Monday, February 01, 2010

I love my Kindle, But



I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of the recent Amazon/MacMillian brouhaha. I'm way too deep into revision mode on Boyfriend Club to come out for more than a few seconds of air, but when I'd heard Amazon had pulled the buy buttons on MacMillian books in order to teach MacMillian a "lesson" (I guess) I had to sit up and notice.

I'm not published by MacMillian, but that's not the point. What happens to one publisher can easily happen to another publisher and as well as being a writer, I'm a consumer, and I have a huge vested interested in how all this plays out. Of course, as of yesterday, it was reported that Amazon has caved into MacMillian's demands and the whole riff is over.

Where the new Apple I-Pad (tee hee) comes into all this is interesting. Competition is good. It's the American Way of life. It's consumerism at it's best. Take it away, and we become, well, Russia.

So in my simplistic way of looking at things, this is what I have to say:

I don't care how many e-readers are out there. The more the merrier.

If a publisher wants to charge 15 bucks for an e-book then let them. It's up to me as a consumer to decide if it's worth it or not.

Price control on e-books is not a bad thing. No one wants to see bookstores and real live books that you can hold, touch, feel and smell go away.

I received a Kindle for my birthday last November and I'm currently reading Pieces of Sky (great western romance) on it. It's instant gratification at its best and for me an alternative way to do what I love most- read. Since buying it, I've bought two print books that I'd originally bought on my Kindle because I loved them so much and I wanted to reread them in the best way possible, by flipping live pages.

I love my Kindle, but it's no substitute for the real thing.

2 comments:

Kwana said...

Well said.

Kristen Painter said...

I actually prefer my ereader, especially for travel. It's so nice to carry all those books in one place!

 

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