… that a book lover must be in search of a better way to store 1500 books in 2GB of space.

Been looking at the new e-readers after participating in a survey/contest with an e-reader as a prize.

OMFG is this a clusterf*** of a market still. I was pretty young when the Betamax/VHS thing happened, so I missed out on most of it.

I’ve heard nothing good about the Sony Reader. Which is just as well, since Borders.com doesn’t offer e-books for sale on the website. To get even a listing of e-books for purchase, you have to download and install a Windows-only library app.

I’ve heard a lot of negative things about the Kindle. While the fiasco with the Orwell books last year seemed to make sense once it came down to facts and not internet panic, I’m still not real comfy with having books I’ve purchased just disappear and the money for them just reappear. Not without some better kind of notice. I’d much prefer an email saying Hi, we sold you this book under some questionable circumstances, with directions on how to return the book. Or they could take a cue from software – if I exceed the trial period on my software or if I fail to properly license the software, no-one comes along and secretly uninstalls it from my computer. Instead, they give it a big error when I go to open it again telling me how to fix the problem.

On top of that, it seems that books purchased for the Kindle are licensed to the device, not the person. Lose or break your reader, buy your books over again. Because there’s so much precedence in copyright law for moving to a new location and installing new bookshelves requiring you to purchase new copies of your books to be compatible with the new shelves.

However, option three, the B&N Nook, seemed on the surface to be heading in the right direction. Android-based, with the possibility of 3rd party apps to install later, when B&N opens up the SDK for developers. But it’s not real encouraging when I visit B&N.com to review information and find…..
A. their desktop reader app doesn’t work with my Mac version. It’s 10.5 or later only.
B. the “sample” I requested of a book I was considering purchasing included, when I finally found a reader that worked on my OS, the title page and table of contents. Absolutely no sample content at all. (to be fair, this may have been a publisher decision, not a B&N decision. Either way, whoever made that call needs to be slapped with a fish.)
C. Absolutely no “technical” information about the device and it’s compatibility with other devices. The “Tech Specs” page literally starts out by telling you what’s in the box. (a USB cable and a power adapter, if you’re wondering) and then has various boxes devoted to outlining the features of the device. Even in the FAQs, I don’t find anything telling me either why I’d want to plug it into my computer (loading music and other files onto the device?) and if it will be compatible with my older, 10.4 Mac.
D. The book I was looking at (Steamed: A Steampunk Romance) costs $6.39 as a digital download. It’s on the shelf at Target for $5.99. I know that the ability of stores like Target and CostCo to buy huge quantities of best-sellers cheaply is a large part of what’s hurting the writing and publishing market right now, but…. Really? You can’t even manage to match the competition when they’ve got shipping and stocking costs and you’re offering a digital download?

If my name is drawn in a couple of weeks as the contest winner, right now, I’d probably get the Nook. If my name isn’t drawn…. well, maybe in a couple of years the market will figure itself out and we’ll get adequate customer service, a common reader format, reliable and open Wi-Fi, and fewer pinheads butting heads over who’s privilege it is to do things like set prices. In short, hey, maybe we’ll eventually get to a reader-driven market instead of a bookstore-driven one.