Reviews of Amazon self-published Kindle books - minor rant.

[srw]

Ha! I've never read in the bath. Come to that, I haven't had a bath for ten years - showers are quicker and far more economical. My point was that Amazon claim 3500 book capacity for a Kindle i.e. considerably more than you could fit in your average house.

Only if it's not a very big house. And that's one book per day for 10 years - more books than all but the most avid readers will read in a lifetime. (It's about what we've got at home...)

TMN is right. Publishers know what they're doing. The idea that crowd-sourcing and crowd-rating will replace expertise in the world of books is insane. It's becoming clearer and clearer that it won't even happen in the world of short-form journalism - you need an editor to decide what's worth publishing, to make it readable, and to promote it. That means newspapers, or something online looking very much like a newspaper. If you need that for something that'll take 5 minutes to read so definitely need it for something you hope the public will invest 5 hours in.

What the internet will do is support the production of modestly popular unchallenging genre fiction which is written as much for the pleasure of the author as for the reader. That, unfortunately (I think the genres are almost dead) means more second world war adventure novels, more children's books about wizards and more soft porn - all written in the 19th century conception of what a novel is. What we should be doing is building on the work of those who reinvented the novel for the 20th century. But that requires work for the reader as well as the author.

 

[MarkF]

I bought a book for my hardly used Kindle, it had good reviews. It was called "The great cycle adventure", so I was, of course, instantly suckered.

It is littered with spelling mistakes and is utter drivel, some young men ride to North Africa, I could have written a longer and more interesting book describing a shoelace aglet. I know it was only .77p but I felt scammed and silly.

 

[ASC1951]

I'll get one the next time I want to buy a gadget that does something I don't need it to do!

My view too. I have a mobile phone, a laptop, a Garmin and various other gadgets, but I've never felt the need for a Kindle. I like books. I like the feel, the weight, the durability, bending one corner over, the whole experience. I have many hundreds, possibly four figures, but I've never needed to take more than half a dozen with me at once.

I don't read books again as I know how the story ends.

Ah, there is more to some books than a story. I have a few that I re-read regularly; and one that I often take on holiday to read on the plane out - an authentic rite of passage.

 

[MacB]

Many of those books are of the sort where a Kindle would be no good anyway.

Reg, you'll be ok once the pop up 3D Kindle comes out

 

[MacB]

A lot of them were art books* with illustrations that wouldn't render well on a Kindle.

*My father was an art teacher - so not that sort of 'art' book...

I figured something along those lines but the pop up gag was teed up and it is Masters weekend afterall

 

[swee'pea99]

It do amuse me the way discussions of the Kindle almost always descend into silly either/or battles. Surely it's more about and. I wouldn't read a Kindle in the bath; nor, now, would I take a half a dozen books on holiday. But that's not to say there aren't times when I want to read a proper book, and for plenty of books there's no Kindle option. Kindles are great. So are books. Read on.

 

[BigonaBianchi]

sometimes its a similar tale with self published music ....lots of sites have 'review' systems that are frankly just an incestuous way of getting on the front page.

 

[Over The Hill]

This thread has suddenly come over all sensible and balanced.

 

[green1]

Yebbut. Your OH would still be able to get in the bath - if you assembled as many books as she could get on her Kindle, you wouldn't be able to get in the bathroom; possibly not even up the stairs.

I already have 2 book cases full of books (each row deep enough to triple stack shelf), don't have for another one until we get a bigger place, so they're now being boxed.

 

[Fnaar]

shoelace aglet.

You learn summat every day! Thanks for my new word of the day.

 

[Fnaar]

I wrote a book which was published 13 years ago (not a novel, but to do with my work). To date it has sold roughly 20,000 copies but someone has scanned it, turned it into a pdf, and it does the rounds of Russian 'free download' websites. I've got fed up letting the publishers know when I discover a new one...they do what they can to chase them up, but it just migrates to a new one.

 

[Yellow Fang]

I once bought a book about heat pumps from Amazon. It turned out to be an MSc thesis, and it was a $41t one too.

 

[swee'pea99]

I wrote a book which was published 13 years ago (not a novel, but to do with my work). To date it has sold roughly 20,000 copies but someone has scanned it, turned it into a pdf, and it does the rounds of Russian 'free download' websites. I've got fed up letting the publishers know when I discover a new one...they do what they can to chase them up, but it just migrates to a new one.

I can see how that must be galling, but it's also quite a compliment! To think that a book you wrote over a decade ago is still considered worth ripping off

 

[Fnaar]

I can see how that must be galling, but it's also quite a compliment! To think that a book you wrote over a decade ago is still considered worth ripping off

It's become a 'standard' text in its field, and remains (for the moment) up to date. Publishers told me it would prob have a shelf life of about 10 yrs, but still seems to be going strong.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

Why do folk seem to think they have to choose between kindle and real books?

Did I miss a meeting?