I was listening to a radio interview on Friday about Boarders and Angus & Robertson. There were a number of ex-fanchiseees that said the problem wasn't the industry or market or legislation favouring o/s or online trading...it was just that these chains had a s#!th@use business model. One ex-fanchisee is now running a successful private book shop in the same spot where he had a failing Angus & Robertson store just a year earlier. He said K-Mart and Target routinely sell "front stock" (new titles) for 25-50% , so all the trade went there for new books. Whereas 60% of the demand in his store was for "back stock" older titles which the fanchise made it difficult order. He added that they centrally ordered books based on American tastes, not Aussie demand and could barely order for 1 store let alone over 100. This guy went out on his own as a specialty store ordering what the people wanted and was thriving. Moreover, another fanchisee added that the boarders model was too chaotic, based on paying exorbitant commercial rents and then putting coffee shops and all sorts of other 'faff' in the store so no one really knew what the core business was anymore. Boarders and A&R essentially just filled a neiche' no one really wanted. The slack had been taken up by the chain stores selling new titles and the smaller specialty shops selling back order titles.
Wow, that's definitely a swag of reasons not to own one. For the record, I won't buy one anyway. I still prefer to have the tried and true in hand on the train. No batteries. No faulty downloads. 100% ownership. I like that ideology.
I can't help you with poorly encoded eBooks but I find reviews have been helpful. As to the DRM issues ......... http://calibre-ebook.com/
Thats what turned me off buying. I bought from Amazon Dune 40th Anniversary edition. Found 22 errors which I highlighted and emailed to them. They claimed corrupted download. Tried it on an iphone with fresh download. Same errors. Posted back. They pulled the file for a week and put back up. Still same errors. So I just "acquire" the books elsewhere. I dont feel too bad about this as I have the hard copy already. They will definitely have to lift their game if they want a pedant like me back in the store.
I've got an A1 condition Kindle 2 with same condition cover that I'd swap for 4 ounces of silver. It has 3G and allows free browsing of websites. You can put your own pdf and mobi formatted books on it.
Soz Intelligencer, I don't trade my real money for depreciating luxury items. The stack is strong with this one...
I have to say though I dont consider these as luxury gadgets etc. I've read more books, more conveniently in the time I've had them than in the ten years before. Its definitely a paradigm shift for those who enjoy reading. I felt ambivalent before I got one. I've bought a lot of things in my life and it really is not an understatement to say that an ereader has been one of the best buys ever. Its paid for itself many times over in purely the knowledge and enjoyment I've gotten out of it. Some libraries were thinking of lending these out at one poibt. Try one out for a while and you'll see what I mean.
Perhaps it's just the Kindle reader and it's user interface I don't like. I have to say it's very uninspiring. Navigation is far from intuitive. It's not very smooth. Doing anything with the keyboard is just awkward. I actually looked round to see if anyone had written a better interface that I could install on it, but no such luck. Maybe touchscreen would be better. Anyway, I'm considering an Android pad atm, don't know what they are like as readers though. Tried calibre and "free" books but found it was lot of hit and miss.
This is one of the major downsides to ebooks, I love lending my books and borrowing other's books. Obviously books with photos don't really work either. Music(CDs) and movies(DVDs) will be virtually totally replaced by digital equivalents. I would even say also newspapers and magazines the same. Books, I'm not so sure yet.
Necro-thread police... activate maximum knicker twist - I am reviving a thread from 2011. Exciting development with "American Psycho". Someone spotted it on a bookshelf in Adelaide without the citizen safety plastic. A police raid ensued and now Adelaide's book-browsing public is once again safe from exposure to this bookshop terror. Hoorah!
It is so not. There's a reason it's called 'American Psycho' and not just 'psycho', and it's not because of copyrite.
There's a reason it's called 'American Psycho' and not just 'Psycho' and it's not due to copyrite but it is due to CAPITALISatioM.
