But just how widespread is this problem? Is my feeling that these days, I am becoming more of a copy-editor than an actual reader just an inflated sense of irritation at paying full price for a seemingly inferior product? Or is it really the case that many new releases are hitting my Kindle and Kobo error-filled? For a little scientific investigation, I took a look at the last ten ‘big six’ commercial reads I read and noted which ones I had tagged in Calibre as being problematic. Here are the results.

Book 1: A new-release non-fiction book which came out in conjunction with its eponymous documentary film. Purchased from Amazon. Overall, it was readable. However, my Kindle bookmarks show at least one random line break in the middle of a sentence, and the book had a problem with proper names not always being capitalized. This occurred more than ten times.

Book 2: A self-help book circa 2009, which I purchased from Kobo books. I only noted two errors in this one, but they were stupid errors: the letter ‘p’ being rendered as ‘bl’ (e.g. ‘blurchasing’) due probably to an OCR error that was not caught in whatever proofread may or may not have been done. This is one of the reasons I am in favour of removing DRM for personal use from books I purchase legally! If one does so, such small errors are easily fixed and make the books much more pleasant on re-read.

Book 3: A book in the ‘for dummies’ series, purchased from Amazon. I am halfway through, and it’s flawless so far. The graphics, sidebars etc. all come out beautifully in my Kindle for iPad app. Kudos to the ‘for dummies’ people! The book is super-long and must have been a monster to put together.

Book 4: A blockbuster new release memoir, purchased from Kobo. I recall a few non-capitalized first words or sentences, and a handful of random line breaks, but nothing egregious. Irksome, at full retail price, but the book was still readable.

Book 5: A poetry anthology, circa 2011. Downloaded from the public library. No errors I could recall. Huzzah, a clean book!

Books 6 and 7: Two YA novels, both backlist (1990s or so) and downloaded from the public library. Both were readable, but had the usual ‘we didn’t proof it’ problems (random line breaks, things which should be capitalized but were not, words with no spaces between them) often enough that I noted it. Boo.

Book 8: Another blockbuster new-release memoir (I am in a memoir-reading phase right now) purchased from Kobo. In addition to random line breaks (often enough to be irksome) the book also had random periods in places periods should not have been. They were frequent enough that I took screenshots of this one, sent them to Kobo and got a refund.

Book 9: A 2010 non-fiction release, downloaded from the library. I noticed a few small errors (random line breaks, I think) but less than 5 overall. Not bad! But still, if they are charging people money for this at mainstream stores, not acceptable either.

Book 10: Yet another blockbuster new-release memoir, purchased from Amazon. This was was in Topaz format, if that matters, and it was full of errors. The most common error was that the book contained drop caps which did not display properly, so it made the first words of many paragraphs look as if they were missing a letter. There were also words which had no spaces between them, and words which had too many spaces between them. I would have asked for a refund if this was a Kobo purchase—they take anything back if you have proof. But I have heard Amazon is stingy about how many refunds they will process for one account, and the book was under $3, so I didn’t complain.

So, my overall experience? Of the ten books read…

2 of 10 were totally clean and error-free as far as I could determine
8 of 10 had errors of some kind
6 of those had errors which were irksome, but minor overall
and 2 of them had errors severe enough that they merited a refund

That is absolutely abysmal. No wonder my ebook spending has fallen by about 50% this year! I don’t want to play Russian roulette with either my reading time or my reading budget. If I have to deal with errors, at least I shouldn’t have to pay to do so. I will be spending my August ebook budget on renewing my Philadelphia library membership, which brings the total number of ebook-lending public libraries I can access up to 5. If the book isn’t available at any of them, it will have to be something I badly want to read before I will shell out cash for it. No way am I paying full retail price for the privilege of copy-editing a book that isn’t ready to be sold!

(Photo: quinn.anya)

“I have consolidated some of my on-line projects into a single handy website: the e-Finds Book Pages! It’s your central gathering place for The Indie eBook Hall of Fame, the eBacklist Collection, the best of my Teleread Articles and more! The site comes in two flavours:

1. The Author Page has info, articles, books and web links of interest to indie ebook authors
2. The Reader Page has links to reviews, curated collections and blogs of interest to readers

Via E-Finds

Joanna (nee Ficbot) made waves with her controversial post about using this method to protest Kindle e-book pricing and quality issues, “Maybe we should be hurting the authors”, then posted a more temperate follow-up.

Now author Paul Carr has posted a rant against the practice on TechCrunch. He feels that those leaving one-star protest reviews on Amazon are, to put it politely, misguided.

I speak from pained experience as an author when I say that we have absolutely no say on when our books are released, in what format and at what price. And yet we’re the ones who have the most to lose from negative Amazon reviews. A book’s overall star rating is one of the most prominent pieces of information on an Amazon page and many readers – quite reasonably – equate a low average rating with a poorly written book. This damages sales of the book and also damages our reputations as writers. Almost nobody – unless they click through and read the full text of the negative reviews – sees a one star rating and assumes its a comment on the decision by the publisher to withhold an electronic edition.

Carr links to another blogger’s post on the subject calling the practice “collective bullying” and goes on to talk about other one-star reviews based on matters unrelated to the book’s content, such as the author’s gender, race, politics, and so forth. He suggests that Amazon should change its review policy to allow reviews only by people who have purchased the book.

As someone points out in the comment discussion that follows, Apple previously had a similar problem in its iPhone app store until it restricted reviews of apps to those who had actually purchased them.

However, there is a key difference: Apple is the only (legitimate) source for those apps, so in order to own it the person would have had to buy it from them. Amazon, on the other hand, sells a commodity you can buy from dozens of places, or even read in the library without buying at all.

Restricting reviews to only those who purchased from Amazon itself would severely lessen the utility of Amazon as a review source by considerably decreasing the quantity of eligible reviewers for a given item.

This is hardly the first time that negative reviews have made waves on Amazon. Lest we forget, Amazon’s practice of allowing all reviews, positive and negative, has been controversial from the very beginning. Jeff Bezos has said:

“We had publishers writing to us, saying “Why in the world would you allow negative reviews? Maybe you don’t understand your business–you make money when you sell things. Get rid of the negative reviews, and leave the positive ones.”

Yes, negative reviews can hurt sales in the short term, but over the long term, allowing criticism builds credibility. Having negative reviews along with positive ones helps buyers decide, says Bezos: “We don’t make money when we sell things, we make money when we help people make purchase decisions.”

It doesn’t seem likely Bezos is going to change his tune now.

And in a sense these review writers are doing just what they are supposed to: judging a product based on its utility to them and stating their opinion. Most people I know, on seeing mediocre reviews, will be inclined to look further at those reviews, good and bad, to see why people dislike it, since not everyone looks for the same criteria in a book. People to whom a Kindle edition is irrelevant will pay more attention to the good reviews, since they are the ones that are useful to them.

In a way, Amazon one-starrers can take this as a sign that their campaign is working. They want to annoy authors? Well, they’re getting authors annoyed. It is unclear, however, whether this will result in the outcome they are seeking, since it is the publishers and not the authors who have control over the book’s release.

Related:

• Paul Carr gives away e-book free on TechCrunch, tweaks European e-publisher Hachette
• Is the Open Content Alliance too corporate?
• Telegraph writer loves Amazon’s Orwellian book zap

The first year course was your standard Norton Anthology-based type of thing, with one or two major novel studies, one of which was usually a Canadian novel. In my case, the novel was ‘Lives of Girls and Women’ by Alice Munro, and it must have been a huge hit among my professors because this would be the first of four times it would be a required reading in one of my classes (it would come up again in Post-Colonial Literature, Canadian Literature and Women in Literature). It is not available as an ebook at the three stores I checked, but other works by Munro are so an e-friendly professor could easily make a substitution. Nearly all of the Norton Anthology material would be extremely easy to find on-line for free.

Here were some courses I took in later years:

HOW MY DEGREE WAS SET UP

My degree was set up in an interesting way. The history of literature was divided into ten time periods grouped according to era, and you had to take certain numbers of courses from each of the different groupings. For example, one of the groupings was Old English/Beowulf/Shakespeare/The Restoration-18th Century and you had to take two of them. This was how I got stuck with the Restoration course, which at my school anyway, was a real dud of a course. Most people took the Shakespeare, and those who wanted to skip the foreign language aspects of old and middle English took the only other option and suffered through the dullest period of literary history with a professor who was banned from teaching first year students because he was so terrible. Anyway, the whole thing was set up to make sure that you had a reasonable grounding in most of the major eras.

VICTORIAN LITERATURE: Dead easy to find all of this on-line. We read Dombey and Son by Dickens, something by Austen, several plays and a boatload of Victorian poetry. One of the books we read cost $25 and was used for two classes. I did not write a paper on it. It was a complete waste of money.

SHAKESPEARE: The Norton Shakespeare, at $85, was the single most expensive book I bought for my degree. All of it available on-line for free, complete with line references, fully search-able on the Kindle…

POST-COLONIAL LITERATURE: None of this would have been available on-line. This was an upper-year seminar and the professor got to choose the focus. We had an amazing South African professor who chose to focus the entire course on literature from that country. I remember how expensive it was because all the books had to be special-ordered from the UK and whenever you cross the Europe/North America publishing lines, it costs you. I think you can find a little Coetzee on-line these days because he won the Nobel Prize, but that would be all, I would think.

WOMEN IN LITERATURE: Aside from the ever-present Lives of Girls and Women, I have no recollection of what we read in this class. It was second-year so they still were in the ‘overview’ form and we would have read novels from different eras. I am pretty sure Oroonoko by Aphra Behn was one of them, and you could certainly find that on-line.

CANADIAN LITERATURE: It was all novels. I don’t remember which ones, although I do recall this being my third encounter with a certain Alice Munro novel. That said, I could put together a great syllabus for a course like this made entirely of ebooks. project Gutenberg Canada could supply me with the more historical stuff (Susanna Moodie, the early poets Stepgen Leacock) and Kobo could outfit me with some modern novels. There is a bit of Coupland out there (sadly, not Microserfs, but I am prepared to compromise on this). Robert J. Sawyer, if one is willing to teach sci-fi. I can even get Rohinton Mistry as an ebook from the public library. Thank goodness the Canadian book chain Indigo has their own ebook store now (they are partners in Kobo). I have gotten many of my more recent Can-lit acquisitions there.

AMERICAN LITERATURE: I remember reading Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nathanael West and Poe, who are certainly available in ebook. We all hated the Faulkner and, come exam time, admitted to the professor that not a single one of us had gotten through it. Our big modern novel was Thomas Pynchon, who I could not find in ebook, but the professor had told us he considered deLillo instead, and he IS available.

LITERARY THEORY: The obligatory theory course. This would be so easy to do with ebooks. I remember a mid-term take-home exam that began with ‘summarize, in narrative form, the history of literary critcism from Plato to the Romantics.’ I remember frequent discussions about Aristotle, and recall using Star Trek examples in my take-home exam to illustrate the whole ‘probability/possibility’ argument. Public domain, all of these guys.

If I were a professor and I was serious about this, my first step would be to compile my own ‘Norton Anthology’ of public domain materials for the first year survey course. Then I would round out my historical stuff with some more appealing options that leverage the wealth of great public domain materials available now. How about an option to do ‘The History of the Detective Novel’ in lieu of the Austen/Dickens course? We could study Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Poe and their contemporaries. Or maybe an early sci-fi course with Verne, Wydham, Piper and others? And can we discuss the Creative Commons movement as part of Literary Theory and read some of the Doctorow and Stross essays?

So much out there, for those who read. And for those who read academically, a veritable treasure trove. Even back in 1996, where much less material was available, I could have made back three quarters of the cost of my Kindle just on the Shakespeare and Victorian stuff. And now? If professors are sensitive to ebook availability and willing to substitute one Munro for the other, as it were, I bet you could go all-E for the kind of program I took.

‘Have it’ and ‘Will Read it’ are Two Different Things

I learned that there are so many great books I can be spending my time on. Why waste it on things which don’t really interest me? It’s like the time my sister sent me the spreadsheet with all her Fictionwise books listed. I went through the list, which was about 200 books at the time, and only found a handful I might like to read. I’m sure that, legality notwithstanding, she would happily burn me a CD with the whole lot of them if I wanted her to, and then I would have a lot of books. But I’d probably never read them because they just are not my thing—and for what it’s worth, I shared MY list with her and she thought my taste in books was equally terrible.

So I let go of my classics guilt and deleted all the ones I had downloaded because they were ‘important’ books and I ‘ought to’ read them. And I let go too of some free books I had downloaded from Sony and Smashwords just because they were there. I put in those book summaries and if it left me feeling cold, I read the first few pages. If I wasn’t sold on the book by then, I deleted it, guilt-free. I’ll spend my reading time on books I really, really love.

There is Something to be Said for The Process of ‘Publishing’

It pains me to say this, it really does, because I believe in indie publishing as an idea. And if I did publish any of my own stuff, it would probably be as an indie author. But there really is something to be said for a book that has gone through even a minimal ‘process.’ Of the 30 already-read books I tagged ‘favourite’ more than half of them were from commercial publishers; another third or so were in the public domain and just three of them were ‘indie’ type books. Of those three, one of them was by an author who has appeared in mainstream magazines, another was the Creative Commons e-version of a commercially published book, and the third was from an an indie author publishing through an e-publisher. Not a single one was from a random guy on Smashwords.

I am not saying big publishers aren’t getting a ton of stuff wrong right now. I’m not saying there aren’t great authors not getting notice because of some stupid way the ‘industry’ runs. But I am saying there is something to be said for a process, and if I do go ahead with getting my own writing out there, I would work at it until I could find an indie publisher to take me on. I would ensure that at least one other pair of eyes besides me own has read the book, approved it and given it a modicum of editing. I wouldn’t just throw it out there into Internet-land all by my lonesome.

Does this mean I won’t ever read the ‘random guy on Smashwords’ books? No. But it might mean I’ll save that portion of my reading time for books which come recommended to me by others, and that if the book has not got at least a sample I can try for free, I’ll pass on it. I’ve read books from mainstream publishers which were awful. But I have read many *more* books from indie authors which were at best just okay, and at worst simply not on par with a ‘regular’ book. There may be diamonds in the rough out there, but I think they would be better diamonds and less rough if they went through even the barest minimum of a gatekeeper and got a proper edit.

I don’t think that, for me anyway, every book I buy has to come from a ‘big’ publisher. But I do think that having it come from *a* publisher—any publisher at all—does make it a more credible proposition for me. And given how huge my to-read pile is right now, the random guy or gal on Smashwords is going to have about five pages to convince me before I hit delete. I don’t want to feel like I am spending all of my reading time on The World’s Biggest Slushpile.

E-Publishers are More of a Brand Than Commercial Ones

This is, I think a big difference between the indie world and the mainstream one. I don’t consider myself ‘loyal’ to, for example, Random House. It’s about the author for me, for books like that. If I want that author’s book, I buy it, and I don’t really care who it’s from. I would not say ‘oh, that author is with Hachette so I won’t buy it’ or ‘that author is with Random House so I will.’ I don’t even know who the publishers are for most of the books I read.

With ebooks though, I have found that e-only publishers are a lot less generic. Most have special markets that they cater to. If you click on the publisher name for a Fictionwise book, you’ll see other titles by that publisher and there are some who publish to a definite pattern. There are two or three e-only publishers who have been a little more reliable for me, and a book coming out of their stable will get a more thorough look. That is another advantage to aligning with a publisher as opposed to going solo. You can ride the coattails fo their past releases a little and have an easier time finding your first audience, I think.

I am Prone to the Impulse Buy

The vast majority of my books were one-offs where the book was the only one I had from that author. I suspect some of this was due to my use last year of the reward program at Fictionwise; they have for awhile been offering 100% micropay on New York Times best-sellers, so if I had something else I wanted to buy and I wanted micropay dollars to buy it with, I would find an NYT best-seller which looked interesting and buy it first to get the rebate. Then I would spend the rebate on whatever I had originally planned to buy and wind up with what was essentially a freebie.

Of the books where I have more than 5 or so by one author, it’s usually because it is a series. I have all of the books in the Southern Vampire series by Charlaine Harris, all the J.D. Robb books, numerous Agatha Christie novels and that sort of thing. But if it’s not a series, it’s probably a random one-off buy.

I am less interested in playing the Fictionwise reward game these days for several reasons. I used to spend my rebates on a dozen cheap multiformat books because they were good value and I could get a dozen of them for the price of one best-seller. But Fictionwise does not have user reviews and many of these books have not been reviewed elsewhere, so I have found myself more than once being the guinea pig for a book which was not at all what I expected but which I felt obligated to slog through since I had paid. I am going to reserve my ‘trolling for new authors’ from now on to books I can at least sample first, or ones who come from e-publishers I have some track record with.

I also think the new agency pricing is going to come into play here. If nobody can offer discounts anymore, my incentive to shop at Fictionwise will be reduced because their books won’t be cheaper than anyone else’s. They have lured me in before with specials on authors I hadn’t planned to buy. Without these specials, I think my ebook buying will be a lot less random. If a book comes out and I want it, I’ll buy it. And that will be that, I think—at least until I finish more of the stuff I have already.

I am a Much Less Classy Reader Than I Think I am

Oh sure, ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ are my two favourite books of all time. But guess which author is the most prolifically represented in my growing ebook collection? It’s Nora Roberts. I just picked up a dozen of the early ‘In Death’ series in a 50% rebate sale and now have the whole series—all 30-odd—except for the first one, which Fictionwise did not have in a suitable format for me but which I have wishlisted at Kobo for pick-up as soon as they send me another coupon code.

On the genre front, ‘mystery’ is the winner by a very large margin, with over 200 books bearing this tag. Other highly populated categories include 83 science fiction books, 49 ‘paranormal’ (I thought about subdividing this further into ‘vampire’ and ‘non-vampire’ but am waiting until I hit 100), 33 romance and 45 literary fiction. The lowest ranked categories were drama (2 books) and French books (5 books, although I hope to be increasing this number).

Of the books tagged ’2010′ (meaning I have read them in this calendar year) there were 12 so far. Only three of them were of the ‘edifying’ type and nearly a quarter of them were Star Trek novels. Yipes.

The 302 is Pocketbook’s most advanced model so far. It seems to be a pretty standard 6” e-ink reader (with the standard USB interface), with the addition of wifi and some apps including RSS, Sudoku, and—according to the Nate’s Ebook News review of it—a web browser. It has 512 megabytes internal storage, accepts an up-to-32-gig SD card, and reads the most common e-book formats including Mobipocket, EPUB, and PDF. It supports ADEPT DRM.

The display supports 16 shades of grey, rather than the 8 that prior readers I’ve reviewed support. Like the PRS-700, it has a touchscreen. I’m not sure whether it’s the same (glare-inducing) kind. Either way, it should be all right to read on judging from my past experiences with e-ink screens.

Pocketbook devices seem to be getting generally positive reviews, especially for their light weight and overall swiftness in tasks such as opening books, navigating menus, and page-turning. I look forward to seeing this for myself. After I finish reviewing it, I might loan it to my non-technophile father to try out for a while, and get his thoughts on it.

The one thing that gives me pause is the $340 list price for the 302—$100 more than a Kindle, and only $160 less than the cost of an iPad. (The smaller Pocketbook 360 costs $240 with accessories.) Is the 302 a good-enough gadget to justify spending that kind of hard-earned money when a Kindle or Nook is so much cheaper?

I look forward to finding out.

Her first question was about the font sizes, although she didn’t call it that. ‘Is that one of those book computers?’ Yes. ‘And is it true you can make the writing be smaller or larger any time you want to?’ Yes, again. I went into the settings and showed her the options, and also pointed out that I could have it read to me too.

Next, she wanted to know what was the ‘better’ brand to buy. I said I didn’t think it was an issue of ‘better’ since all of them are slightly different. My Sony was a wonderful device, but my Kindle is too. And there were two very specific reasons why I upgraded.

If was more of a music person, I’d be happy taking an ipod to the gym, so text to speech would not have been an incentive. And if I didn’t read in French, I would not have cared about the dictionary. Those really were the only two reasons I upgraded and I have used these two features enough since I got the Kindle that it has been worth my while.

She wanted to know about where to buy books, and I explained that it depends on what you read (for example you can read pretty much any classic or public domain book for free with very little effort). She asked about prices too and whether it would be more expensive or less expensive than a hardcover new release.

I explained the upcoming ‘windowing’ issue in very layperson terms to her (the book will start out at $15 or so, and then be lowered later) and she seemed to think this was completely fair and she would be happy to either pay the higher price and read it now, or else wait until later and read something else in the meantime (she suggested that this waiting period would be the time where she would read the free classical books I mentioned.)

Always interesting to get a take from an average, non-techie ‘man or woman on the street.’ I scribbled a web link or two on the back of her subway transfer so we’ll see if she turns up at any of my on-line haunts!

You can find it here. Way to go!

I have a phone, but it is a basic model with limited features. I have an iPod Touch but don’t often carry it with me; it’s more for light games and music at home. My Kindle is one of the few things I always carry with me and I know what I’ll be doing with it tonight: making an ‘in case of emergency’ document with:

- Driving directions to both home and work
- Emergency contact numbers for both personal and workplace situations
- Information about my personal medical issues such as my medic-alert ID and allergies
- A scan of the first aid manual I received from my workplace training

In an emergency, I could use the search feature on the Kindle to quickly find the information I need. Last night’s little crisis may have been a one-time fluke. But I needed information, and I didn’t have it. Things could have escalated and I wouldn’t have been able to reach the appropriate person and call for backup if needed. I won’t be caught without this information again! Be it Kindle or iPhone or cell phone—whatever device you have with you nearly all the time—I urge you to treat it not just as something to read books on, but as something on which to store your vital information. Make yourself a little emergency file—if you ever do find yourself in a crisis, you’ll be glad to have the information you need.

MY TWO REASONS FOR UPGRADING

First, I must admit, I am really loving my Kindle. I use it daily and am finding that I am especially using the text to speech and dictionary features, which were the two things lacking in my Sony that prompted me to upgrade.

I am not a huge music person, so I found that while walking to the subway or running errands or using the track at the gym, I was wasting a lot of time on the same handful of ipod songs. I was very interested in text to speech because I could use this time more productively—and unlike an audio book, where all you can do is listen, I could resume reading in the regular way when I was off my feet again. The TTS feature has definitely lived up to my expectations. On a typical day where I might listen on the way to work, on the way home from work, and perhaps for half an hour at the grocery store or post office on the way home, I can zip through 5% of a story. I have a huge backlog of books I haven’t read yet, so while there is something to be said for a leisurely enjoyment of a meaty story, there is something to be said as well for speeding up ones progress sometimes. I have been a lot more careful with my ebook buying this year, so I want to clear out some of the trashier reads so I can focus on the more quality offerings.The dictionary feature was something that when I first started reading ebooks, wasn’t a priority for me because I don’t need a dictionary when I read in English, and no readers at the time offered multi-lingual support for those who read in other languages. When I learned that the Kindle did, that was one of the ‘deal-breakers’ for me regarding continuing with the Sony. I am fluent in French, but my speaking is much better than my reading and I wanted to address that imbalance. I was delighted to have a device with an on-board French-English dictionary and that remains my only Kindle store purchase thus far. Unfortunately, all of my ‘reading in French’ time has been occupied with a work-related course right now so I have had to put aside my leisure books for now. But I have two novels ready to go for the end of March, when the course ends. I have had the chance to use the dictionary a little on some notes I saved from the course website and converted using Calibre, so I know this feature will be one I will enjoy.

CONTENT FOR THE KINDLE

I have not bought any content, except for the replacement dictionary, from the Kindle store. Prices in Canada are $2 higher even if you don’t use the wireless feature, so this has turned me off a little. Even the ‘free’ books cost $2! And I prefer to have a backup on the computer—I can’t do this right now because Kindle for Mac is still ‘pending.’ When Kindle for Mac comes out, I may re-evaluate my stance on the Kindle store.

I have a lot of existing content I have been using on the Kindle. It took about two minutes to bulk download my Fictionwise multiformat books in Kindle-compatible mobipocket. They look beautiful on the Kindle and I am very happy with how fast and easy it was to get going with them. Other content, however, has been trickier. I use Calibre to manage my library and found that its conversion of LRF files was slow, glitchy and did not always produce a nice-looking book. So I spent some time seeking out ‘native’ mobipocket versions of many of the free books I had downloaded from Mobile Read, and I spent even more time tweaking the conversion settings on the few LRF-only titles, trying to get them readable. It took half a dozen ‘help me!’ posts in the Calibre forum at Mobile Read before I had all my books ready to go. Converting one’s own content for the Kindle is definitely not as fast or easy as getting content that’s ready to go, and the mobi format seems to need more tweaking to look nice than LRF for the Sony did.

I have also found, to my chagrin, that some of the content I have already is pretty terrible. I got into a cycle for awhile where I was very tempted by the Fictionwise rebate system and I would buy expensive best-sellers just to get the rebate. Then I would spend the rebate on a dozen cheap multiformat books. I am getting much more reading done thanks to the Kindle’s TTS feature and have been trying to get through some of these cheapies and unfortunately, most of them are rather forgettable. So I think I am more amenable to buying Kindle content now because I don’t feel like I have to waste my money—or time—on accumulating Fictionwise credit to use on mediocre books. I would rather pay $6 for a book I want, and only get that book, than spend $16 and get one book I want and five other so-so ones. My Fictionwise bookshelf right now is cluttered with these cheap, forgettable books I never would have bought in paper. I think my eventual Amazon bookshelf will be much more selective.

PERIODICALS AND MAGAZINES

I was interested in the idea of getting periodicals or magazines on the Kindle. I liked the thought of having the morning paper auto-delivered to me wirelessly while I slept. I bought a sample issue of both a newspaper and a magazine to see how I enjoyed the experience.

I found I did not enjoy it. Firstly, they don’t have pictures, which made the magazine less fun. Secondly, I found that they took far too long to read for me—it’s much faster to just go on a news website, skim the headlines and read in full the handful of articles that might merit further exploration. A Kindle paper was several hundred pages. I just didn’t need that much news. It’s easy enough to use the five-way controller to skip ahead, but it just seemed like too much effort and expense and hassle. On a slow news day, I can get my news in less than ten minutes by clicking to one website.

OTHER KINDLE FEATURES

I had been looking forward to the on-board Wikipedia, but it proved to be unspeakably slow, and at times rather buggy. Several times, it crashed the Kindle and forced a re-start. If I am near a computer, it’s faster and easier to view Wikipedia there. I also found it took a lot of menu navigation to get it open on the Kindle. I think there is room for improvement in this area. Perhaps the impending app development atmosphere will make accessing and using these features a little easier.

I was dismayed too that no other website was accessible using the on-board browser. It would be nice to be able to load new content from sites like Feedbooks directly from the Kindle. I don’t know why this option is not available in Canada.

WOULD I UPGRADE AGAIN?

I think the Kindle will more than meet my needs for awhile. If the Kindle app for the iPod Touch had the dictionary feature and TTS, an iPad might be a better device for me. I still might consider an iPad, but it would be more as a netbook replacement for me to use when I’m teaching. I have also heard that Indigo/Kobo might be launching a device, but I have no idea what features it might have.

I was happy with the Sony. The only reasons I upgraded were to have the dictionary and the text to speech feature which were features missing in the device I had. If I new device comes out which has features I require that the Kindle does not have, I would upgrade, but right now I can’t think of what those hypothetical features might be. Certainly, as far as ‘e-ink device on which you can do nothing but read’ the Kindle has everything I could imagine needing. I suppose if we got to the point where something like an iPad could match it both on battery life AND power-user features like multilingual dictionary support and TTS, I would upgrade again. But right now, it seems like multifunction devices like this one are not ready to match the features I am using on the Kindle

After discussing a novel set in a dark future world, which involves a copyright enforcer hunting down and killing copyright violators, Bosworth puts forward the thesis that “there’s a long-simmering resentment of people that actually make art, and the Internet has brought it to the surface in a way we’ve never seen before.”

(On reading this, I couldn’t help but think of the title of Ficbot’s frustrated rant of a few weeks ago about how many authors and publishers ignore readers’ complaints about the poor quality or unavailability of their e-books: “Maybe we should be hurting the authors.” Though in actuality Ficbot’s article did not express the sort of resentment Bosworth postulates.)

However, Bosworth does not use this as an opportunity for putting down either the content creators or the people who “resent” them. He simply discusses the issues, and concludes

For now, I’ll just say this — creators and fans should not be at war with each other, especially when the real culprits are the bean-counters, the middle managers, and the corporate structures that siphon away as much profit from the creator as possible while ensuring maximum value return for their work.

Bosworth stated in closing that he planned to write more on different aspects of the issue. It is unfortunate that he never had that chance.

But in his TechDirt response, Masnick disagrees with Bosworth’s central point. He believes that critics of copyright enforcement are critical because they fear it will harm that which they love. And if authors are shown to respect fans, those fans then become extremely loyal—possibly even hero-worshipful.

I’m not denying that there is some resentment out there of successful people. There are always some people who are resentful of others, but I just don’t see that as a driving force in the criticism of content creators who choose a path that is anti-fan.

Regardless, recent events in the world of publishing have brought out consumer aggravation with publishers in ways that I do not recall having seen before. I would like to think those publishers will take notice, but they seem ready and willing to make the same mistakes the record and movie industries have made before them.

Many of the arguments that we have covered in detail over the last couple of weeks make their appearance here: the cost of printing and shipping a paper book versus price of e-book, the sense of “entitlement” displayed by consumers, and the risk of increased price leading to increased piracy.

There are a few notes that might come off as ironic to those who have been following along. In particular:

“There are people who don’t always understand what goes into an author writing and an editor editing and a publishing house with hundreds of men and women working on these books,” said Mark Gompertz, executive vice president of digital publishing at Simon & Schuster. “If you want something that has no quality to it, fine, but we’re out to bring out things of quality, regardless of what type of book it is.”

As many mistakes as readers have been finding in Kindle editions (springing, apparently, from automated conversion without subsequent proofreading), this declaration is laughable. If they want to increase their prices, they had darned sure better start paying attention to the sort of “quality” they are putting out.

The publishers seem to be hoping that the Americans who have not bought Kindles or Nooks so far, and are not used to the $9.99 price for best sellers, will find $12.99 to $14.99 a reasonable price to pay for the electronic version of a more expensive hardcover book.

A number of consumers interviewed for the article had other opinions, however. Author Douglas Preston expressed astonishment at reader “entitlement,” calling it “the Wal-Mart mentality”.

Amazon commenters attacked Mr. Preston after his publisher delayed the e-book version of his novel [Impact] by four months to protect hardcover sales. Mr. Preston said he was not sure whether the protests were denting his sales. But, he said, “It gives me pause when I get 50 e-mails saying ‘I’m never buying one of your books ever again. I’m moving on, you greedy, greedy author.’”

This is the sort of experience a number of authors are having lately. Certainly judging from a recent post on Whatever, John Scalzi has been getting a number of that kind of e-mail in the wake of his series of posts on the Amazon/Macmillan affair, but he doesn’t let it bother him.

If the article has a flaw, it is that it simplifies e-book readers’ complaints to the price increase and release windowing, which does make readers seem a little “entitled.” On the other hand, as Ficbot and I have made clear, some of we early adopters do have a few more issues than just those. (But then again, most of the people complaining will probably be relatively new Kindle users who may well have a simpler outlook.)

In any event, the article also quotes publishers saying they can take advantage of the opportunity to experiment with different prices and find out what the best prices are for their content. And if the publishers’ track record on pricing so far has led to the sort of frustration Ficbot and I expressed, we can at least be hopeful that this is a chance for them to make a fresh start.

Readers like me want to buy books and support authors. But we want to be treated like more than a nuisance or afterthought too.

We deserve books which look nice and are free from errors. We deserve to pay a fair price—not overly high, but not overly low either (most of the objection to the Macmillan price raise was a distrust that they would actually lower it later, when the book aged—they have not done this in the past and mass-market $6 paperbacks still are retailing in e-book for $10 and up!)

We deserve books which are not so crippled by DRM that we can’t read them on the device of our choosing (and yes, we deserve to be trusted that we won’t abuse this freedom—treat us like book-buying fans and not potential criminals who must be thwarted at every turn!) We deserve to simply have the chance to BUY the books and not have them made unavailable due to the vendor we shop at or the country in which we reside.

Here is my call to arms, for readers and authors alike—let’s move into action now. We all know that the issues are, and they are just as bad for authors, who let’s face it could use the extra business, as they are for the customers, who are walking away with fewer purchases and bad experiences.

We need to move beyond ‘the author camp’ and the ‘reader camp’ and into a ‘mutual problem solving camp’ where we can begin to resolve these issues. No more explaining or justifying or defending of why things are the way they are, or how you are I or this person or that person is powerless to change them. No more defensive authors and aggressive readers. Let’s work together.

LET’S STOP TALKING ABOUT WHAT THE PROBLEMS ARE AND START TALKING ABOUT HOW WE CAN FIX THEM!

I put this out there to readers and authors alike: what can we do? What reader initiatives actually have a chance of success? Who can write to or phone or email, and how can we phrase our issue to give it the best chance of being heard?

Would a petition help and to whom can we address it? Can any author organizations band together and help us advocate? Who are some people in the industry who are known to be sympathetic and how can we reach them to make our voices heard?

I want a better e-book environment for everyone. I want readers who can buy and read, and authors to enjoy the fruits of the profits these readers will send their way. But readers like me need the authors to help us. We’ve tried advocating on our own, it hasn’t gotten us anywhere, and we simply don’t know what else to do. And we’re tired of feeling like we have to work so hard just to get someone else to take our money.

Let’s work together. Let’s help each other. Authors, readers, bloggers, commentators I throw down the gauntlet to you. What can we DO?