Just got a Kindle.

Darat said:
Hasn't that rumour being doing the rounds for quite some time?
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At least a year, based on the mentions in the Kindle forums on Amazon, but it's resurfaced.

As both a Prime member and already a Kindle owner, I guess I shouldn't expect any presents. :(
 
I read an article the other day that said that Amazon should give away Kindles with Amazon Prime memberships. Here it is.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/03/04/amazon.free.kindl/index.html?iref=allsearch

I very nearly ordered a Kindle recently but changed my mind and the reason was that it dawned on me that with my reading habits, after buying the Kindle I wasn't going to be able to use it very much unless I started spending more on books than I do now. (I usually get books from the library now.) If Kindles were free I guess I'd get one but I still wouldn't use it all that much if I had to buy books all the time (assuming I'm reading more recent books that cost money to get on Kindle).

The current Kindle holds 3,500 books. It dawned on me that if I filled up my Kindle with books...quite a task at 3,500 books...and if books cost an average of $10 each, I'd be walking around with $35,000 in books on my Kindle. I'd rather have that in cash.

They ought to make an e-reader to rent books. First of all, instead of 3,500 it could store maybe 5-10 since that's probably the most people would read at once. That would cut the cost of the e-reader. And then charge a buck or two to have a book reside on your e-reader for a month...maybe half that price again to renew for another month in case you're not finished after one month...and then the book disappears and makes room for your next rented book. I like reading books but I usually don't have the desire to keep them around permanently, either in physical form or e-book form.

Even if e-readers were free I'd cringe at spending $10 for an e-book, reading it and then having it sit forever on my e-reader. Each $10 isn't a big deal but over time the ever-increasing list would remind you of how much you've spent on stuff you're no longer using. I realize the same argument could be made for a bunch of $15 meals over time or $25 shirts over time, etc.
 
You wouldn't need to delete it unless you were running out of space. But the point is, you're paying X+Y in exchanging for getting a book to read and then to keep whereas I'd rather just pay X in exchange for getting it to read but not to keep, assuming X isn't only slightly less than X+Y. Sometimes I want to keep a book but mostly it doesn't matter to me whether I get to keep it.
 
Number Six said:
You wouldn't need to delete it unless you were running out of space. But the point is, you're paying X+Y in exchanging for getting a book to read and then to keep whereas I'd rather just pay X in exchange for getting it to read but not to keep, assuming X isn't only slightly less than X+Y. Sometimes I want to keep a book but mostly it doesn't matter to me whether I get to keep it.
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I mentioned above that this also appealed to me. Part of the reason I got my Kindle is because of all the books I’ve bought and eventually given away simply because of the amount of shelf space they take up. I believe you mentioned 3,500 books translating (roughly) into $35,000. I have little doubt that I’ve spent at least that much on books in my lifetime. Given my penchant for hardbacks, which start at $20 and go up from there, I’ve probably spent more. So I'm totally on board with you in this regard.
 
Number Six said:
The current Kindle holds 3,500 books. It dawned on me that if I filled up my Kindle with books...quite a task at 3,500 books...and if books cost an average of $10 each, I'd be walking around with $35,000 in books on my Kindle
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My last Kindle book cost 49p (about 65 cents). The 3 before that were all free.

Where do you buy books?

The Kindle and other readers offer you access to a brave new world where wanna-be authors practically give-away their content as they try to build a following.

Some of them are really good, most are average and some are terrible. It's fun finding out, trying before you buy.

I've recently discovered the joy of Calibre, a free program that runs on your PC, Mac or Linux box. Among its many talents is the ability to create a custom newspaper from multiple news sources, and have Calibre package it up and send it to your Kindle every day at a set time. All for free.

Still, I'm sure lugging home all those books from the library is part of the fun of living in the 19th century :p
 
I was checking Amazon for the price. I get books at the library now but when I was considering getting a Kindle I was going to start getting books off Amazon. Yes, if you get the right books you can get them free or very cheap. But the prices on Amazon for books of my reading habits, which generally involve getting books from the last ten years but not usually brand new ones, were mostly only $1-3 less than physical books. In some cases the Kindle books actually cost more. Considering I mostly get my books from the library now, that would be a big increase in cost. I could take a moderate increase in cost because of how cool the e-readers look and how convenient it (seems) it would be. But the increase just seemed too much.

I guess I'm just not adventurous enough to get books by new authors selling their books cheap for exposure, but anyway I'm assuming those are mostly fiction and I'm not much of a fiction reader these days anyway.
 
Number Six said:
....snip...

The current Kindle holds 3,500 books. It dawned on me that if I filled up my Kindle with books...quite a task at 3,500 books...and if books cost an average of $10 each, I'd be walking around with $35,000 in books on my Kindle. I'd rather have that in cash.

They ought to make an e-reader to rent books. First of all, instead of 3,500 it could store maybe 5-10 since that's probably the most people would read at once. That would cut the cost of the e-reader. And then charge a buck or two to have a book reside on your e-reader for a month...maybe half that price again to renew for another month in case you're not finished after one month...and then the book disappears and makes room for your next rented book. I like reading books but I usually don't have the desire to keep them around permanently, either in physical form or e-book form.

Even if e-readers were free I'd cringe at spending $10 for an e-book, reading it and then having it sit forever on my e-reader. Each $10 isn't a big deal but over time the ever-increasing list would remind you of how much you've spent on stuff you're no longer using. I realize the same argument could be made for a bunch of $15 meals over time or $25 shirts over time, etc.
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Do you not re-read books - and when I look at my bookshelves and the piles of books "archived" in the attic I think only $35,000. :)
 
Number Six said:
You wouldn't need to delete it unless you were running out of space. But the point is, you're paying X+Y in exchanging for getting a book to read and then to keep whereas I'd rather just pay X in exchange for getting it to read but not to keep, assuming X isn't only slightly less than X+Y. Sometimes I want to keep a book but mostly it doesn't matter to me whether I get to keep it.
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I think this is something that the publishers still haven't got their heads around with e-books, i.e. it is different to someone buying a paper-book. It offers them an opportunity to open up a new way of getting people to pay for books, which is the rental model. I would be surprised to learn that Amazon isn't trying to set up something like that with the major publishers.
 
Darat said:
Do you not re-read books - and when I look at my bookshelves and the piles of books "archived" in the attic I think only $35,000. :)
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Occasionally I re-read books but not often. It's not that some of them aren't worth re-reading but just that there are so many other un-read books that when forced to choose I'd usually rather read something new for the first time than something else for the second time.

I'd be happy just renting books and every now and then when I rent something that knocks my socks off and I want to keep, then I'd buy the book.
 
Darat said:
I think this is something that the publishers still haven't got their heads around with e-books, i.e. it is different to someone buying a paper-book. It offers them an opportunity to open up a new way of getting people to pay for books, which is the rental model. I would be surprised to learn that Amazon isn't trying to set up something like that with the major publishers.
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Rentals work with paper books too. My local library offers rental books of the dead tree variety, and has for years.
 
I don't understand the point of renting paper books instead of just loaning them out. With e-books the point becomes that you can make a million of them so cheaply that if you lended them as freely as they do library books then there'd be less incentive for people to buy the book. But with paper books, you can just borrow them at the library and read them and return them. Why would people rent them?
 
Number Six said:
I don't understand the point of renting paper books instead of just loaning them out. With e-books the point becomes that you can make a million of them so cheaply that if you lended them as freely as they do library books then there'd be less incentive for people to buy the book. But with paper books, you can just borrow them at the library and read them and return them. Why would people rent them?
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I think they only do it with new or popular books. I remember once I had to wait for one of the free copies to be returned before I could read a particularly popular item. There were rental copies available, so if I had been less cheap patient I could have read it right away.

Also, not all books are available at the library. If a bookstore started renting books, they and the publisher could probably make a few bucks.
 
BenBurch said:
Just got a Kindle.
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Me too! :) Got a 3G one for my birthday yesterday. As I had one on loan for a couple of weeks, I've already got Calibre set up down download the Guardian and the local paper automatically, and I bought a George R.R. Martin novella just to check everything was working.

I was given a gadget bag to protect it for now, but I'm considering one of the Oberon cases; with currency conversion and postage, I think they work out about the same as the official cases with a light (which is another possibility, but those seem over-priced to me). Are there any book lights that work particularly well with the Kindle (either with or without a cover like the Oberon ones)?
 
zooterkin said:
Me too! :) Got a 3G one for my birthday yesterday. As I had one on loan for a couple of weeks, I've already got Calibre set up down download the Guardian and the local paper automatically, and I bought a George R.R. Martin novella just to check everything was working.

...snip...
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Do you think you could set up something for the www.randi.org page and the Forum?
 
Darat said:
Do you think you could set up something for the www.randi.org page and the Forum?
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The Guardian is one of the news feeds already configured in Calibre, so I didn't have to do very much apart from enter my Kindle email address in Calibre, and choose the News feed.

Not sure about the forum (would you want to read that non-interactively, anyway?), but one of the options with Calibre is to package up your google reader feed and send that, so I think you could subscribe to http://www.randi.org/site/ in Google reader, and get that sent to the Kindle daily (or whatever frequency). I'm not sure how well that would work (would you only get new articles, or all of them every time, for example), but at least something would be possible. I may give it a try tonight. :)
 
zooterkin said:
I was given a gadget bag to protect it for now, but I'm considering one of the Oberon cases; with currency conversion and postage, I think they work out about the same as the official cases with a light (which is another possibility, but those seem over-priced to me).
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I just ordered a case from Oberon.

I had been using the standard Amazon (non-lighted) case but started having battery problems--the battery level would start off with a full charge but would start going down (by about a quarter over an hour or two) without any usage, and with the wifi off.

I thought I had a bad battery but after some googling I found that a good number of people reported that it was the non-lighted case that was causing problems!

This sounded like hooey to me, but so many people were reporting it that I decided to take the Kindle out of the case to see if there was any difference... Guess what--no case, no more battery drain.

Apparently the little clips that hold the Kindle in place are making contact with something inside the Kindle and I assume shorting something which is what causes the problem. Amazon seems to be aware of the problem--they've stopped selling the non-lighted case.

Just thought I'd share in case anyone else with one of those cases is having problems--something to try (even if you're skeptical like I was).
 
zooterkin said:
I was given a gadget bag to protect it for now, but I'm considering one of the Oberon cases; with currency conversion and postage, I think they work out about the same as the official cases with a light (which is another possibility, but those seem over-priced to me).
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If it helps, I love my Oberon. It is actually, aesthetically, much more appealing than shown on the site. The leather is very thick, and easily protects my Kindle, while giving it an old-book feel. There was some concern, even noted by Oberon, over the bottom straps cover the buttons (Up arrow and Back), but perhaps they’ve adjusted their pattern, because neither strap touches the buttons. The clasp that holds the book closed is a very nice piece, and Oberon included extra bungee-cords, should this one fray and break.
 
AdMan said:
Apparently the little clips that hold the Kindle in place are making contact with something inside the Kindle and I assume shorting something which is what causes the problem.
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That doesn't surprise me too much, since I assume the unlighted case is attaching in the same way as the lighted one, and those clips are therefore attaching to where the lighted case draws power from. Odd that the official case would get it wrong, though. I wonder if there are any problems with the lighted version, too?

Useful information, though, thanks for sharing.
 
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