ebooks and read-athon

[cathepsut]

Interesting discussion again over on ebooks on ebooks versus traditional publishing. The post is basically a collection of links to people that bash ebooks. Fairly entertaining. A big issue was the pirating of books.

I get the arguments and I can relate to some extent regarding piracy and how it damages sales and will maybe make books go away forever....!!?!

What I never get in this --people have always shared books, gotten them for free from others that got them for free from someone else. Just look at paperbackswap, bookcrossing, bookmooch and countless other sites like them. Nobody bitches that they damage sales. I have about 100 unread paper books on my shelf. I actually bought about 10 of them. Maybe 5 or so were presents, all the others I got through Bookcrossing and Bookmooch. How is that so different from downloading books for free from the Internet? Ok, piracy, illegal, sure. But the idea behind it is the same--someone gets a book and then shares it. Ok, Internet = higher turnover. But still... Maybe I'm naive.

Why not make it easier to lend and borrow ebooks freely? Why the restrictions? And don't give me the copyright argument. I mooch books from allover the world, surely those are copyrighted somehow as well and I still get them.

I am perfectly happy to pay for ebooks, if the prices are reasonable. In my case that means not more than the mass market paperback. Or Kindle bargains under 5 Dollars...

I am waiting for the new Sookie Stackhouse. Currently the ebook is listed at around 14 dollars for US residents and 23 dollars for others. I probably could have warmed up to the 14 dollars, if the paper book was only slightly cheaper. But over 20? No bloody way! It's almost as if they want to discourage peple from getting the ebook and push them onto paper.

In an ideal world I have bluetooth on my reader, you have bluetooth on yours and voila! I bought one DRMd book so far. I guess books bought in the Kindle store have DRM as well? I would prefer to boycott them completely, but that would limit my choices a lot.

I love that Calibre started collecting DRM-free books, I actually sent the guy a donation...

The read-a-thon starts in about 2 hours...

Free, cheesy romance ebooks!

[cathepsut]

Oh, forgot to mention, on All Romance you can download one free romance novel per day until the 21st of April. Not sure about the quality and some of them sound incredibly cheesy. I download a supernatural one that sounds a bit like Harry Potter at a US college, a gay cop story and something with shapeshifters. Reading fodder for my Kindle!

Go here and click on the banner, it will take you to the free book of the day. You need to sign up with your address, but don't need to give any payment details, so I don't think that is a big deal. I did have to give them a state though, even after listing Germany as my country and they obviously only list the US states. So I now reside in Alabama! :-)

24-hour read-a-thon

[cathepsut]

Current reads for the 24-hour read-a-thon:

A Taste of Crimson by Marjorie M. Liu

Sovereign by C.J. Sansom

The Silent World by Jacques-Yves Cousteau

24-hour read-a-thon

[cathepsut]

1)Where are you reading from today?


2)Three random facts about me...
I brush my teeth in the shower, I love cats and I love to eat olives with cheese.

3)How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours?
I have three that I am currently reading, but I leave that up to chance and how I feel at any given moment.

4)Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)?
Not really, I see how it goes. I'm going out tonight, so I won't be able to do all of the 24 hours anyway. Maybe next year!

5)If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, any advice for people doing this for the first time?
Not a veteran.

24-hour read-a-thon

[cathepsut]

Sovereign by C.J. Sansom

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Three chapters in, so far so good. The story is getting set up, I think we are slowly approaching the first corpse. I like it so far.