Thursday, November 5, 2009

Digital book readers, how's a girl to choose????

I have wanted one of these fabulous gadgets since they arrived on the scene....but lack of funds has put it on the bottom of my wish list. But now the prices seem to be coming down and different models are being made.....it's becoming more of a reality for me. Yippee!!!!!

I was COMPLETELY bummed yesterday in Target. I've been checking out the Sony Reader and I played with one at Walmart last week. I looked at the new Reader Pocket at Toys R Us, but it was not a working sample so no playtime with that. I was at Target getting some other things and I knew they had the original Reader so I thought I'd mosey on over to electronics and see if they had the Pocket to play with. Couldn't find them anywhere. I asked the worker in electronics. She said they CLEARANCED OUT the remaining Readers they had and they were all gone. They sold them for....are you reader for this....$75. I wanted to scream. $75!!!!!!!! I asked how long ago...she said about a month. So at least I missed it by weeks rather than just a day or two.

So now I am starting to do research and weighing what I want and need and comparing prices. I love the price of the Reader Pocket, but you cannot make notes in the margin. For normal books...not a big deal...but maybe I'd like to upload my own work and read it on that and make notes that way. But is that worth an extra $100??? I would need to do edits on my laptop anyway.

I need feedback on this...please tell me what you have, how you use it....if you're happy.....

And now today I saw at Barnes and Noble that they are coming out with their own book reader....but you can only buy ebooks from B&N. But I think Kindle is like that too, right?? You can only buy books from Amazon??? What about the Sony...can you only buy books from the Sony store???

And then I run into the money thing. I sooooooooooooooooo badly want to buy books and support fellow writers....but I'm kinda poor!! (Not really...I like to joke. But we are a single income family and once bills are paid and food's been bought, not a ton of leftover money...especially in winter when my husband can't supplement his income with overtime.) So would spending the money on a digital book reader even be worth it for me right now???

*Sigh* Maybe I will have to wait a while before I get one.

3 comments:

  1. This is a tough decision and I can't speak for the other readers since I don't have those. However, I ♥ my Kindle. And their price has dropped too.

    You can download books from other sources besides Amazon if you download them as adobe files. However, you do have to do an extra step, where you email them to your kindle address, so that it can be coverted. Then you can download it on to the kindle. However, it is rare that I run across a book that's unavailable on Amazon.

    Most of the readers are proprietary--meaning they are tied to a certain format associated with their manufacturer. Sony you shop at sony store. I'm assuming B&N's is the same way.

    You also can download word documents on your kindle so you can read your own manuscript on there. You have the ability to highlight and makes notes.

    I love the face that kindle is wireless too. If I finish a book in bed at night and immediately want the sequel. I can shop through the kindle, purchase, and have the thing downloaded in 60 seconds (bad for impulse shoppers like me.)

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  2. I have the Sony Reader and have never bought a book from the Sony store. I shop at Fictionwise and Books on Board. And let me tell ya, 2 days ago I scored 5 Lori Fosters, a Toni Blake, and a Jennifer Crusie for twenty bucks and a few cents. Yes - true story. FW sends out all kinds of coupons and discounts and this time it was 50% off my entire order. Plus since I'm a member I earned a rebate (as always) to my account of another dollar-something. When will I have time to read them? God only knows. LOL
    At Books on Board I bought the new Dan Brown (bestseller) for $9.95 and they had some sort of special going on, so I now have $12.50 in my account there. Nother good deal. Both Books on Board and CyberRead give you discounts and/or credit your account when you write a reader review (even if you didn't buy the book from them). Another new e-tailer is Diesel books - I've been getting lots of Google alerts about my books selling on there. Not sure, but I'd bet they've got good deals too - it's mostly a matter of putting books on a wish list and waiting for them to let you know when they're on sale or send you discount, but you can really save $$ on ebooks if you normally buy books. And if you check them out from the library, most systems now offer ebooks too. Only difference is, once your time limit is up, you can't open the file anymore. Pretty cool though -- and free, plus no trips for returns or checkouts.

    I do like my Sony. Biggest gripe is getting etailers to make their downloads more user-friendly. If I wasn't so cheap and bought my books directly from Sony, it'd probably go smoother. :)

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  3. WOW!!! Thanks so much for your lengthy posts!! I so appreciate it!!!!!

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