It's no use, for months now I've fought the rising desire in my loins for an e-book reader, but with the impending release of the Amazon Kindle in the UK (about bloody time too) and a sudden increase in alternative readers, it seems my resistance has finally become futile.
The thing is... I love books. I mean LOVE books. Our walls at home are resplendent with the volumes of Ballard, Adams, Dick, Wyndham, Asimov, Tolkien, and many other wonderful people who built worlds out of words. The thought of reducing them to pdfs with only small icons to prove their existence doesn't sit well with me at all. But due to an RSI injury attained years ago I now have trouble holding books open for any extended time, and the opportunity offered by the lightweight e-readers is too much to pass up.
So I devised a plan to align both of my worlds. I'd buy the e-book, then if I really liked it I'd buy a copy of the print version to proudly display on my shelves... that was until I investigated the prices of e-books. Bloody hell!
On average so far they seem to cost about £2 less than the RRP of the print edition. Which would be fine if the print editions weren't nearly always reduced or made part of 3 for 2 or Buy One Get One Free offers. So in actuality you'd end up paying more for an electronic copy of a book which has cost next to nothing to print, package and deliver, and which you can't lend to a friend, or read without an expensive machine.
I can't understand the attitude of publishers here at all. Surely with ebooks still being a very small part of the book market (although set to expand rapidly if the portents are to be believed) the idea would be to offer a reduced price to get you into them - especially when the cheapest e-book reader (the new Sony Pocket Reader) still costs about £160. Amazon's delayed entry into the European market has given Sony, BeBook, Cooler, and the few other machines available a massive head-start during which time they could have built a loyal band of customers thanks to competitive pricing and compatibility across the board. Instead they all seem to have gone after a fat slice of pie, which may well end up giving them indigestion. Sony didn't even bother to make their machine Mac compatible in it's first few incarnations.
So now I wait on Amazon to see if they will seize the moment and show the others how it's done. My only other hope is that Oxfam open a second hand e-book store...
1 comments:
I can't agree more, mate. I had a reader, which I bartered to a friend because it didn't work with my Mac. But, since then I've been hungering for another one. I was on the verge of a purchase when I looked at the receipt from Borders after my 40% off coupon. Like you said, the e-book was more. I pay more, I get less. Doesn't make sense to me. But, the e-book readers sure are pretty!
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