A few rants about ereaders & ebooks

These are some recent thoughts and rants about ereaders and ebooks. I may be wrong on some things but you can correct me if I'm wrong. These are from the point of view of a kindle paperwhite reader. (The correct term should be e-reader but I don't like that plus I had been using ereader so why change?)

01 - Ereaders are expensive. I waited to buy my kindle ereader during a holiday so I can save some money but I didn't really save anything because amazon makes you pay to remove advertising from their kindles (at least the regular and paperwhite models) which is the dumbest thing in the world. A product that comes with advertising should have made me not want to buy it, right? I guess I'm one of those dumb consumers because I brought it and paid more to remove advertising because who wants advertising on their device? But at least, I didn't pay the full price.

02 - The problems with ereaders, once you choose one, you are sort of stuck within their eco-system which means you mostly use just one format of ebooks. I chose to get a kindle ereader (over nook and kobo) because I had the strange idea that the kindle format is more widely used and it was probably true when I brought it a few years ago but I guess it's changing a bit.
    Just because a device accepts this or that format, didn't mean it's easy to get them onto your device. Amazon did add support for epub books. The whole DRM (Digital Rights Management) issue does make it harder to get epub books onto a kindle. Some people remove the DRM to get books onto their kindle which legally is not legal, at least, not in the U.S. Lots of books comes DRM-free but most are not so it's sort of a headache if you don't know how to get epubs on your device. I was never able to get epub public library books onto my kindle but I can do it with regular DRM-free epub books. Books that are not kindle format aren't even labeled books, they are labeled documents.

03 - Ebooks are not equal to paper books in a lot of ways especially in terms of ownership. When you buy an ebook, you're not buying a book, you're buying the rights to read a book. (It says so in the Terms of Use - the Content Provider grants you a non-exclusive right to view, use, and display such Kindle Content aka books.) Besides that, you're just getting a file which you can access through an ereader or an app on your computer or other devices. You cannot resell ebooks as far I as I know because of DRM.
    Even if you've purchased a hardcover or paperback, you still don't own the rights but you can resell it and in that way, you do own it. I don't want to say it's all about money but it is. Even when we borrow books from our public library, the library purchase those books using our taxes.

04 - You know ebooks are definitely not like paper books because you can't toss it across the room and expect it to survive but you might break your expensive ereader instead. I'm not saying I have done that but paper books do have a better survival chance then ereaders when you drop them or toss them.

05 - One thing I really hate about ebooks is cover changes. I have a habit of removing books off my kindle when I don't want to re-read a book but when I do, I re-download the book and surprise! - new cover. Not all ebooks does this but I notice it's more frequent now to change covers because it's probably too freaking easy to do it. I'm sure this practice can be stopped but doubtful amazon or any book sellers would stop it because it does increase sells when a cover is changed because it brings new audience. But those who like or even love the old cover just get annoyed.

06 - Ebooks are just as expensive as paper books. I'm such a cheapskate that I'm unwilling to pay over 8 dollars for an ebook unless I'm certain I'll love the book which I doubt anyone's 100% about that because they usually haven't read the book yet. Technically, the prices of ebooks are about the same as paper books and once in a while, even more expensive. The thing you're saving money on is mostly not having to buy more book shelves.
   I think it's fair to consumers that pricing of ebooks shouldn't go over 8 dollars or heck, no more than 5 dollars (unless it's one of those illustrated books or photo books because photographers and illustrators need to get paid too.) It's not like you can buy a cheaper version of an ebook as there's no such thing as a used ebook, not like paperbacks and hardcovers, so the pricing will never go down unless there is a sale which usually didn't make them any cheaper.
    The other side of the argument is that authors/publishers/editors and all those folks who worked hard on putting out books deserve the money and yes, they do but books don't only come in ebook format so these folks also get paid from sales of other formats so I don't think we should feel sorry for them.

07 - There are reasonably priced ebooks or should I say cheap ebooks but most of them are lower in quality such as poor writing or covers that looked like it was put together by a first-time computer user or are usually from first time authors. But there are some gems in cheap ebooks. It's very tempting to purchase these cheap books because, well, they're cheap. I might have been reading a lot of cheap ebooks when I first got my kindle and I might have complained about their poor quality and yet, I get tempted to buy them, even now.
    The idea I like from these cheap ebooks is that, the first book of a series is sometimes free. Having the first book free allows readers to test drive an author's writing and test a first book in a series. I rarely purchase series as a whole (since most of the time it's damm expensive) so it would be nice to have the first book free because if I didn't like that first book, bye-bye series. Considering book series are getting longer, I think giving away the first book (not just for ebooks but for paper and audio also) is a great idea. I've read so many first book in a series that never got me to continue the series that I am now compelled to never purchase a first book in a series unless it was on sale.

08 - The great thing about reading ebooks are book samples. You can read samples of paper books but only if you're at the library or at a bookstore but with an ereader, you just download the sample from your ereader or on a browser through your amazon account (or whatever brand you're using). But not all ebook samples are equal. Sometimes you get to only see the cover, the credit pages and the content listing - I don't know what publishers/authors are thinking when they do this - they might as well just list the alphabets. A good book sample should be the first few chapters so we can get a taste of the writing.

09 - Borrowing ebooks from your local public library is a great thing unless the book you want to read is not in the format you can use on your ereader. Sadly, most books I want to read from the library does not come in kindle format. I can request the library to purchase a kindle format of a book which I had done only twice. One of the book actually got purchased after almost a year that I made the request and I had to cancelled my hold because I had already read it (in eaudio format) and didn't want to read the ebook anymore. Now I'm kind of sorry I made the request but it seems you can't unmake requests, at least, I don't know how as it doesn't even show on my library account. Now I'm hesitant in requesting the library to purchase kindle books because of budget cuts and considering they have most books in all the other format - paper, eaudio, epub, overdrive - it seems almost redundant.

10 - I'm not interested in color ereaders nor ereaders that does other things like taking notes, writing over the books or whatever. I don't read comics, manga, graphic novels, photo books or even audio books. Honestly, if I'm to read any of those books, I would prefer to read them in paper format rather than digital because reading them on a 6" screen is not great. And audio books - I can only tolerate them for short times so I rarely read them. Having said all that, I really don't need an ereader with a memory storage bigger than 8GB (which is really 6GB as they used 2GB to run the device) but now ereaders comes in 16GB, no 8GB, except for the older models. This increase in storage is supposedly to accomodate those reading comics, manga, graphic novels, photo books, audio books but it also means an increase in price which I minded since if I want to upgrade to the newest version, I'll pay more for storage I'm not even going to be using.
    
11 - So what's the conclusion? Don't go thinking using ereaders is as easy as opening a book. Most of the time, it's that easy, other times, if you want to go outside of your ereader's eco-system (reading formats other than what your ereader wants you to read), it's a pain in the ass.

Are you an ebook reader? Do you have any complaints about reading or purchasing ebooks?