The WSJ asks "Are E-Books Worth the Money?" Here are six money tips for pennywise book lovers. 1. Casual readers probably shouldn't bother.
The biggest thing it's done is that it's the centerpiece of my presentations. I show all my photography on it, and I used to spend $300/yr on matboard 8x12 photo prints for bridal shows. This is easily updatable, additional photos cost nothing, and I can integrate video with it. My clients spend more time looking at each image, at bridal shows people spend longer amounts of time at my booth because of it, and most importantly, it pre-conditions my customers for the fact that I am in a different price level than my competitors, and that my service is more high-end than theirs. Since I've started using it, I convert more presentations into sales and my average sale has gone up nearly 25%. I edit my contracts and email them to clients on the spot, allowing me to cut down my average time to make a sale. I use EasyRelease to get model releases signed on the spot, instead of having to drag around paper releases everywhere. It frees my computer to be used for rendering finished images and uploading them to my lab. The latter usually takes 12 hours per wedding I shoot, and not multitasking with that computer clips up to 3 hours off the upload. I'm waiting on my credit card reader from Square that will allow me to get the lower rate for swiping transactions than what I pay for manual entry. It creates a bit of buzz. I've heard a few brides tell me that they heard about me the first time because another bride mentioned that I let her play with the thing.
Also, if you've ever tried to view images on a laptop from an angle, you know how badly they distort them. This can be viewed easily by a group of people at different angles without losing clarity or color punch.
My girlfriend and I just got Nooks, love it. There is no "I'm reading a computer screen" feel to it, I knocked out a book in a day, with literally no difference in the eye stress level. I also like the nook because you can buy your books from almost anywhere(a huge improvement on the fascist kindle). I love books, and keeping them, but I don't have the room to waste doing so, nor the time anymore to shop for them, so The Nook was a good idea for me.
got the iPad couple months ago and I am loving the Amazon Kindle app and the iBookstore. In the past 4 days, I have read 2 ebooks. I definitely do not have the time anymore to go to a book store and spend hours there trying to find a book. After downloading and reading Fight Club, one of the recommendations was to read the book "Shit My Dad Says" by Justin Halpern. A quarter of the way in and extremely funny book.
Found something for free on Kindle (Ulysses Grant's autobiography, co-authored by Mark Twain) a couple of days ago that I hadn't been able to find even in Lexington's massive used book store. Me for the win!
Kindle vs Nook I have one of each, obviously bought the Kindle 2 first. I got a nook about 4 months ago. I use the nook more, but there are a couple of things that are better on the Kindle - the feature that allows putting eBooks in something like folders (you can't sort the nook eBooks at all), and the page turning mechanism. I once sprained both my thumbs playing volleyball, and having to press fairly hard with a thumb to get a page turn on the nook can play havoc on my thumbs after a while. The nook has a large selection of books that can be read because it is open compared to Amazon's proprietary set up. And as the previous poster has said, there is a lot of older stuff available.
Re: Kindle vs Nook Since people are loving up physical books, I have to say I'm increasingly feeling a big downside to them, fiction or nonfiction. Nonsearchable. Also, they pile up all over the place, and at places like the library, Amazon, or even physical bookstores, you often have to wait for them. Looking forward to picking up an ipad.
Re: Kindle vs Nook You dont have to use the buttons to turn the pages, there's a touch screen feature
I`ve been using a Sony eReader (PRS-700) for a couple of years now and love it! I`m very satisfied with all the free, out of copyright content available on mobileread.com, internet archive and gutenberg.org. Ironically, out of the 125 books I have on the reader the only one I have paid for is Lewis Hyde`s recently published polemic against copyright law and intellectual property, "Common as Air".
My wife and I have decided to get Kindles -- ordered them last night. There seem to be things that each of the e-readers out there do better than the others, but overall we thought Kindle's plusses were the greatest to our taste. We'll see. In deciding to get them, we felt that there are a) books we'd like to own (in book form) that we'll still buy (for instance, I have a collection of Everyman's Library hardbacks), b) books we want to read and return to the library, and c) books we'd like to own, read, and have access to in the future, but don't want cluttering up the house, such as genre mass market paperbacks (or books that aren't available from the library, but would otherwise qualify as "b" above). With e-reader prices coming down and quality improving, we decided there were enough books in category "c" that an e-reader made sense for us for a certain percentage of our reading, so Kindles are our (early) anniversary present to each other.
I had a Kindle gen1. Loved it. I bought my wife a Kindle gen2. She loves it. I just used some accumulated credit card points to get amazon gift cards and buy myself a new Kindle gen3. It's so freakin' awesome, it's unbelievable. I added to this a cover that has a built-in light that gets power from the kindle itself, and it's the greatest thing ever. I always just used the bendy clip lights for the kindle, but I was never 100% satisfied reading in bed. Now, it's perfect.
I bought a new phone the other day - the Samsung Galaxy S - and it has its own Aldiko eBook reader app and Kindle is also available on Android, so I'm using both. I've downloaded a few free eBooks that I want to read through, but am waiting until I fininsh the book I'm reading at the moment before I start. Can't wait to see what it's like, though.
Are you in Japan? Does Docomo charge you a fortune in monthly service fees? I'm thinking of getting the Samsung Galaxy Tab when it is available next month.
I'm not in Japan right now; not moving back to Tokyo until January. And I've never used DoCoMo. I'm a Softbank guy. The rates are reasonable.
I've been reading on my blackberry which I kind of like. It is easy to hold and back lit so I'm not disturbing my wife when I read at night. you can change the font to suit your needs. It's about the only thing the pos is good for anymore.
I was all set to buy myself a Kindle for Christmas but then I started reading some articles about publishers sometimes charging more for electronic versions than print versions. Also, some publishers aren't working with Amazon at all. So I'm back to waiting and seeing. Edit: Another thing - I actually got to see and fondle a Kindle in person recently and it's much smaller than I thought it was. I'm not sure I want to read something that tiny.
I don't notice the size at all when I'm reading it. As for holding it, it's light (even with the case) and comfortable, but I haven't had any issue with screen size. C & I got them recently and we're both loving 'em. Drop her a PM for more comments. I haven't seen any book I'm interested in cost more on Kindle -- all have cost less (plus I've picked up a couple of out-of-copyright books for free that would have cost me for printed versions).
Thanks for the info. I'm pretty sure I'm going to pull the trigger on a Kindle this week. It's already in my amazon shopping cart. The trick will be figuring out how to read in the bathtub without killing it. I'm thinking a couple of layers of ziplock bags.
I have a kindle, I love it! Someone makes a waterproof case for them but I think they're like $50 or so. I might buy one this summer before I head to the beach (more or less just to keep sand out of the keys). As for the books, I've notices that if a new hardback comes out the book on kindle is usually $12, after a while it becomes $10, when paperbacks come out they're usually about the same on the kindle. Now older books you can pick up cheap, and lots of publishers put out free books (especially Romance novels). Then there's the indy writers, people without publishers that publish to the kindle and sell books from 99 cents to $2.99... and most of them are well worth it! I thought the same thing about them being kind of small then I realized it's about the size of a page of a paperback. Due to lack of margins you can actually get slightly more than a paperback's page on it at a comfortable font. Of course, you might not want to take my opinion as I've written a couple soccer books for the Kindle that I'm selling through Amazon! (My attempt at full disclosure).
Link? Yeserday I downloaded some free Kindle versions of various HG Wells and Jules Verne titles. There is a whole boatload of free stuff available - and not just romance novels.
Had the Nook for 6 months now. Bought it for business travel. I like it. My library has a fair, not great, but fair catalog. There's plenty of free titles, but I've picked up a few current books. Something I've found really useful is using Instapaper along with it.