I came across this article about Kindles in Waterstones. Is this true ? I have never owned a Kindle and continue to buy & read books, but have noticed that on my morning commute, more people seem to be reading books. I don’t believe Kindles or e-readers will disappear, they have a role, though I am cheered by this if it means smaller bookshops can thrive.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/06/waterstones-stop-selling-kindle-book-sales-surge
Mrs T has one – I thiught it would be perfect for her – she doesn’t like heavy books from a weight perspective, and also the small print – but she just didn’t get on with it, and it sits covered in dust in the office. People seem to love them or hate them. I use the Kindle app on the iPad a fair bit, but have no desire for another device. What I’d love is for my dismal phone battery to allow me to use it as a music player, Kindle, even phone…but that’s crazy talk.
I’ve got one but only ever use it on plane journeys save carrying bulky books.
I heard the bloke from Waterstones talking on the BBC. He said sales didn’t just slow down, they stopped. He also said that no one updates their Kindle unless it gets broken, so it’s a once only purchase.
And…if I was in the market for a Kindle, I doubt I’d buy it at Waterstone’s. I’d buy it from Amazon. I don’t buy this ‘you only buy one Kindle’ thing – they’re bringing out new models all the time, and presumably there are people who lust after the latest thing, just like iPhones.
I actually have a Kobo (thanks to a brief and ultimately doomed Amazon boycott). Although there are a few things about it that irritate me – the interface is clunky, the search function is pants, and I’ve recently discovered that tiny flies are capable of turning the page when I’m reading in bed with the backlight on – I love reading on it. I spent 1 3/4 hours in a hospital waiting room today, and I happily finished one book and started another, and was barely conscious of time passing. I doubt I’d have taken two actual books with me just in case.
But I don’t see it as either/or – I buy loads of books, both new and second-hand. Sometimes I end up buying both a hard copy and an ebook. So there.
Whether one likes them or not (I do), the greedy publishers are often charging more than paperback prices when there is no printing and hardly any distribution costs.
I spent 17 years as a bookseller and bookshop manager and am wedded to the idea of the book as a physical object – one that you not only see, but feel, smell and hear. I draw the line at licking them, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are people who do and I would empathise. I almost always read on paper at home and the only downside of physical books is that they can be a pain to lug around.
I do have a Kobo, but I take on holiday and to the office to read at lunch time. My Kobo is mainly stocked with old books from a dodgy download which was passed around the office on a USB. Price seems to be key here. E-books are often a similar price to physical books, but if you are not paying for manufacturing, warehousing, transport or the high street bookshops cut (anything from 33 to 60%) that seems high. Why not sell a download code online with a physical book, as Amazon often do with CDs, then I could read my ‘proper’ book at home and the e-book elsewhere.?
I think this is partly the fact that Kindles are pretty much indestructible and not something that people will replace once they have. They will continue to be there, but not at the growth rates that have previously been seen. That said, I also feel there is a move back to physical books as a preferred way of reading.
I don’t own a Kindle but do use an iPad. I find that i do prefer reading “real” books but I like the iPad for reading magazines – i.e. content that you can just dip into.
The forthcoming Kindle Fire 7″ has a bigger, colour, screen and will sell for £10 less. As great as “flexible paper” might be in terms of contrast and battery life, it’s never going to beat a colour screen for desireability.
They do have appeal to the less tech-savvy in my family – say “It’s just a glorified Android tablet” and their eyes glaze over.
Kindle Fire owner but don’t use it for books. Use it for internet when staying in hotels, playing games and checking emails. Tried with books but prefer paper, also downloaded audio books but not for me.
Yep, me too. They were half-price at Argos last Christmas. I like the Sudoku app.
The traditional Kindles are much better than tablets for reading enjoyment. I have actually had 3, 2 of which sis break and were replaced by amazon at no or little cost. Also had a kindle fire which I left on a plane. Thats slightly more annoying than forgetting a paperback!
Did break not sis break …
I enjoy the old experience of reading hard copy books, but use my Kindle much more and reckon they’re going to remain popular because:
– they save you from cluttering up your home with books, and are often easier to carry around;
– most books are cheaper on Kindle than in paperback;
– you can vary the size of the type, which I’m sure is a big plus for many readers as they get older.
That’s progress – it often causes pangs of regret, but when it works for a lot of people you can’t stop it.
Yes and no Rotherhithe hack. Firstly I like the clutter of books so disagree with you there – a house with books on display is much more interesting than one without books – ditto physical music.
Re the type – that is a distinct advantage. I picked up a couple of books in Rise Bristol at the weekend but when I saw the size of the type I put them down again. Surprised publishers go with smaller type as I certainly ain’t the only one who can’t be bothered risking eye strain.
I suspect, with no facts to back me up, that (like estate agents here in Spain claiming that the housing market is bouncing back, in a desperate attempt to get the market moving) this is an attempt by a failing company to convince people to buy more books from them. I also suspect (see above) that 99.9% of Kindle purchasers do so from Amazon.
Completly agree – I think this says more about Waterstones attitude towards Amazon
It’s not that.
New management have completely turned around Waterstones’ fortunes in recent years – they’re a big high street success story right now (tallest dwarf in the village and all that), and other retailers are starting to ape some of their ideas.
Strategically, I don’t think it makes an enormous amount of sense right now for Waterstones to sell Kindles.
Here’s an interesting article about James Daunt, and how he helped revive the chain: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/14/book-revival-james-daunt-waterstones
Well, he has done a lot to improve Waterstones but they are still a way behind what they were like when they first started. I go in there now and stuff is still all over the place and they’re still promoting celeb bios. Their staff is still a bit hit and miss which wasn’t the case in early days. He’s a shrewd cookie though, not given up his ownership of the Daunt chain.
Very different market conditions to the early days of Waterstones. The point is that they’re not a failing brand at the moment – by recent standards they’re enjoying rude health – so I don’t think this is a desperate wave from a drowning man. If anything, it feels more like a valedictory “we need no longer embrace the cause of our suffering” moment, a bit of a show of strength.
FWIW, the Waterstones near me is great these days; fantastic staff.
All good points – but it has to a strategic/PR move. Are they really going to generate less margin on the shelf space on stocking a few kindles ? It’s a statement.
Err…sorry, just reread my post – those were your points anyway…
The Kindles themselves won’t survive – I’ve had 5 – but the concept of digital text is here to stay. From what I’ve seen younger people use mini iPads and phones to read – the Kindle just isn’t cool. Which is true, it isn’t. I’d love to be wrong and that books can do a Lazarus but how would it be possible.
Book = LP ?
Possibly, JW. Books will be – maybe already are – niche market item because of the actual or perceived ‘warmth’.
I’ve got a Kindle Fire. The backlit screen means it’s useful for reading in bed when the missus is asleep. I still read books though. I’m not an either / or.
I will never use an E-reader. Books are among the very best things in life, both in terms of their content, but also their form. I don’t consider them to clutter up the house – quite the opposite.
I’m all for digitising movies and music, but I draw the line at books.
What he said ↑
I don’t consider that books clutter up the house either, Bingo – a house without books is a dreary place. I buy loads of books, sometimes without any serious intention of reading them even, just because I like the look and feel of them. The books I have on my Kobo are mostly books that I want to read but don’t particularly feel the need to put on the shelf, and would probably go to the charity shop once I’d read them. Lee Child books, for instance.
E-readers have their uses and I’m very happy with mine on that basis. But as Jim says (and indeed I say up there ↑) it’s not either/or. And nobody’s going to take your books away from you.
I love books. I was brought up in a house full of them and my own houses have been full of them. But I’m not remotely fetishistic about them as objects. I’m only interested in them as vehicles for putting words before my eyes. The recent e-ink Kindles (Paperwhite, etc.) do that as well or better than many of today’s paperbacks, which are often irregularly printed on cheap paper that’s often barely distinguishable from newsprint. Sort it out, publishing industry; you’re taking the piss now.
One and a half walls of my living-room are lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases with books crammed into them at all sorts of jaunty angles. That’s quite enough. Saturation point has been reached. Any new print book I read from now on, unless I’m fairly sure I’ll want to reread it some day, will be put in the box in the hall to be taken to the charity shop once it’s full.
These days I’m reading as much as I ever have, possibly more, but only one in twenty or so of the books I read are print books. The medium really isn’t the message.
I sold all my books to Dickensian rascals in coarse suitings, and now I just steal stuff of the net for my Kindle. AS A PUBLISHED AUTHOR (hem-hem, phone for details) I simply do not give a toss for whining writers or their airy claims for royalties.
Kindles are fantastic – not just for the free books you can get off the net, like, for nothing, but as reading machines. And I say this as someone who used to get a raging hard-on running his finger over the spines of rare first editions (some foxing).
You’ve earned out?! Rispeck
I like a Kindle because I lie on my side to read. But I still buy an awful lot of books.
…but still desirable.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g401/mikethep/slightly%20foxed_zpsyozhxn6n.jpg
“AS A PUBLISHED AUTHOR” is broadly analogous to the phrase “Speaking as a parent”.
Alas, not in my case. Which, as you’ll note, was upper, for ironic effect.
The thing about it not being either/or…. it kind of usually is, for me. I was an avid acquirer of CDs for the best part of two decades. Then I got a Spotify account and basically never bought a CD again.
I’ve also previously acquired the suspicion that the more we all use E-readers, the closer we come to a world without book shops, and I don’t want to live in a world without book shops.
Plus, I want my kids to see me reading books. I think it’s important. God knows, they spend enough time watching me staring at electronic devices.
Yes, all that. Exactly the same for me with CDs. I suppose what I’m saying is that there isn’t exactly a crisis, either with books or ebooks.
Interesting views.
I have never really taken to Kindles because I always associate screens/i.t with work (but not this blog, obviously). I do have books loaded on ipad, and read one a recent flight which was fine. The only thing for me is that I tend to speed-read and not concentrate as much with the ipad as I would with a book. I probably need to get over my aversion to e-readers overall. I had thought that the price of books would have gone down with the advent of e-readers but not a bit of it; same shoddy production values and no drop in price. Some of my old paperbacks have lasted better than more recently bought books.
Much prefer reading an actual newspaper and touching an actual book to their digital counterparts. However, and it is a very large however, I can read The Guardian online for free (ok some articles/columns can take up to a day to drift in) and any remotely popular book is usually much cheaper on Kindle, sometimes ridiculously so – I downloaded the latest Stephen King last year on the day of hardback publication for 99p.
When travelling it’s a no-brainer to take a tablet and/or a Kindle (except when you leave your iPad on the roof of your car and drive off down the motorway home)
I once did that with a large box of Thornton’s chocolates. Equally sad, if not as expensive.
I use a kindle quite a bit, I also listen to audiobooks as I drive, walk and exercise, I also read “proper” books, especially when I’m in the bath.
Here’s a thought, do you reckon that the sales of Kindles have dropped off because you only buy one every 3 or 4 years or so, unlike books which necessitated a trip to Waterstones every time you were in town.
Mrs Beezer bought one to use on holiday, it was fine and was heavily used.
Now we’re home and back in our own environment we’re both back to books. We haven’t looked at the kindle.
Though we will next time we go away. It’s simply another reading option to suit a set of circumstances.
I own a kindle and like some of you I also buy books – many, the latest a ‘coffee table’ heavyweight ‘Dust And Grooves’ a beautiful book that I will look at over and over.
Reading? It’s 50/50, I still buy books because I love them and I also love reading books on my kindle, the advantages have already been made.
Magazines, I will only read the real thing, there is no comparison, magazines are better read in your hands. That is where kindles, iPads fall down and read a book or magazine on a phone? What do people who do this have for eyes? Microscopes!
Well, I only read magazines on my iPad these days – different strokes, etc… Apart from London Review of Books, where I still have a paper sub, and the very wonderful Oz mag The Monthly, which is my, er, monthly treat from the newsagent.
I go to the Library and borrow books.
Yes, same here. I love our local library and the opportunity to reserve books in advance.
I agree in part with the analogy of a gradual move back to records. I use a Kindle – great for holidays where previously we would literally take a holdall full of books. However that is the conundrum because not having the physical product to see and hold I find is taking something away from the reading experience. Frequently when people say “what have you been reading of late ?” my mind goes blank because I have no image to go to. What I want it for the manufacturers to create the front and back covers of the book you are currently reading on the case of the kindle. Otherwise like many others I think will continue to swap and change between real books and digital ones and maybe even migrate back 100%
Apparently, your retention of what you have read on your Kindle is much less than when you have read on old-fashioned paper.
Sorry, Ian … what was that again?
I read the Kindle as well as physical books but the main use for me is in conjunction with audio books (Audible). I listen to audio books a lot on long train journeys or walks and, combined with a Kindle via Whispersync, you can pick up on the Kindle where you left off with the audio book of the same title and vice versa. Truly the best of both worlds.
Talking of book covers, and speaking as a commuter, the thing I miss most in the gradual e-reader takeover is that I can no longer tell what people are reading on my daily journeys. That’s admittedly probably an attraction for some readers, but I used to like getting an instant daily straw poll of what everyone is reading, and I’m sorry to see it go…
Apparently 50 Shades Of Grey benefitted from this side effect hugely.
I use my tablet & phone to read books these days, mainly because my eyesight is getting worse and I can’t seem to see the print. However, I love books, and still buy many of them. I also listen to a lot of audio books – and when it comes to something like the Lewisohn project, I have the book, the audio book and the kindle version. The book is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it is not quite the right medium. My wife loves the fact that now when we go on holiday, my books no longer take up valuable shoe space in the suitcase.
Goodreads tells me I am closing in on 150 books read this year. I reckon maybe six of them were on my Kindle. I took it on holiday to save space (along with two or three paperbacks I also snuck in to fill all that space I’d saved), but apart from that the only time I use it is when I’m giving blood – I can turn the “pages ” one handed. I only buy books for it if they are on offer – don’t think I’ve ever paid the full price for an ebook and I don’t think I ever will.
Like so many others, I love physical books. They are desirable objects in their own right, my house is full of them and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I went mad on digital books. I commute, I do 200 miles a day travelling on trains so reading was initially how I got through. Real books are a pain when you read quite quickly as I do. Taking a spare incase you finish the one you’re reading adds a fair bit of weight to your bag alongside your lunch, your flask of coffee for the train, the ipod and oversized headphones.
So when I found the kindle app for the smartphone I was over the moon. I was reading a book every two days, sometimes more if the trains hit a delay and I was stuck in the middle of nowhere. And it was great. Except the memory jogger of physically turning those pages, looking at the cover, remembering that I was about halfway through and being able to find the page was gone. Some books just weren’t staying in my head. And even worse, the authors I did like I was starting a book and not finishing.
It’s not that I’m not reading, I read articles on line, a lot of them long reads, daily. I read to my children at bedtimes and whenever else we can sit down and do that. But novels for me have dwindled. I have started a dozen books the past year or so and have finished 2.
While I agree with Archie that (like I feel about digital music) the message not the medium is the important thing I’m starting to question the process of reading digital. Like I say, it doesn’t seem to sink in as much as reading from a printed real page. The process of finding new books by old authors, or new authors is not the same online as browsing the shelves in a book shop. And digital doesn’t smell like a book.
I think you’re on to something here. I’ve worked in a bookshop for years and years and am pretty unsentimental about books as objects (I’m also dismayingly dismissive about vinyl for an ex-record shop employee). I was an early adopter of the Kindle in the hope that it would stimulate my reading habits in the same way that getting an iPod had previously kickstarted my moribund consumption of new music. And it was great in many ways: I downloaded a ton of classic novels for peanuts or less and actually enjoyed reading quite a few of them. But I do find there’s something about reading books on devices that makes them stick less than reading them in the traditional way. The best analogy I can come up with is that it’s like when I sample music via Spotify or youtube rather than from a CD or download I’ve purchased – I haven’t invested anything much in the way of time, energy or money so I tend not to give it much attention. These days I’m back to reading books, paid for full-price from independent booksellers if possible, while the Kindle gathers dust in a drawer and the app icon on my tablet goes unpressed.
I’ve posted this fine Neil Gaiman essay here before, but this is the section on the survival of paper books.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming
Just moved several thousand books and a similar number of CDs, tapes, lps, 8-tracks, and shellac cylinders, and I strongly up-arrow the fact that books and physical music decorate a room, whereas a hard drive just isn’t the same. I find e-books a pain, though have tried, and i understand the reason. I suspect they are a bit like 3D TV – people think they are the future but in fact they don’t work as well, so are found superfluous. That you seem to hire the book, and can’t pass it onto a friend or a charity shop when you are done, nor drop an e-reader in the bath then continue reading seem further faults.
My rapidly dwindling initial bugbear with Kindles is that they are devices that need power.
To use them you need to have filled them with electricity. This is not necessary with a book. You open it and begin. It is not necessary to plug it in to a socket and give it life etc.
It’s a dwindling bugbear because this is and will be the way until humans destroy themselves. We will always need power, it is the unremarked norm now. Every convenience we have requires the burning of fossils at Point A.
Though it still niggles a bit that at some stage you have to stop using a Kindle and plug it in. You don’t with a book.
Equally, the book you are reading at no inconvenience nay in fact be a load of old shit and you haven’t another in sight for miles around. A kindle can give you all you could want, in situ, in just a few electrically powered clicks.
It all evens out.
I have no idea if I had a point to begin with. I’m going to have a biscuit.
Have an ‘up’. Post of the day!
Hmm, nothing’s free. Books = paper = trees?
Now is the time to lump on with regards to books and CDs.
Always invest when the stock is at its lowest price, don’t they say that in the city?
In the dire 1980s, that meant buying LPs, original mono ones, for a fraction of the price of the new-fangled format.
1 CD in 1986 would cost you the same as 4 Arsenal home matches and a mono copy of, say, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ could be had for £5-£10.
In 2015, CDs are now the value purchase. The same is true of books.
Could off-load all your books.
Or could be the recipient of all these second-hand books which, almost as much as CDs, are now flooding the market.
Have I mentioned before I love charity shops? I’m one of those people who HAS to collect something. I have also just discovered books. Not the annual autobiography at Christmas but fiction. Wow! Who knew? Now I pick up LOADS of hardbacks for between 20p – £1 and can lend them to relatives when I have read them and return them to the charity shop when done with.
I do find the occasional coffee table tomes on rock ‘n’ roll icons for buttons so I’m always on the hunt. I carry around a list of Michael Connelly hardbacks I need to complete the set to avoid buying duplicates. I found a signed copy for £2.50 last month. My holy grail is Don Estelle’s autobiography Thoughts Of A Gemini. I have already been to the charity shops Rochdale to no avail.
If you’re a collector of old books like what I am, charity shops are an increasingly barren hunting-ground – I suspect the old stuff is moved on before it ever hits the shop shelves, either that or they feel nobody wants anything except shiny new books. That’s with the exception of the Oxfam bookshops, which are a different sort of operation anyway, and not cheap.
I go to a LOT of charity shops and have a routine of regularly visiting the good ones. I will probably visit a dozen today on my slow boat to Glossop. I also encounter the odd second-hand book shop but they require several hours of proper browsing.
I highly recommend Book-Cycle. They have a small number of braches but two are in old libraries in Wigan and convenient for me. They are opening a third branch in the town centre soon. They don’t sell the books but ask for donations and also have LPs and CDs.
http://www.book-cycle.org/
The e-book in whatever form, is definitely here to stay.
I love books & have as long as I remember – I will always peruse a book or record shop in a new town before any others – but virtually everything I read these days is on my Kindle. I’ve had it about 5 years & won it in a competition & it’s completely replaced my everyday reading matter – paperback novels mostly that once read I hardly ever feel the need to re- read, so take by the sackful to the Oxfam shop. It has saved me tons of shelf space, which has always been a problem & therefore I get less stick from Mrs Jim over the piles of CDs.
Compared to new books, I haven’t found price an issue – a key point for me was buying a new Neal Stephenson a month ahead of the physical hardback & less than half the price – a no brainer, especially as NS tends to knock out door stops.
The book is a wonderful thing – a near perfect repository of ideas or information whose design can’t really be improved upon, but my eyesight is going & I don’t like reading with glasses so I crank the font up.
Books won’t disappear & the books I often love most, yer art & photography and that, beat any screen format, so I think it’s a case of running parallel to each other rather than just ‘this or that’.
As long as people are reading & firing up the grey matter, what they read it on doesn’t matter to me.
I love my Kindle. Much easier on the eyes than an iPad. I read at night & it saves piddling about with book-lights. (Yes, that’s right, all the lightbulbs have been stolen from my house.) I still buy and read actual books, and I am sure that will continue. Don’t see why the two shouldn’t peacefully coexist.
I reached an accommodation with Kindles: trashy shit I don’t care about or am just trying out goes on the kindle. Stuff I’m looking forward to, event reads, those stay on paper. There’s still no substitute for a real book when you’re settling in for a proper read.
A bookbinder of 28 years (how long, bloody hell!) writes: I love books, reading them and making them but I do most of my reading on my Kindle. When I buy a book it’s got to be really special. Something that looks and feels good, something that ‘needs’ to be a book.
The Kindle is brilliant for reading in bed, no need to put the light on and disturb anyone. It’s great when you have a few minutes spare (it sits in my bag, it weighs next to nothing) And it’s great for an impulse purchase, say if you hear a review on the radio or TV.
I’m a total Kindle Konvert. I used to be something of a book snob – they do so furnish a room. But ultimately, it’s reading that matters, and I do more reading on my Kindle than I’ve ever done on paper. It’s about the words, not the paper they’re printed on. I carry my Kindle with me, and miss it if I forget to put it in my bag. I’ve got hundreds of books on it – some old favourites waiting to be re-read, a lot of new stuff, new authors. I’m not sidetracked into liking – or disliking – books for their physical aspects, as objects. The Kindle format is completely democratic – writing stands or falls on its own merits. Similarly, I am more than happy to live without music in a physical form. Maybe the lack of Media Stuff makes my living room less interesting to visitors, but I don’t get any visitors who give much of a damn about that sort of thing.
Loving books for their physical form is a pleasure, but it’s unrelated to the act of reading. Like loving vinyl, and the tea ritual of cueing up an album, settling back with the sleeve. It becomes part of the experience, and can enrich it, but it’s not what music is about, that’s the stuff that affects your brain through your ear, and reading is about the words affecting your brain through your eye. The Kindle is a reading machine, and an absolute delight. Having been a vinyl obsessive, and a bibliophile, I’ve surprised myself by being able to live happily without even a shelf on the wall to be empty. I’ve got my iPod and my Kindle, and they get the music into my brain as purely and conveniently and directly as possible. I’m living in the Dan Dare days I dreamed about as a boy; all I need is a personal autogyro and the future has delivered everything it promised me.
Yes, all that. The only thing missing is smell. My nearest and dearest are always amused when I open a new book and bury my nose in it, for all the world like some up-himself oenophile. I do like to sniff a Penguin.
Agree on the smell – popped into Waterstones at Waterloo this morning and was immediately hit by the lovely scent of new books
Best-smelling book ever: Ballantine US paperback of Aleister Crowley’s autobio (whatever it was called). This fat paperback also had the best feel – the pages creaked against each other as you bent the book in your hands. Delicious. And an altogether more memorable experience than Crowley’s own words. He died in Leamington, y’know. Last words along the lines of “what an ass I’ve been!” which are a better autobio than the book.
I don’t like using my kindle but it has become a necessity for travel, replacing the bag full of books that I used to lug around with me. I also find it useful for accessing British titles that are not easily available in Australian bookshops. I can’t understand why the kindle is so clunky and user unfriendly. The touch screen interface is terrible and just the look and the feel of the pages is awful. Maybe I need to upgrade to a newer model. I still prefer to read real books, but the kindle fills a niche.
Kindles do break. Mine locked up after 3 years. Tried all the stuff on Amazon support, YouTube videos, etc. Decided that taking apart the whole device just to see if I could fix the on/off button was a step too far. Amazon offered a new one at a discount, but there was subsequently a special offer on, so I reluctantly bit the bullet. Total waste of the old Kindle. They really should make the parts accessible.
I still like a real book, though, but love the convenience of a Kindle, especially when Ryanair have such stingy weight restrictions.
The button on my Kindle Fire stopped working, and peering at it through an electron microscope I could see it had very slightly tilted, lodging the lower edge against the inside of the aperture (anyone else getting wood from this? no? just me then). I tried various tools to encourage it out, but none would answer. Taking my courage in both hands – and the Kindle – I rapped the back of the rubberised case – directly beneath the recalcitrant button – on a table edge. Result? That darn button – clearly scared out of its tiny wits – popped out of its hole and resumed perfect working order. This is a technique for an apparently common problem I haven’t seen described on the inters, but I offer it up here.
My first Kindle has a screen problem, fading out randomly so that half the page was illegible. Amazon sent me a new one and said I should just bin the old one. Couldn’t bring myself to do that, so I stuck it in a drawer. Got it out 6 months later and it worked perfectly, so I gave it to my son, and he’s still using it 5 years later. Go figure, as they say…
had a screen problem
I used a Kindle for a couple of years but have stopped. It’s hard to define exactly why. Part of the reason is the difficulty of referring back to a section that I’ve already read.
I’m currently lugging round James Ellroy’s Perfidia. That is a book, like most of Ellroy’s multi-layered works, that I frequently find myself checking something from earlier.
It’s not the sole reason, but it is one reason.
I owned a Kobo Mini until the screen broke. Screens on these devices are constructed partially from glass and are somewhat fragile. I used it to read both purchased books and content from the local public library, as well as public domain classics.
The main issue was the Kobo software. There were two separate rendering engines. Books purchased from Kobo’s own store used one rendering engine, which indicated the number of pages left in the current chapter. Content from other sources was handled by a different rendering engine which had some severe page layout problems, such as pages that were half blank, and hopeless page numbering.
By using the freely available Calibre E-book managing tool, and some plugins, I was able to get the Kobo to use the better rendering engine to handle my own E-book files, but the results were somewhat mixed.
‘As a non-fiction author’… people might be interested to know that my sales in print are more than 10 times those in ebook form. I wonder if people being a non-fiction title are more likely to go for print than ebook, where the opposite might be the case for ‘airport novels’ and the like?
(I don’t own any of these e-reading gadgets, but I don’t have an axe to grind either way.)
I have an e-axe to grind.
I was initially a enthusiastic kindle reader which was completely at odds with my absolute refusal to buy digital music.
New books are sexy. In the same way as vinyl is. Kindle for holidays only from now on which kind of correlates with the article in the OP.
Re: problems in referring back. The new Kindle books have something called X Ray that brings you up to speed on bits you might have forgotten. I’ve ‘rescued’ several abandoned reads this way.
Another advantage is that if you’re a writer you can send your Word doc to the Kindle’s email address (with the word ‘convert’ in the subject line) and it will format the Word doc for the Kindle so you can see your work in more or less a finished format.
Original Kindles were like electronic books… the Kindle Fire, and everything after, are just iPads… Kindle aren’t competing with dead trees these days but with Apple