 which is a hefty pricepoint, and the smaller one $260 which is still a little pricey.

[Morat20]

I got the smaller one. And with my house PACKED with bookshelves, and my personal belief that a three-day vacation requires 10 books, minimum, I'm happy to pay extra to save some space.

The fact that I can copy the files to my harddrive and back them up, and that a lot of classics are free is a big selling point too.

I have a small house and WAY too much stuff, but I'm not prepared to simply "get rid" of books --- I do a lot of rereading for light entertainment and I like books! However, I am prepared to digest my books in tinier, e-book form, and the Kindle is a heck of a lot more portable and readable than my PC or something.

I guess the extra is worth it to simply my life and make my library more portable.

[caladein]

Anyone have any experience with magazines on a Kindle, specifically Time and The Economist?

I'm much more a periodicals guy than anything else, the subscriptions prices are pretty good (like, pays for itself in ~3 years good), and like Morat I'd like to ditch the house-full-of-paper school of decorating.

[Morat20]

Anyone have any experience with magazines on a Kindle, specifically Time and The Economist?

I'm much more a periodicals guy than anything else, the subscriptions prices are pretty good (like, pays for itself in ~3 years good), and like Morat I'd like to ditch the house-full-of-paper school of decorating.

All I've heard is that the Kindle sucks for graphics -- doesn't do much for even simple charts. I mean, it's good considering how they DO graphics -- but it's not great for anything with a lot of graphs or charts.

You can probably get a free trial or something. I might try it for a few of my favorite periodicals if they offer a trial or a single-issue deal, just to see.

I'm looking forward to them moving the backlog of older, "giant fucking fantasy series" stuff to Kindle (you'd figure they'd do it for stuff like Eddings, since it'd be a chance to resell his work with minimum actual cost, although to date only about half of Edding's stuff -- all the newer stuff that I never bothered with -- is on Kindle) so I can get rid of tons of older hardbacks.

Jordan, Goodkind, Eddings, Martin, The Dark Tower stuff, the Dune novels --- I think I'll hammer all of Modesitt's work with the "Ask for it on kindle" --- I could probably empty an entire bookcase just of older works that I keep around just for the occasional urge for a mindless re-read of something complete and finished.

[HaemishM]

The publishers have been REAL reluctant to embrace the eBooks. That whole MacMillan/Amazon fight from this past weekend was a part of that. The Kindle store has traditionally given SHIT for royalties (35% WTF?) and of course, the publishers are shitting their britches over the thought that eBook sales will cannibalize their precious hardcover sales. Now that there are a million Kindles out there, though, and Amazon is offering a 70% royalty option, you'll probably start to see more coming out. Whether it'll be priced obscenely or not is another story. I think most of the traditional pubs are still adamant about keeping prices as high as other editions.

[Trippy]

The MacMillan fight wasn't really about cannibalizing sales, it was about price fixing. For some ebooks Amazon sells them for less than what they buy/license them from the publishers for. MacMillan said "no you must sell them at the price we tell you to". Which would be pricing fixing if these were real (physical) books.

[naum]

The publishers have been REAL reluctant to embrace the eBooks. That whole MacMillan/Amazon fight from this past weekend was a part of that. The Kindle store has traditionally given SHIT for royalties (35% WTF?) and of course, the publishers are shitting their britches over the thought that eBook sales will cannibalize their precious hardcover sales. Now that there are a million Kindles out there, though, and Amazon is offering a 70% royalty option, you'll probably start to see more coming out. Whether it'll be priced obscenely or not is another story. I think most of the traditional pubs are still adamant about keeping prices as high as other editions.

Tired of reading justifications for ebook prices that are roughly equivalent/greater than paperback equivalents.

Costs for paper and ink are growing more exorbitant (especially in relation to bandwidth, disk space, etc.…) and the rationale that the author needs editors and proofreaders and fact checkers is bogus — it's a one-off cost and more essentially, significantly cheaper in post-internet-age.

Ebooks should cost no more than $4.99 unless it's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire sized, and even then, no more than ~$15.

[Jerrith]

Have a Kindle, love it.  Not an Apple fan, and I basically look at this as Apple driving up the cost of ebooks I buy.  What I really hate though are pricing situations like this on Amazon:

Evil for Evil
Formats:
Kindle Edition: $9.35
Paperback, Bargain Price: $4.94

The Escapement
Formats:
Kindle Edition: $9.35
Paperback, Bargain Price: $4.05

The one good point regarding the new deal for Amazon is that ebook & hardcover releases from Macmillan are supposed to be simultaneous now.  I read quite a bit from Tor (part of Macmillan) and their frequent long delays have been annoying me.

[Quinton]

I'm not sure I'm willing to pay $15 for an ebook at release.  Of course I'm not convinced the publishers even care about that -- I think they'd rather you but the hardcover for some absurd reason.

[HaemishM]

They'd rather you buy the hardcover because it justifies the continuance of the business model they've been making money on for a century. We fear change, especially when there's money being made. To their eyes, it ain't broke, why fix it? They are facing the same dilemma the recording industry was facing, without the added stigma of widespread "pirating." There's also the business of the book distribution business, places like Ingram, which are completely cut out of the loop on eBooks. You know book distributors, the guys that will not carry a book from a publisher/author unless they get 50-55% off the sale price from the get-go. So the publisher which sells a hardback for $25 only gets $12 with which to pay the author royalties (and they get fuckall, let me tell you), pay for marketing and distribution and new talent discovery. The paperback situation is even worse.

The entire publishing industry from magazines to books is seeing a sea change in their business model and they want to extract every bit of profit that they can from the old model before it gets tossed into the bin.

[ghost]

Wife is updating the Nook to 1.2.  I hope that it fixes the issues that it has, like not turning on.  That would be nice.

[schild]

Can someone with a Kindle and/or Nook tell me if DND guides are available on them? Does Wizards even publish like that?

[Quinton]

Neither the 3.5ed nor 4ed D&D books appear to be available for kindle from amazon.

I'd advise against using e-ink readers for content that you want heavy random access to -- that's where they really fall down at the moment.  Love the kindle2 for reading novels but trying to flip pages / navigate around rapidly would drive me crazy.

[Tmon]

Neither the 3.5ed nor 4ed D&D books appear to be available for kindle from amazon.

I'd advise against using e-ink readers for content that you want heavy random access to -- that's where they really fall down at the moment.  Love the kindle2 for reading novels but trying to flip pages / navigate around rapidly would drive me crazy.

If you found a pdf version of the handbooks you could load them onto the nook or the Kindle but it wouldn't be terribly useful since navigation would still be painful and slow.  Current e-books and their readers are designed for linear start to finish reading, they all have search, highlight/note taking features but they all seem painful to use and limited.  I bought an epub version of the Bible and even trying to do something as simple as navigate to the daily readings is so awkward that I finally just gave up and archived it. 

[Ingmar]

I have the 4e books in PDF from when they used to offer them, and they don't translate well at all to the kindle format.

[Engels]

So now that I have an iPad and a Kindle2, I'm still not sure which I like better. The irony is that now I find myself wanting to go back to the kindle as it has a 'warm comforting feeling' that  the iPad doesn't provide. The same exact nonsense I felt when first using the kindle and felt towards paper books.

Humans; I'm one, and I'm stupid.

[Arthur_Parker]

Anyone tried the new one?  I'm waiting for Amazon to send my Kindle 3, I have half a garage full of books I'm going to be able to throw out. 

Hyped because I've not tried an ebook reader before, made the mistake of talking to my neighbour about it, ended up having an odd Bill Hicks type conversation, he can't see the point of books, he's nearly 40 and the last book he read was in school.

[Phred]

The most important thing the publishers bring to the table is the marketing apparatus, something 99% of established authors have no hope of equaling and 100% of new authors will never have a chance to equal.

I kind of disagree with you here as established authors have very little need for marketing, IMO. Do you really think George R R Martin is gonna need anyone to mention he finally wrote another book? (Maybe if he takes another 10 years to do it heh). I'm starting to wonder which will come first, the next book in the Fire and Ice series or my death from old age. New authors I'd go with full agreement though. Publishers, IMO provide their most valuable service with what they've been cost cutting on majorly recently, editing. A lot of authors wouldn't have near the respect they do if they didn't have decent editors cleaning up their prose.

P.S. Sorry for the necro, don't really come to general much. Too much like politics.