Comments on: Kindle Up Some Old Books

By: Camille

Camille — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 02:41:39 +0000

You don’t need a Kindle, or to spend any money, to read those old, classic ebooks. The Gutenberg Project has been making them available for free for over a decade now. (Long before Google started – and all legal PUBLIC DOMAIN books.)

I used to read classics on my Palm, but now I read them on my iPod Touch, or on a netbook. (I also buy ebooks – especially from Fictionwise.)

I might be interested in a Kindle when publishers have a better understanding of the economics of reading. Books have been traditionally priced high not just because they are expensive to print and ship and warehouse, but because they are durable and can be shared. eBooks should be a lot cheaper than they are now, and imho, they will not be truly successful until they are.

By: LeAnne Hardy

LeAnne Hardy — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 19:33:36 +0000

It seems to me that if royalties are based on the price of print, or represent a higher percentage (since e-books don’t have all the paper, ink and shipping costs) then it should be possible for us to make a decent living. I love the idea of a whole library in handheld form, but I DO feel guilty that I get all my news from electronic sources and don’t pay for a newspaper or magazine. Someone has to pay the reporters or that news source is going to dry up.

By: Janet Ann Collins

Janet Ann Collins — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:42:12 +0000

I got a Sony Reader for Christmas. It doesn’t come with books but I’ve downloaded classics for $.99 each. My book, The Peril of the Sinister Scientist is available on Kindle at a cheaper price than the hard copy, but it doesn’t cost as much to produce. I don’t think e-books will harm writers in the long run. In a few years we’ll realize that, like computers, replacing parts and buying updated ones costs at least as much as buying hard copies of books.

By: Cat Woods

Cat Woods — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:48:32 +0000

I write this from a biased point of view. Never having held the Kindle, I can’t speak for its benefits and therefore hold fast to my love of holding a real live book in my hand.

By: Britt

Britt — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:24:44 +0000

I’m a writer…but I can’t help but “covet” the Kindle.

By: Michelle Ule

Michelle Ule — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:49:09 +0000

You make excellent points as usual, Bill, and certainly we agree with you.

If it’s in print and for sale, it shouldn’t be available on line. I don’t see anything questionable about that line of argument.

But as a PhD, you would understand completely how much easier it is to do research now than in the old days.

By: Bill Giovannetti

Bill Giovannetti — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:19:43 +0000

Michelle, thanks for this post.

I don’t want to be a Whig (or do I mean Tory?), clinging to a doomed past, but when eighty percent of my book was posted on Google Books, I flipped out. Then I learned my publisher had done that for marketing’s sake. I have directed people to that site, but I’m not sure of the benefits.

Google argues that they give potential buyers the same opportunity they would have in a store: to flip through the book before they buy it.

I see a couple problems w/that premise:

1. In a store, time is limited. You’re not staying overnight, and you won’t hang out with the book for hours on end. You’ll flip through, and either buy it or set it down. (Yeah, people read all day at BN, but that’s still not the norm). Google books allows you to linger all day long and all night long and forever with someone else’s labor.

2. In a store, you can’t cut, copy, paste, or search for relevant paragraphs. You have to flip. You’re stuck with a linear approach to a book… page to page. Google books allows a complete search. Find what you want from the book, copy it, and move on to the next book, no purchase required.

iTunes is smart enough to embed digital rights management code into music. The literary world needs to figure out how to make that happen.

I have no problem with public domain works being made available for free — especially when the scanned copies have cool old pencil markings and librarian stamps. Now, we just need to digitize the old book smell…

Loving the brave new world…
Bill Giovannetti

How To Keep Your Inner Mess From Trashing Your Outer World… mostly free at Google Books: http://bit.ly/4Qy4ce