Kindle pros and cons, tips?

[Varjak]

Sadly, this is not just e-books. I read several newspapers a day and magazines, books, etc. The most common errors are like the one you described: a real word is substituted for another word so the spell-checker doesn't 'catch' it. More often you see mistakes of more similar words: their/there/they're, then/than, it's/its, to/too, etc. In most cases, I'm sure the writer knows the difference; but they're human and make mistakes. I know the differences and yet I sometimes type the wrong thing as well. As you say, the budgets are to blame. No one actually READS the books or articles thoroughly.

[r0k]

I use the Kindle software on my iPhone, iPad, Mac, Galaxy Player, and formerly on my Sylvania tablet. I like the fact I can read books just about anywhere but it annoys me that Amazon (or somebody pulling Amazon's strings) has so much control. For instance, some of my books have a device limit. What if I put them on cloud reader on my laptop and the thing dies? That dead copy counts against my device count.

Then there's the whole library lending fiasco. If I buy a Kindle Fire, which arguably has an even worse Android interface than my pathetic Sylvania tablet, I can borrow books but I can only read the borrowed books on the Fire. What good is that? I can read anything I own anywhere but if I want to read the "free" titles available to Prime members, I must do it on Kindle hardware. Rather than tempting me to buy a Kindle, this has me looking for new formats.

Then there's the cost issue. I purchased about 8 books in the Ender's game series. I loved reading them and don't begrudge Amazon the 8 bucks each, but now I'm done with them. I want to pass the along to my wife. I can't do that. I can't even loan 'em to her. And to think Tor books made headlines saying they were gonna remove DRM. Why don't they start by allowing their books to be "loaned" from one Kindle account to another?

[questionfear]

Actually Raspy I bet if you asked for a refund they'd give it to you. Amazon's customer service is usually pretty good with that stuff.

Just be glad you didn't buy on the NOOK platform...you might find that sloppy editing rewrote War and Peace!

[raspabalsa]

Yes, they said exactly that. But I don't think I'm not going to ask for a refund. I already removed the DRM of the two books that had the most errors, and found that with Calibre I can "explode" the book so I can access pictures and text (in HTML). I edited the HTML set of one of the novels, then rebuilt the book, free of the glaring errors I found. Took me all of 1.5 hours, not counting the time I spent searching for the questionable plugins! Why can't Amazon/editors/publishers/kindle development team/anyone in the business devote as much time to ensure a higher quality product is beyond me.

Very funny story about War and Peace. "Superior" formatting indeed!

[Varjak]

Did anyone catch this:

'Little Dorito' and More: Suggestions for Literary Product Placement - NYTimes.com

Now that's an e-reader wrinkle.