Cheap E-books!
June 24, 2009 at 2:22 pm | In Book Services | 3 CommentsIt’s possible I’m the last person on the bandwagon with this e-book thing, and everyone else has already figured this out. Anyway, you know the whole Sony Reader/Kindle battle? Which high-priced, sexy bit of electronics are you supposed to buy if you want to read e-books? I admit that I was starting to covet one, but I just couldn’t get over that whole price thing. Sometimes even free is too expensive.
It occurred to me that I could use my old Palm Pilot as an e-reader, as I’ve already done with free e-books from manybooks.net for years now. Sure enough, it is possible to buy books in the Palm OS format, using a free e-reader software. I went to Fictionwise, which is apparently run by Barnes & Noble, and found the book I wanted (The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink). I registered and downloaded the book in under 10 minutes, and it’s reading fine. I compared prices, and while it was about $2 more than Sony’s price and nearly double Amazon’s Kindle price, there’s a kicker.
I bought my Palm for $50 nearly five years ago. I checked current prices on eBay, and the same model now sells for $3.99. That’s an awful lot cheaper even than buying the Kindle or Sony Reader devices on eBay at steep discount. Even if you read a book a day like I do, it would take a pretty big stack of slightly cheaper titles to catch up to the initial investment in either higher-end device. Besides, they’re all black and white.
The caveat is that my Palm m500 has about a 2″-square reading area. But I’m used to it. Plus I carry it in my purse anyway, as my calendar, address book, grocery list, cookbook, e-mail reader, game player, notepad, etc etc. The battery life is amazing – I only charge it about once a week – and I know if I broke it I could replace it inexpensively and simply download the contents onto a new device. I hate to say it, but it looks like 2009 is going to have to work harder to catch up to 2001.
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Pingback by books » Blog Archive » Cheap E-books! « Both Eyes Book Blog — June 24, 2009 #
That is such a good idea! I love these money saving tips! I think my husband has an old one lying around – I’m going to see if it still works!
Comment by Jackie (Farm Lane Books) — June 25, 2009 #
I guess it would be more accurate to say “Cheap E-reader.” It turns out I paid the same as I would have paid for a new paperback edition. That’s fine, because it was more convenient for me to download it. But I looked up another book I was reading (from the library) on the same site, and they were charging $24.95. That’s the hardcover price, while the book is currently in print in paperback at significantly less.
Note to Barnes & Noble: Why would you assume readers will pay *more* for a book they can’t share or resell when they are done?
Comment by Jessica Coleman — June 25, 2009 #