Posts Tagged ‘kindle’

David’s Kindle

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

We’re at the lake with Andy’s brother David, and David has a Kindle.  It’s a first generation Kindle, and David says he uses it primarily for reading fiction– pleasure reading.  He says he doesn’t use it for anything that he would take notes on. I fooled around with it for twenty minutes, as I have in the past, but this time more serious about turning it on, reading some pages of Booth Tarkington’s Magnificent Ambersons, turning pages, testing larger font sizes  (can I read without my glasses?– yes, but such short pages who wants to?), tried it outside on the hammock, and yes, sun and shade, very readable.  He says images and maps, photos of, say, the subject of a biography– all of that is pretty useless, as is the miniature keyboard at the bottom.

And!  He has an app for his computer that reads books for Kindle, and he bought a copy of Trespassers (Hamilton Stone Editions)  from Smashwords and loaded it, and there it was, my first ebook sale, sort of.  Well, well, well.

Ebook on BarnesandNoble.com

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Well, my experiment with ebooks is moving forward:  the Hamilton Stone Editions edition of my novel Trespassers about the Columbia University 1968 sit-ins is now available as an ebook on  Barnesandnoble.com (just click there and search for “Trespassers by Meredith Sue Willis”).  My book, and Carole Rosenthal’s It Doesn’t Have to Be Me, have both been available on Smashwords.com for a while, but this is the first appearance on another site, which Smashwords has been promising.

I am still looking into ereaders.  Does anyone out there have one?  What do you recommend?  I’m thinking seriously about the soon-to-be-released Kobo, which is a hundred dollars cheaper than Nook and Kindle.   The disadvantage, if it is one, is you generally have to download books via your computer.  This means you can’t be sitting in an airport and download the latest best seller out of the ether I mean 3G network.  But since I’m picturing myself rereading Trollope’s Palliser novels on a device,  I  don’t really care so much if I can’t get Dan Brown’s latest contraption two minutes after it’s released.

Meanwhile, we’re still watching Phoebe Allen’s webcam with her two ugly little naked blue-black balls of baby bird with yellow beaks, not hummingbird beak shaped at all, and a few yellowish pinfeathers on their blue-black body balls. Phoebe looks happy as a clam when she sits on them.

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

I’ve now handled both an IPad and a Nook as well as my brother-in-law’s Kindle.  The IPad is very attractive, but I’m not sure why it isn’t a computer– my husband’s new big screen is very attractive as well,  The Nook felt very nice in my hand, and I could imagine sinking into the telling of a story on its dull but easy-to-read screen.  I downloaded a free copy of The Eustace Diamonds which turned out to come from Google scans, and while the text was easy to read, there were dumb little page breaks from the old short pages.  Still, the idea of all of Trollope there in my hand when I go on vacation…

Smashed!

Sunday, March 28th, 2010

I’ve got a book uploaded to Smashwords.com!   It cost me some time, but no cash.  Take a look at Trespassers– and tell me what you think!  We’re going to put up more books from Hamilton Stone if this seems worth the trouble.

Smashing a book

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

I’m working on an experiment with a Hamilton Stone Editions version of one of my books.  Using a site called Smashwords , I’m rather painstakingly turning a word processed manuscript (already published in hard copy) into a format that Smashwords will then run through some software called The Meatgrinder, and spew out the other end several versions readable by Kindle, the Nook, and more.  Everything from EPUB to .pdf.

There is no charge upfront, and the service is not exclusive, as best I can read their information.  The publisher/writer gets back a little if anyone buys/downloads a book.  On the other hand, you don’t own the files in the specially formatted versions.

So the experiment is, does this work?  Is it worth the labor  (my favorite phrase:  Is the Game Worth the Candle?), and will anyone conceivably buy the books?

If anyone has any experience with Smashwords, please let me know!  Most of their books appear to be self-published single book deals, lots of science fiction and other genre, but more and more small publishers seem to be using it.  This is, in my mind, a stop gap, something to do while things sort themselves out.

But I want our books available to read once I buy an e-reader!

Do Monks Dream of Parchment?

Friday, February 5th, 2010

A friend told  me last night that she had tried reading  a blog of dense literary criticism, and finally gave up.  Then she ran across  the same material in book form, and loved it.  Of course it is possible that the writer cut and polished before the book was published.   But long blocks of dense prose– novels, criticism– may be just too much for the eye to deal with in the flickering ambiance of the screen.

We agreed that poetry works well on the web– for example, I know a poet who sends a poem “by someone else” once a week or so  to his email list.  Sometimes it’s a famous poet, sometimes not, but it’s always a single poem. Flash fiction works well on the screen.

And the word on the street is that reading e-paper (the Kindle, Sony e-readers, etc.) is just like reading tree-pulp paper.

After the Gutenberg Revolution, did monks and priests have nostalgic dreams about the flow of illuminating ink over the crisp surface of parchment?

Note:  Here’s the latest from the Authors’ Guild on the Google book scan issue.

Books and the new devices

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Yesterday  (1-27-10) I was listening to NPR while I put some dinner together and played with the parakeet, and I heard an All Things Considered clip in which an author complained about how he saw someone reading a Kindle, and she actually had his book among  her 200 loaded on the device, and he was unhappy about it– he felt she and readers like her were likely to be distracted by all the other possibilities  (news, magazines, games) and how much better it would be if she had a hard copy of his book and were reading that.

My gut  reaction was, What is this guy whining about?

Yes, I have an image, a vision, of the Gentle reader in a mahogany and book lined study with French doors open to a greensward, sitting in a leather chair, reading a leather bound copy of my book– it’s beautiful, it’s elitist, and– it’s over.

Actually, it was myself I pictured there reading.  I’ve always preferred the idea of a dog-eared copy of a book of mine in the hands of some kid on a subway pulling at their hair as they make a private space and read.

Paperbacks were a threat.  E-readers are a big threat. But is the threat to writers or to corporate profits?