Reading Habits

 

My reading habits have changed considerably over the last few years – how about yours?

Here are the main ways I’ve changed:

1) I much (much) prefer reading on my Kindle. Much. For one thing, I mostly read while I eat lunch – it’s how I get in five decent half-hour reading sessions a week – and it’s really, supremely, awkward to hold print books and eat. The Kindle has spoiled me.

2) I use OverDrive a LOT. I actually love the ease of finding and downloading books from the Ottawa Public Library using the OverDrive App on my Kindle Fire. I love how they return automatically – no late fees! I also love the reading interface. One thing I don’t like as much about pure Kindle books is they show you a percentage of the whole book read. OverDrive tells you how many pages you have left in your chapter. Very handy when deciding whether to start a new chapter!

 

3) I rarely – almost never – buy traditionally published books. I’ll buy indie-pubbed books from some of my favourite authors – Natalie Keller Reinert, Mara Dabrishus, Kim Ablon Whitney, Maggie Dana, Kate Lattey, etc. … but I check trad-pubbed books out of the library.

4) I read lots of series. When I find an author I like, the OverDrive app makes it super easy to search for all the books in the series, put holds on them, and wait for the email telling me I can download them. So easy …

Twice, recently, I’ve contemplated buying a traditionally published book. This is what happened:

Situation One:

I had read all 17 books in this author’s series in less than a year and I was really, really enjoying them. The author had a brand new book out – with something like 48 people ahead of me in the hold line at the library – so I thought I’d maybe buy Book 18 to take on a family trip. I figured the eBook would cost around $10, but I thought I’d already read all the others through the library, and it was for a specific trip, so OK.

I went to Amazon, found the new book, and the eBook was $17.99. No, that’s not a typo – it wasn’t $7.99, it was $17.99. The paperback was $16.30. So it was $1.69 MORE for a digital file I would have the licence to, but not really own.

I will NOT pay $17.99 for an eBook …

Now, I was a fan of this author, but being his fan had not rendered me completely senseless. To be perfectly honest, I believe pricing like that is actually insulting to readers. It’s like publishers saying “This is what we think of you – we think you’re pretty dumb.” Although this author has another, parallel series, I haven’t started reading it. I’ve moved on.

Situation Two:

I moved on to another trad-pubbed author I quite liked. For similar reasons to above, I thought I’d give it another try and maybe buy her book. I went to the Kindle store, and it was $8.99, which is close to my all-time limit of $9.99 but just within it. I figured I’d already read one of her books from the library, and got the other on Kindle for about $2, so the overall cost of three books averaged out was reasonable.

I bought the book.

A few pages in, I realized I’d read this book before. Which was a bit disappointing. However, her books were well-written, it was a mystery and I couldn’t remember the details of the plot, so I decided to keep it.

I powered down my Kindle, and the next time I powered it up I got a warning message that the brand-new book, that I had fully paid for and downloaded directly from the Kindle store to my Kindle was DRM-protected and I would have to jump through multiple hoops to be able to read it.

I don’t take kindly to having my eBooks locked up.

Um, yeah, it took me two seconds to decide to return it. What a joke. Bad enough that DRM catches innocent people when they do something perfectly legal like try to read a book (which they paid for) on a different device (which they own), but this was the 100 per cent most straightforward way in the world to buy and read a book and the publisher was putting all kinds of roadblocks in my way.

I find it hard sometimes to understand which century publishers think they’re operating in. It’s so simple to get pricing and DRM right, that I can only conclude they don’t want to.

Just as an aside, if you’re not familiar with this 1) Pricing – when you upload a book, Amazon will provide a recommended price at which you will get the most sales and make the most royalties. It’s in Amazon’s best interests to get this right, as they only make money when your books sell. And, just for reference, they do NOT recommend $17.99 for mystery novels. 2) DRM – couldn’t be simpler. When you upload a book, Amazon asks you if you want to impose DRM on it, or not. If you care about your readers, you’ll choose NOT.

There – done – two problems solved and many more sales that publishers would be making to people like me.

The advice is free – although probably I should quadruple that amount to play the publishers at their own game.

What are your book-reading / book-buying habits these days?