Although I've read a couple of e-books on my laptop, I've held off getting a reader like a Nook or a Kindle. I admit I have a soft spot for physical books; just handling them and rearranging them on my bookshelves brings back memories. Still, my bookshelves are nearly full, and I don't have much space in my office to add more. It might not be a bad idea to switch to e-books, but I wasn't sure which reader I preferred. And honestly, I wasn't even sure what the selection of e-books was like. I normally buy SF/fantasy paperbacks; how many of them are in electronic editions these days? I decided to conduct my own experiment.
I chose six books I recently purchased:
I took this picture on my cellphone, which is why it's so blurry. Here are the titles:
The Dragon and the Stars (an anthology),
Gaslight Dogs, A Cast-Off Coven (mystery),
Infoquake, Nine Gates, and
The Patriot Witch. I then checked both Amazon.com and Barnes and Nobles' website for electronic versions of these books.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were indeed digital versions of all these books available. However, Amazon.com had all six books, while Barnes and Noble did not have e-book versions of
The Dragon and the Stars and
Infoquake.
I put the Kindle on my wish list. It's temporarily out of stock, otherwise I might have been tempted to go ahead and buy it. There will probably be some books I will still want to buy in paper editions, but the Kindle might keep my bookshelves from overflowing.
I have one and it's great. There are still some books I want in print, and there are some books not available on the Kindle, especially backlist. When I just can't wait to read something, the instant gratification of the Kindle is great.
ReplyDeleteI'm still leaning toward the Nook. Amazon just has way too much physical control for my comfort.
ReplyDeleteThey sunk to a new low when they deleted '1984' and 'Animal Farm' from people's Kindles when the publisher backed out of offering the digital versions.
When I buy something, I expect it to remain in my possession. If they screwed up, that's their problem. Not mine.
That's very Big Brother of them to delete 1984, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteHa! That was kind of ironic of them.
ReplyDelete