Friday, September 07, 2012

Kindles and why they annoy me...

Marcel needs some French novels to read - of course I have loads of classics but I wanted to give him something lighter and easy to start with so I tried thinking contemporary, mass-market - Marc Lévy sprung to mind immediately. Something like 'Et si c'était vrai' would be easy enough to build his confidence. I go on Amazon and I am offered the paperback at £3-89 (+£2-80) postage or the Kindle edition for £8-99 - that's a third dearer. Obviously I would prefer the Kindle edition. The last thing I need cluttering up my house is more books but the Kindle version is dearer, it won't necessarily be lying on my shelf in two or three years when Lots wants to read it, or ten when Amaia does, so I refuse to pay more money for something that has a shorter shelf life and is non-transferable. I have my dad's Kindle sitting here, and for me it is limited to a means of reading books that are out of copyright. I want Kindle book prices to reflect the fact that they can't be shared amongst family and friends. I want, like with CDs, to scan say the bar codes on my current four rooms of books so I can store then on that and not on bookshelves and I want what I buy to be future-proof. It just doesn't work for me as a format, yet.

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