Paranormal Romance & Urban Fantasy discussion
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Step away from the mouse...
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Take a deep breath, now imagine the guy that played the cannibal on Con air, one of the friends of Armegeddon, and one of the wagon drivers on lonesome dove as your hero and if the urge doesn't leave I dunno what to tell you.
You know, you don't necessarily have to OWN a book in order to read it. We do have a place that's called a l-i-b-r-a-r-y. I work at one and we can get almost any book you want for you to borrow for a while to read. And guess what, it's all free! How about that? :-)
PBS helping me save a TON by switching to swapping...hehe...instead of buying everything I want. Better than even buying used. Amazon IS great but can't get better than over $500.00 in savings just from listing a few books online (what I have and what I want.) Any questions just post here or PM me dear. It is quite the hard choice to not buy when amazon KNOWS your exact vise from what you have bought before. She knows how to dangle that carrot =)Kenjii
Joseph, some people don't like used books or to have to read the book on a deadline (3 weeks and if it's late, there's a fee). I used to work at the library for about 3 years and some of the books were gross to open. I don't want to be reading over someone else's encrusted boogers, personally, so that could be the deal with traceyellen.
Traceyellen- Have you tried Bookfree or any other online book rentals. It's a great service. Sort of like netflixs for books. I love it , it saves me alot of money.
I've tightened my budget too and stopped buying books. Now I get them from the library. If they don't have what I want then I use the interlibrary loan system to try and get it. I'm a fast reader so I don't mind the time limit and I can always go online and check the book out again. And, all the books I've checked out so far have been hardbacks which I really like. The larger print is great for my old eyes. I just resist the urge to pick at anything crusty Ranata..Ha Ha. You would encounter the same thing with book swap sites and used book stores too. I don't think it's just the library patrons who have less then stellar hygiene habits :)I like the idea of supporting my local libraries too. There are a lot of people would have to give up reading if it weren't for having access to free books.
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The library system that I belong to has this system where I can actually reserve books online and have them deliver to my doorstep for free. It is so cool. Furthermore, I can renew three times, giving me a maximum of 9 weeks, if I get really busy or slow on my reading, and I can do all my renewals online. And since they are quite current when it comes to their paranormal selection, I don't really have that long to wait.
Also, as part of my library membership, I get access to online resources where i can download audiobooks and e-books.
So I might not be owning more books, but I'm definitely still happily reading...with no dent on my pocket and with very little inconvenience.
Joseph -- Much as we all love libraries, they have problems. They don't get new genre books right away, plus some (most?) don't order very many romances, or only those from the NYT bestsellers. Most romance fans far outpace the library's acquisitions department in the number of books they read every month, and even those who don't would find their selection pretty restricted and several months out of date.Libraries are lovely for research, for classics, or for catching up on the backlist of an author you've just discovered. But if you want the newest, the hottest, category romances, or anything out of the mainstream, you're going to have to buy.
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All great recommendations---to the library point---I really have a thing about keeping my books (I'm a re-reader!). I also like to pass them around and share. I will probably check out the library for the less than stellar series that I have started, but not liked enough to buy the rest.I did try bookfree back in January and the shipping was way too slow for me (took 13 days to get my 1st shipment). Don't know if maybe it had to do with where I live???
I have some borrowed books and quite a bit to re-read so I don't need new ones now...I just really really want them :)
I love the library, but it's those bloody overdues. D:traceyellen, I've heard that if you get the more books at a time package, the books arrive faster, but I'm not sure.
I also had issues with bookfree on not being able to totally control the order they were sent in which is no good for someone who is addicted to the series, like me. No good when you get book 2 and 5 and still need to read 1, 3 and 4!
LOL, that happened to me too. Quite frustrating, I agree. I had to keep my list to one or two books.
Actually BF have the set sequence button where you set the sequence of how books are shipped. That helps with books in a series. My only problem with them is the waiting for books to arrive. It has gotten better but still. I use to love the library but I had too many overdues and I kept getting parking tickets. It was costing me way too much to go to the library LOL. If they'd deliver my books I'd close my BF account down :)
LOL, too true, Jael. I'd jump on that in a heartbeat. The sequence button did help though, you're right.
I use swaptree and have been generally happy with it. The condition of the books is pretty good. I've just had one CD that I swapped for that arrived with the wrong disc in the case, but as soon as I told the swapper, she quickly went on Amazon and sent me a brand new one.One drawback is you can't set the order of the series. For example, I've had 2 and 3 of one series and been waiting for about a month for someone to post no. 1 for trade before I started the series).
But if you don't tend to keep books, you can get one in and when you're done with it just move it from the "not trading" to "trading" folder.
If you go on, look for me -- I have a lot of PNR posted right now. I'm mansiongal. And I promise I'll ship within two days of the trade being accepted. :)
I refuse to do the library thing. Chalk it up to a bad experience as a teen that left me hating the system. Won't go there unless someone hog-ties and blindfolds me... Not even for a million bucks.I can say, however, is try second-hand/used book stores. You pay about half the price of a new book, and you'd be surprised at what you can find. I've bought some for $4.50 (cdn) a book and they look brand spanking new! Plus, if you have books that you know you won't read again and aren't necessary to keep, you can bring them to a used book store where they'll give you an in-store credit - then you can go nuts and get more books. What's great about walking into a used bookstore is you can flip through the pages before bringing them home. That way, no surprises!
Breaking book buying addiction is difficult, good luck with that! I stepped away from the mouse awhile back, still feeling the withdrawal.
Local libraries vary alot. Lucky to live in an excellent library district, books not available at my local brach are quickly and automatically transferred from another branch. About 95% of my genre and new releases are available and over half the erotica I order...who would have thought? Even less known authors and small imprints are surprisingly available.
Paperbackswap is an online (USB) book trading site, just pay postage on the books you ship out (approx $2.40 ea). The books you request to receive are free. It's a wonderful service.
Local libraries vary alot. Lucky to live in an excellent library district, books not available at my local brach are quickly and automatically transferred from another branch. About 95% of my genre and new releases are available and over half the erotica I order...who would have thought? Even less known authors and small imprints are surprisingly available.
Paperbackswap is an online (USB) book trading site, just pay postage on the books you ship out (approx $2.40 ea). The books you request to receive are free. It's a wonderful service.
Good luck with that! I've been trying for years to break my addiction to buying books! Just the other day, I went to Borders Books and I told myself that I could only buy the 1 book that I was going there specifically for. I ended up leaving with 4.
I am completely, totally, hopelessly addicted to books. I must buy the physical object so I can look at it, stroke it and love it any time I have the urge. Preferably in hardback. Books are my drug of choice. Luckily my husband realizes I don't have any other addictions that cost us money, so he doesn't fight me on it.I like libraries... but I don't want to give it back. The book is mine, mine, mine. I am very happy to loan them out. In my office I am the librarian, and people have been very kind to my books.
I have had good luck buying the "New and Used" option through Amazon. Good clean copies, quick and inexpensive.
Someday I will have a room in my house just for my books. And a comfy chair. And a reading lamp.
I'm with you Terri--totally addicted. I like to have them and keep them to pluck off the shelf at a whim or pick up a book just to read a favorite scene (bathroom scene in V's book anyone?) Amazon is my weakness. I love, clicking away at whatever catches my eye, reading the user reviews, perusing the listmania stuff, putting books in the shopping cart, taking them out in favor of something else that catches my eye (putting the fist ones back in again--hey, I'm indecisive!)---finally hitting the "check out button" and impatiently wait for a box to show up at my door. Between the 4 for 3 promotions, no tax and free shipping, it's less costly than hitting up a local book store and I am far too indecisive to buy a book without being able to click on the stars to see what others had to say about it!
I'm hopeless!
Lisa,The trick is to get to know your librarians. If they know you by sight and know what you like to read, they will want to order books that you want to read.
I am a recovering book addict. Not because I've given up reading, God forbid!
But because my house is literally exploding with books. My husband and I share a two bedroom house with five dogs and 12 overflowing bookcases. (When we moved in 7 years ago, we came with 52 boxes of books. And we've bought plenty of books since then, so I really don't want to think about moving anytime soon.)
Then last year, Amazon introduced the Kindle. I thought 'how cool is that,' but couldn't begin to justify the price tag. So, I kept buying books.
But after another six months of thinking about it, I finally decided that the price really was worth it. For no other reason than our house. I could save SPACE if not money. Not to mention the less stuff to clean part!
I bought a Kindle the first week of July. I haven't looked back - and I haven't picked up a book since then either. I've downloaded tons of free classics from around the 'net, and I've downloaded entire series from Amazon that I'd never have spent the money on if I were buying in book form. Amazon also offers free titles periodically just to entice new readers on the Kindle - when's the last time you got a book to own for free?
Since July, I've collected around 200 titles on my Kindle, and I've read about half of them so far. The Kindle's how I discovered Sookie Stackhouse, the Twilight series, the Undead of MaryJanice Davidson, and the mysteries of J D Robb. The pricetags on the electronic books are less than new paperbacks these days, too, so I'm saving a little bit of money after all. And to be able to travel with only one 'book' in hand? How cool is that?!
Happy reading!
I have been seriously considering the Kindle, but I just worry that the books that I want wont be available on there. Have you had any problems with that? Also, when a new book comes out, is it available at the same time on the Kindle as it is in regular book form?
Kindle IS GREAT!I bought one in the middle of October and love mine too. Unlike most readers I bought mine in order to read manuscript submissions. It works great for that. It easily imports and reads Word files, so essentially anything that IS a Word file or that can be saved as a Word file is readable on a Kindle. This includes a lot of PDF ebooks which can be opened, saved to text, and then the text file opened using Word, then saved to Word.
I have also bought more books since owning the Kindle, partly because it is there and handy. If I am riding in the car and everyone else is absorbed in their thoughts or listening to music I can surf Amazon and buy a book or two or three. It's also great when waiting in the car for people to come out of work or school. It only takes a few minutes to Kindle-surf to Amazon and look around. A lot of times I am just looking and don't really buy...but other times I am enticed. With one click ordering it is SO EASY.
As a publisher (Black Velvet Seductions) I cannot really see a downside to publishers making their books available for the Kindle. It is really just a matter of typing in a few bits of information and submitting a file which contains the book. Software takes the rtf file and turns it into the file for the Kindle. It takes less than five minutes to make the Kindle file for a normal paperback. I am sure it would take longer and be a more involved process for books with pictures, charts, and diagrams, but I still don't expect that it would be a prohibitive factor.
Amazon reports that they have all but a few of the most recent best-sellers so I would assume that big publishers as well as smaller publishers are making their books availble for Kindle. Black Velvet Seductions titles have been available for the Kindle since the launch of Kindle.
I don't know about other publishers and when they release the various versions of their books. We release ours within a day or two of each other. This is more related to how fast Amazon gets things listed on their site than when we submit them. Paper books usually take about a week from the time they are submitted. Ebooks at Fictionwise are submitted on Wednesday night and are released the following Monday. We release first on Fictionwise, then on our site, then on other sites. This is because Fictionwise is predictable. We know when the books will be released there. They do the formatting of our ebooks, and we buy their files for distribution to other sites that sell ebooks, including our own.
I have heard a lot of people mention being worried about the availability of certain books weighing into their decision to buy or not buy the Kindle. My thoughts are this....
Buying a Kindle does not mean you can never buy a paper book again. While your Kindle might become your preferred method of reading, it doesn't mean that you couldn't buy a paper book if a book you wanted was not available for the Kindle. I expect that the number of unavailable books will shrink over time as I believe that the Kindle is here to stay. Our sales of Kindle format books has grown steadily since the launch of the Kindle last year. I expect them to continue to grow, particularly after Christmas as I expect that Kindles are on a lot of Christmas lists.
What I've noticed in my own reading habits is that there are books I buy on audio. I have a subscription at Audible.com and I get two books a month there. I spend at least 40 minutes a day driving so that driving time is time that I can use to "read" using audio books. I also read on the Kindle. I continue to buy paperbacks as well.
In general, my paperback purchases have become fewer, my audio book and Kindle book purchases have grown. Most of my paperback purchases are used paperbacks through paperbackswap.com or through my local used book store. I still buy some paper books new but a lot of them are non-fiction titles which are more difficult to find used or which include material you want to have in paper format for some reason. (I still am not a big user of the highlight and clipping features of the Kindle. I know it is there...but for reference books that I refer to a lot I still prefer paper or cheat sheets.)
It could be that I am abnormal. That my reading habits are different. But I see kind of a broadening of the ways in which we read. We are all busier...our world is changing at an astonishing rate which means there is more knowledge out there to gain... Just seems to make sense that we would become more adept at taking advantage of the odd moments...whether to read fiction or non-fiction. It makes sense that the convenience of having one book device that contains both fiction and non-fiction titles would be a big factor in an increasingly fast-paced world.
Okay, there you have it, my .02.
Kelley Anne - I also wondered if I'd find the books I wanted on the Kindle before I got one. My suggestion is to search the Amazon site using the Kindle Store and search for your favorite authors - if they're in the Kindle Store, you shouldn't have any problems.
Also, I've had great luck with the 'request this book on the Kindle' tab on Amazon's site. I've requested several of them and I'd say at least half have already been brought over to Kindle format.
As for the dates of release - I use my Kindle for mainly pleasure reading and almost all of my titles have been available the same day as the hardback. If they are later, its usually no more than a week or so. And the price is usually at least half of the hardback price, too.
There are a few notable exceptions - J.K. Rowling absolutely refuses to allow her books to be put into any kind of ebook format, including the Kindle. But for most authors, the chance to win another reader is getting more of them into the ebook format.
Lauire -
Good to meet another happy Kindle user! And yeah, I've fallen in love with the ability to add Word files onto it. The Kindle has definitely added convenience to my reading experience.
Kindle isn't offered in Canada as of yet, but I was wondering what it was. Like reading a book, right? Like on your PDA or Blackberry or something like that?
Kindle is an ebook format made especially for the Kindle handheld Reader put out by Amazon, Gina. :) I think those books are exclusive to the Kindle-- can't be read by other devices as far as I know, but I could be wrong.
Gina - The Kindle's a device on its own, it fits your hand like an oversized paperback and it looks like a weird hybrid between a blackberry and a very small notebook PC. Kind of hard to explain, but if you can find a pic you might understand. Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_K... for the pic.
I also have a kindle, I received it as a gift and I think that it will def help me save not only money but also shelf space. I literally have no more room left and have resorted to stacking books on top of books already on the shelf. Now I have no more room to do that either.I also use the library. I'm from New York and the library system that I have is pretty cool. You can go online and request a book and it will be delivered to your library. There are about 20-30 libraries in the system so you are bound to find what you are looking for.
But yes, I still buy books. Too many. Hence my lack of shelf space. It's gotten to the point where I have to hide my Barnes and Noble bags so people don't know I'm bringing more books into the house. Then I'll get yelled at. haha. I can't help it, I am addicted. It doesn't help that while on goodreads, I find new series books all the time. :)
I thought the Kindle idea was pretty neat - until I found out it wasn't yet available in Canada. Sucks to be me, I guess. Do the novels download right to your Kindle? What happens when you have no more memory space for more books?
Yep, you can search Amazon and buy Kindle edition books on the Reader. I don't think you can browse other sites, unfortunately. You can use SD memory cards to store more books or delete those on your Kindle to make room for more. I think that's the case with most Readers.
You can delete the books from your kindle and it will stay on your online amazon account. You can then send those books back to your kindle whenever you want.Gina I hope that they release the kindle in Canada soon! It really is worth it
Gina - there's a memory card slot in the Kindle, like new_user said, but you can also download them from your Kindle to your computer to keep them. The titles are always availalble on Amazon's site, like Jess said, for resend to your Kindle, too - but that doesn't help you if you've created your own Word files or downloaded from sites other than Amazon. For those, a computer backup is a good idea.And new_user - yes you can surf on the Kindle, but its ugly. I've actually gotten my email from home on my Kindle when I was out of town and didn't have a computer handy. It just takes a while to figure out the controls when you do it.
As for Canada getting the Kindle, Gina - I read somewhere that its the lack of availability to the 'whisper net' feature that's holding it back. If you don't mind downloading the books to your computer, then downloading those to your Kindle, you could probably use one in Canada. I believe that's what users in Alaska are doing.
Happy reading!
I'll have to look into that. I'm sure Alaska can probably get it - it is a U.S. state after all, LOL! There are perks to being Canadian and sometimes it sucks, LMAO! Thanks, ladies!
I have probably close to 1000 books. I don't want to give them up and there is just something soothing about holding a book in my hands to read, the feel of the paper, the scent of fresh ink, or even old ink (I buy the majority of my books used), so no matter what I do, I'll a;ways buy books.However, I do read ebooks as well, I probably have 1000 of those, too, lol. I currently read them on an older Palm IIIX which I bought on ebay for about $10. I've about worn it out now and can't see the pixels very well any more.
i saw a Sony E-Reader in Borders one day and though the price is about $300 that's what I've asked for for Christmas this year. It'll never replace my "real" books, but I definitely want one now.
Please read my blog on why people should buy books for holiday gifts:http://mysterygal.bravejournal.com
Swapping and buying used books has its place, especially to obtain an author's backlist, but if you want your favorite authors to keep writing the stories you love, it's their most recent book that counts when sales are tallied.
I am not sure how ebook versions figure into the equation, so my post mainly refers to print editions.
(sits shaking from book crack detox)