Bookwi.se

As I have been publishing free ebook posts over the past month.  I have started seeing a trend that I have not noticed before.  A number of authors, many in that mid range (you have heard of them, but they don’t sell millions of books) are taking back the digital rights of their books.

In some cases this is easy because digital rights were not in the original contracts (many of these books were published in the 1970-1985 range).  In other cases there are some clauses in the original contract that specified terms (usually out of print in paper and/or a buy-out amount).

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Image by agirregabiria via Flickr

I am a fan of digital media.  I prefer my kindle to paper books.  I haven’t purchased a physical CD in a while.  I no longer have a CD-rom on either my computer or my wife’s computer.  I have whole-heartedly bought into the digital system of media.

In spite of this, I am alway frustrated when simple actions with physical media are no longer simple with digital media.

On the good side, digital media allows for cheap distribution, easy updates and a wide variety of creators.  I can upload a book to Amazon and sell it.  Someone can let me know a mistake, I can make a change and then send that change to Amazon and Amazon can send out updates to anyone that wants one.  On the whole I think that is great.

The problem is that sometimes publishers, instead of updating the file, remove the book and submit a new book.  The old book then gets orphaned.  Yesterday I went to loan a Kindle book to someone. When I tried, I just got referred to an Amazon 404 page.  Eventually after emailing and chatting with Amazon help I discovered that this is what happened for the book I was trying to lend.  It was a good book that I wanted to lend to someone.  After 30 minutes on email and chat and then drafting this post, I got a request to borrow a book from Lendle and again, another book I wanted to lend, that I have a legal copy to and I purchase with the rights to lend, had been orphaned by the publisher, and my lending rights removed.

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Amazon released an app to make getting your documents from your computer to your kindle just a bit easier.  It only works on Windows PCs, but seems to work well and I would guess that it will be released on other platforms soon.

I frequently use email to send documents to my kindle, which is fairly easy, but there are some good reasons to use the app.

• It allows you to specify whether you want the document to be delivered over wifi (free) or whispernet (paid)
• It allows you to specific which kindle on your account it should go to (or you can send to multiple kindles)
• You can send one or many documents at the same time
• It allows you to archive the document in your Amazon Cloud storage
• It allows you to rename and specify the author as you send the document

I do not use a Windows PC, but I installed on my Mac in a Windows partition.  I tried it out and if there were a native Mac app I would most likely use it instead of email to send documents.

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I have not purchased a Kindle Fire for myself.  I have a Kindle with Keyboard and an iPad so I did not feel the need to buy a Kindle Fire.  But my Mother got one for Christmas, so I have spent a good bit of time over the last week playing with it, helping her use it and getting a good overall impression of its good and bad.

Conclusion

I will start with the end.  If you have an iPad you will not want to buy a Kindle Fire.  But if you would like a small tablets to watch videos, surf the web, do some occasional reading and play games, the Kindle Fire is a very good option.

The Good

The screen is quite good.  I watch some videos and they were sharp and clear.  It is a bit reflective but I did not think any more reflective than the iPad.  It will be hard to read in direct sunlight, but that is true with any LCD screen.

The interface is easy to use and the cover-flow idea works for people that are new to tablets.  I think it is easier to use than the standard Android system, especially for new users.

The speakers are mobile speakers, so you can’t expect huge sound, but they are sufficient.

The 7-inch size is much better for reading than the iPad.  If you are going to have an LCD screen (I really prefer eink for reading, see below) I think the 7 in size is the most natural.

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If estimates are right, around 5 million people have purchased or received as gifts a Kindle this season.  So now what do you do.  Below the jump you can find out about borrowing books, importing books, audiobooks, tracking the prices of kindle books, finding new books, getting your questions answered and more.

Cover via Amazon

Free Books

One of the first things you want to do is check out free books.  There are a lot of free books, in fact because of the new Kindle Select program for authors there will probably be around 100 free books a day for quite a while.  So you have a couple of options.  The two I recommend are ereaderiq or Booksontheknob.  They take two different tacks.  Ereaderiq will send you a daily email of pretty much all the free books, divided into genre, with a short summary and a book cover.  It is such a long email lately that my gmail account will not open the whole thing in preview, I have to open it as a specific email and scan through them.  Book On The Knob for the most part ignores all the independent books and only talks about free books from the major publishers.  You can follow Books on the Knob on their RSS, Facebook or Twitter Feed.

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Many, many people will be getting a Kindle for Christmas.  If the numbers continue then Amazon will have sold more than 5 million kindles (all models together) in November and December.  This is a lot of new Kindle owners.  One of the first things that most new kindle owners will do is start filling it with books.  If you do not have a lot of money to spend on books, your two options are Free Books and borrowing books.  You can try to borrow books from your friends.  But a better option is the Kindle Book Sharing sites.  There are several independent lending sites.  Bookwi.se reviewed Lendle last week.  This week I am taking at look at Booklending.com.

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Lendle is a great idea.  A kindle community that helps people find other kindle owners to lend/borrow kindle books.  Before I found Lendle I have actively tried to get people to borrow my kindle books.  I posted the list on my site, I posted it on Goodreads, I talked about it on Kindleboards.com, I told friends.  But I only lent a handful of my books.  Since I joined Lendle I have loaned almost 60 books in about six weeks.

At the same time before Lendle, I had only borrowed one book, just to try out the lending service for a blog post.  Since joining Lendle, I (or people on my kindle account) have borrowed a half a dozen books and I have reserved a place in line for about 100 more.)

Here are the basic features.  

• You post your lendable books and get credit for offering books to lend
• You borrow books based on your credits
• You earn a small amount of money for actually lending (usually between $0.20 and $0.60)

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Left to right (Kindle Basic, Kindle Touch, Kindle with Keyboard, Kindle Fire)

Here is my decision tree questions.  I added a flow chart at the bottom of the post.

1) Do you want to read on it or do you want a tablet?  The eink kindles (kindle 4, kindle touch, kindle with keyboard) are much better for reading.  Eink is much closer to reading a paperback.  All eInk devices are only black and white.  There are no color eInk devices available commercially.  If you need color you have to get an LCD screen.  The only advantage for reading on a LCD screen (like on the kindle fire) is if you read a lot at night.  The eink kindles have a nice light option for the kindle case, but that is an extra cost.  In general if you are reading primarily, get an eink.  If you want a tablet to do email, listen to music, watch videos and play games, you should get the Fire or iPad.  A small group of people (around 10%) have sleep problems from LCD screens (it seems to be from the backlight).  If you want a tablet, your only option is a Wifi only Kindle Fire.  If you want an eInk device (which I strongly recommend for anyone reading for long periods), keep reading.

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Takeaway: This is a very good time to be a reader.

The National Endowment for the Arts has been studying how Americans read since 1982.  Over that time there have been five different studies looking at how American read, what they read and how much they read.  The most recent study Reading on the Rise, was completed in 2009.

After reading Upside a couple weeks ago, I decided that I am going to be more vocal when people make public pronouncements about how bad the world is that do not happen to be true.

Right before Thanksgiving there was a blog discussion on Books and Culture’s website about Tony Reinke’s book Lit! (my review).  I think that Reinke’s books is decent, but that it does not really accomplish what it says it wants to to (move non-readers to readers).  It is decent about moving marginal and aspirational readers to better readers.  But in the midst of the discussion there was a question, “How then should we go about encouraging readers of books in a post-literate culture?”

I disagreed with the whole concept of the question.  I am all for encouraging readers, but I do not believe we are in a post-literate culture.  Both in the US and World-wide we have the highest literacy rates in history.  There are more full length books being published now than ever in history (surpassing 1 million English language books published a year right now.)  The third point is that I knew that there was a recent study that said that reading (of books) was up in all age, education, and racial groups.

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