Considering kindle-have questions

[ctp]

Hello, everybody. I'm considering getting a kindle (touch, by the way) in the near future and I'm curious about a few things:

Is the fact that everything is reformatted for the six inch screen ever a problem? I'm guessing newer books are available with a kindle-friendly page design but what about older books?

How annoying is it to buy books you already own? Luckily, all of the Sherlock Holmes stories and Shakespeare plays are in the public domain but having to buy all of Michael Crichton's books a second time might be a deal breaker.

How little light can you read in?

Thanks,
c

[Betsy the Quilter]

You need the same amount of ambient light you would need for a paper book, the screen is not backlit unless you get a Fire.

Personally, I don't see a huge reason to repurchase most paper books I already own, as I already own them in a readable form.  Books in an ongoing series...I am rebuying, gradually, e JD Robb series and the Lee Child Reacher series as all future books in that series will be purchased on Kindle.  So, no, I'm not annoyed.  It's my choice to buy or not.

The books (except some in PDF format, reflow on the page based on the font size selected, so it's not a problem.

Jump in, the water's fine!  

And welcome to KindleBoards!

Betsy

[LaraAmber]

The reformatting can be a problem in some instances.  Frequently graphs and maps won't look right, or be rendered so small to be unreadable.  So if you're reading a graph/map heavy volume you might want to check out the sample first or check out the reviews and see if other readers have complained about it.  The second issue I've come across is that some books the publishers scanned to make the electronic copy (older books, can't find the non-layout electronic copy of the file).  This is done with sophisticated software that reads each word, 99% of the time it works great, but sometimes it comes across something in the layout so that two words get smushed together, a word gets split or God gets turned into Cod (which made a funny read when one of the main characters was a priest and nattered on about Cod all the time).  If you report this to the publisher (and author) they will go back and correct the errors, but it will take time.  Otherwise, it's wonderful.  Most authors take a great deal of pride in their work and would throw a hissy fit to end all hissy fits if a sub-standard version got posted by their publisher, after all those guys are taking a cut of the money, they better earn it!!!

I did repurchase a lot of books I already owned, but then I also had a space issue to consider and needed to make room, so the books were sold. 

I would caution against thinking you will get all the public domain books for free.  The free version are usually missing something: a working table of contents, footnotes, detailed information from a historian, and for foreign works it will be an old translation.  So it can frequently be worth it to pay for those works for those features, but you're talking $1.99 instead of $8. 

I'd say right now 80% of books I've purchased have been nearly flawless: working footnote links, nice chapter headings, no weird editing errors.  The other 20% is about 19% nearly perfect (just a few small mistakes easily ignored) and 1% OM*G Did You Even Look At This Before You Listed It For Sale.

 

[ctp]

Thanks, guys.

How do you feel about the availability of books? Where can you get books other than the kindle store?

[Andrew Kaufman]

I have to admit, it took me a bit to get used to the smaller screen, but I eventually became accustomed to it, and before long, didn't think anything of it. One thing that makes the difference is how large you set your font. If it's huge, then yes, the small screen can seem a bit cumbersome (at least for me it was) since so little of the text fills so much of the  screen. When set at a smaller size, however, it doesn't seem any different than reading a regular pocket book.

It's all relative, I guess.

Hope this helps some.

[history_lover]

The text in Kindle books are fluid so the size of the screen doesn't matter. You can adjust the size of the text to suit your eyes and the text will readjust to fit the screen properly. Just like a word document, for example... you can change the size of your document and the text will adjust to fit it. PDFs are the exception because they have set pages and the text is not fluid.

I don't tend to reread books so I don't have a desire to rebuy books I've already read in print. Don't forget that buying a Kindle doesn't mean you can't still enjoy paper books too. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

People say there are other places to buy books for Kindle but I've never used them. The vast majority of books I want to read are available from the Kindle store and the few that aren't I'm happy to put them on my Kindle-watch list at www.ereaderiq.com and wait. Other people are happy to buy them in print - like I say, it doesn't have to be Kindle or nothing.

[jbcohen]

All the information posted already is correct so I will not go over that grounds again and instead I will attempt to cover new grounds.  I would not repurchase the books that you were talking about, I would simply leave them in the old format and read them either on kindle for PC or your old reader, if that is still available.  I would make a division between the old and the new starting with your acquisition of the new kindle, anything you buy after that date will be in the new format and everything bought before that date will be archived and left in the old format.

As far as the availability of books goes that is one of the major reason why I selected the kindle in the first place.  I like the availability of low cost ($4 and below) and free books.  I have not been able to find any other store that can match amazon in terms of the breadth of low cost books that they can offer and the quality of those books. Sure Barns and Nobles has quite a few low cost books (for them that means $8 and under) and free novels but nothing like what amazon was able to offer. Still when you buy a kindle you give up one thing, the ability to march into an amazon store in your neighborhood and talk to a technician. Now I know amazon has great customer service but there is nothing like being able to talk to a tech standing in front of you. The number of the low cost and free books allows me to pinch the long term costs of owning a kindle much more then I would be able to with a nook.