Category — Book Club

You know I love moi Kindle. And moi iPad. And reading books is a personal pleasure I cherish. At the moment I’m reading a paperback, a hardback, and I have a few books loaded and ready to go on the Kindle app for moi iPad. And none of it cost me a penny:

• The Queen Mum lent me The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.

• Stacey from CoMo gifted me a 1st Edition of the 1929 Paris is a Woman’s Town by Helen Josephy and Mary Margaret McBride, which I am savoring slowly.

• And moi iPad is loaded with 3 recent books from the library:
• Dreams of Joy: A Novel by Lisa See
• Private by James Patterson and Jack Morgan
• The Litigators  by John Grisham

Borrowing books from my local library for my Kindle or iPad couldn’t be easier:

1. I enter my library card number on the library website
2. search the list of e-books (Kindle, Adobe EPUB, Open EPUB, OverDrive MPE, and Public Domain)
3. check them out!
4. If the book is immediately available, it downloads wirelessly immediately to your Kindle or iPad. If the book is already checked out, I can put it on hold, and the library will send me an email letting me know its available for checkout.

Over the past 6 months I’ve checked out at least 20 books, without every leaving the couch. Here are a few tips for checking out books for your iPad:

• Each book is available on hold for 5 days. If I do not check it out in those 5 days, it goes back in the cue, and I’ll have to put it on hold again.
• If I only want books that I know I can check out today, I have the option to only search for books that are “available immediately”
• My library only allows me to have 3 books on hold at any time, but I can check out as many books as I want, so I can load up my iPad for long trips.
• Most books are only available for 21 days. At that point they disappear from my iPad.  If I haven’t finished reading it yet, I have to borrow it again.

Does borrowing books from the library for your iPad work perfectly? Of course not! But borrowing hardcover books from the library doesn’t work perfect either: last Fall I walked to the library, borrowed a book, read it in a few days, and returned it. About a month later I went to download a book to my iPad, and my account was closed. So I walked over to the library to see what the problem was. My book was listed as overdue, with a fine. The fine was less than $1, but the book wasn’t listed as returned yet so the fine would continue to accumulate. The librarian and I walked upstairs to the New Books section where I originally found it, and voila! There it sat, on the shelf. No system is perfect.

But I so have a few suggestions for my local library to improve the e-book lending system (each library can set up their own policies for lending e-books)

• why a limit of 3 holds at a time? For 1 book I am number 36 of 42, so it will be a couple weeks before I rise to the top of the list. I can check out as many books at a time as I want, so why limit holds?
• books are automatically removed from my iPad after 21 days. But sometimes I read the book immediately and can return it immediately. There is no option to “return now”. If I’m number 36 on the hold list and there are 5 copies available to borrow, maybe all 5 are sitting there in limbo: already read but not able to be returned.
• If I didn’t already know that libraries lend e-books, I’d never have learned it from my library. The Chicago Public Library is a huge library system. And the availability and instructions for borrowing e-books is very well hidden. I found it because I was looking for it. CPL calls it “Downloadable Media”.  Really? Why not something more creative, like, hmmm: “e-books”!

But am I thrilled to be borrowing books for my iPad? YES! I’ve belonged to the public library in every city I’ve lived in, and I’m happy the library is moving with the times. I wonder if they’ll be lending e-magazines any time soon?

You all know: I’m a Kindle addict, and am hanging on to my Kindle Classic (the original version) while also reading books on my iPad and iPhone with my Kindle apps. And truth be told: I do read more books thanks to the Kindle: its just so easy to get a book when I hear about it (and btw…TBG released his first book, Linebacker in the Boardroom, earlier this month and it’s available on Kindle too: I downloaded it in seconds!)

But my gripe…and everyone else’s…is still Kindle book pricing. I was OK when books were $9.99 or less, but when e-b0ok prices on Amazon crept up, I was furious: of course they have to do marketing, of course the author and publisher are entitled to their royalties. But there’s no printing, shipping, handling, or other overhead costs so why are e-book prices increasing as their popularity increases…its just WRONG!

I’ve spent time tracking down free e-books, library e-books, and other ways to read what I’m interested in…but not spend so much money on books that I can’t share.

And now Amazon has quietly introduced the Kindle Daily Deal: a daily, one-day only discount price on a selected e-book.

So far, I haven’t downloaded one but I’m sure I will. But why not: because Amazon has a long way to go in figuring out how to publicize the Kindle Daily Deal.

On the Daily Deal website, it instructs users that the deal is available 12:00am pst, and posted on the Amazon Kindle site, on twitter, facebook, and the Kindle Daily Post. But at 9:49am cst on the Kindle Daily Post it still reflects yesterday’s Daily Deal, I can’t find today’s deal posted on FaceBook or Twitter, and I had to click around quite  a bit to find today’s deal on the Amazon site: even when I entered Kindle Daily Deal in the Amazon search field, I was not directed to the daily deal: instead, it took me to Kindle books with those words in the title!

From the screen print above you can see a great deal on The Lincoln Lawyer for $2.99: except its no longer available: that’s yesterday’s deal and today’s deal isn’t posted though its long past 12:00am pst.

Amazon has some work to do so the Kindle Daily Deal is more easily available. From what I’m reading online alot of other users are similarly frustrated: they’re trying to download yesterday’s deal today, because that’s what showing up in their in-boxes and online!

They’ll work it out: but what if I miss a deal! Come on, Amazon: this is low-tech stuff: fix it today please, so I can get my deals too!

I’m not really an early adopter. But I am a big reader. So back in the 90s, with my first Palm Pilot (I hated cell phones, but with a job requiring travel and 2 kids and a husband: necessary!) I discovered eReader: I could download books to my Palm Pilot, and read them wherever, whenever. Back then the selection of e-books was pretty limited, so I pretty much read classics and trashy novels, which kept me entertained for hours on planes, trains and automobiles…and subways, buses, doctors’ offices and cafés. I adjusted to the small screen easily, the only inconvenience was I had to download the books to my computer, and sync my Palm Pilot to load the books, so I had to plan ahead. A small inconvenience with a huge payoff.

screenshot of my iPhone: outdoors

Fast forward 15 years, I was gifted the brand-new cutting-edge Kindle  e-reader (OK, I bought it myself, wrapped it, and handed it to TBG with instructions to gift it. But still…). And I was happy to spend all my spare change on ebooks at Amazon.   Then, I graduated to the iPhone. And the Kindle App. Could life get any better? Yes, in fact it could. This Christmas TBG gifted me the iPad, and he thought of it all by himself.

Kindle: outdoors

The first app I downloaded? The Kindle App, bien sur! So I could be reading a book on my iPhone, Kindle and iPad: wherever was convenient. And some magical mystical amazon internet god saved my place and let me open my book to the correct page, whichever technology I was using. And I can download a book from anywhere, nowadays even planes are offering WiFi…for a price.

Kindle and iPad side by side: outdoors

And so you ask, why do I continue to use both the iPad and Kindle to read? (The iPhone is easy: it’s always with me!) Blame the sun gods.

iPad outdoors: see the palm trees... behind me!

You’ve probably read alot about the e-reader glare factor. If, like moi, you read outdoors…or in the car…, sun glaring on your e-reader screen converts that screen from a reader to a mirror. I’ve purchased the adhesive glare screens for my iPad, and while they reduce the glare, its virtually impossible to be outside in the sun reading for more than a few minutes. So my Kindle remains close-by for dedicated reading, and my iPad is ready for multi-tasking.

Kindle and iPad side by side: indoors