Your E-Book Is Reading You

[DaveBj]

I have a Kindle and I have yet to buy an eBook that is more expensive than the paperback (retail price). Plus, with the number of books and anthologies available for free or 99 cents, I have offset the cost many times over.

Second this. I have taken advantage of a number of freebies (altho sometimes you get what you pay for – lots of typos, scanning errors, formatting errors, etc., but I can overlook those). Also, things like the 38-volume set of the Early Church Fathers are less than $5 per volume. They would be prohibitively expensive as real books, not to mention very heavy :bigyikes:

 

[MarcoPolo]

You can find a number of books online for free. I know I found Lovecraft and Stoker online. These are public domain. You can copy-paste them into a word processor and save as a .txt file and put on your kindle. That would be one way to mask what you are reading, unless they are downloading what you uploaded to your own kindle.

I know at one point, my kindle had “popular” highlights throughout the book I was reading. It would actually tell me how many people highlighted certain phrases. I had to shut that off because it was annoying.

I also think you can circumvent corporate spying eyes by always downloading to your computer and doing a manual drag to the e-reader, but always do it when you’re offline, and don’t ever connect your e-reader to wi-fi.

p.s. I’m still waiting for the dang color e-ink! They are sure milking out the b/w technology long enough before they roll out the color, because we know the color exists in Europe.

 

[Do_Good_Then_Go]

You can find a number of books online for free. I know I found Lovecraft and Stoker online. These are public domain. You can copy-paste them into a word processor and save as a .txt file and put on your kindle. That would be one way to mask what you are reading, unless they are downloading what you uploaded to your own kindle.

I know at one point, my kindle had “popular” highlights throughout the book I was reading. It would actually tell me how many people highlighted certain phrases. I had to shut that off because it was annoying.

I also think you can circumvent corporate spying eyes by always downloading to your computer and doing a manual drag to the e-reader, but always do it when you’re offline, and don’t ever connect your e-reader to wi-fi.

p.s. I’m still waiting for the dang color e-ink! They are sure milking out the b/w technology long enough before they roll out the color, because we know the color exists in Europe.

I had no idea that colour e-ink readers existed and as I read your post I thought that’s not something I would want anyway, I’m very happy with my kindle… but then I took a peek at the link to the jetBook (in the other thread). That looks very nice indeed!!! Too expensive for me though… wonder how long before the price comes down?

 

[MarcoPolo]

I had no idea that colour e-ink readers existed and as I read your post I thought that’s not something I would want anyway, I’m very happy with my kindle… but then I took a peek at the link to the jetBook (in the other thread). That looks very nice indeed!!! Too expensive for me though… wonder how long before the price comes down?

In May, a story came out that Amazon might release the color e-ink this year, but other stories say not this year.

But I’m a cynical consumer who presumes that companies will not release the new technology until sales to new buyers of the previous model fizzle out. Why roll out the color e-ink now and lose all those new buyers in the next months. Then you can sell to them all a second time once the market has all the old models!

 

[Lokabrenna]

I love my Kobo and all the ebooks I’ve bought so far have been so cheap it’s like shopping at the discount section of the bookstore every time I shop! I like to wait for paperback books anyways, so I don’t mind waiting for a price drop, plus there’s no shipping charges.

If Chapters-Indigo REALLY wants to look through my selection of kinky erotica and cheap fantasy novels, they can go right ahead.

 

[MarcoPolo]

I love my Kobo and all the ebooks I’ve bought so far have been so cheap it’s like shopping at the discount section of the bookstore every time I shop! I like to wait for paperback books anyways, so I don’t mind waiting for a price drop, plus there’s no shipping charges.

If Chapters-Indigo REALLY wants to look through my selection of kinky erotica and cheap fantasy novels, they can go right ahead.

Kinky-erotica aside… Is your Kobo able to read books sold by Amazon or Barnes & Noble? I’ve often been interested in that device.

 

[Lokabrenna]

Kinky-erotica aside… Is your Kobo able to read books sold by Amazon or Barnes & Noble? I’ve often been interested in that device.

No, unfortunately, BUT if you have access to a computer you can download the Kindle for PC reading app for free and get books that way. The downside is you need to be at your computer to read them, though.

Also, I don’t know if you make a habit of reading PDF files, but the Kobo is TERRIBLE at reading books in pdf format, so make sure the books you want are in ePub format (most of them are).

And the nice thing about Kobo is that they frequently have special offers. I guess everyone does that, but it seems like I get an email with coupons once a week or so.

 

[MarcoPolo]

Ugh! It’s like Mac vs. PC wars all over again!

 

[KDHall76]

An alternative if one doesn’t want one’s specific habits tracked, at least not while reading, is something like a Sony Reader without WiFi or 3G. I have a two-year-old Sony Reader Touch (thanks to my lovely wife and kids – it was a Father’s Day gift), and have finally read things like War and Peace, Commentaries on the War in Gaul, a bit of Tacitus, Ben Hur, and other things beside. I add books to it via USB; most of my books come from Project Gutenberg and places like that.

 

[curlycool89]

I love having a library that I can carry around in my backpack and I can read anything I want wherever I want. If Apple and Amazon are interested in what I’m reading, that’s fine with me. Then they can point out new titles to me that I might have missed otherwise.

I’m sure these same people who are complaining about this probably also have a half-dozen loyalty cards in their wallets too. (this is almost turing into a tin-foil hat thread)

I read on my iPhone (yes, I know it’s small. It works for me), so I have books from both Kindle (like Hunger Games) and Kobo (like Game of Thrones).