Re: The Old Favorite

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> You can adjust the font size on any e-reader and there are many books
> that are free though sites like Project Gutenberg that you can legally
> download to any e-reader. A lot of the Kindle only free books are books
> that are self-published through Amazon publishing and according to my
> mom, there are reasons many of them are free. (And she's nowhere near as
> picky as I am.)

Oh, yeah, that's very true. And some writers who've picked up contracts with real publishers after successfully selling many, many books on Amazon, well, I don't quite get the fuss. Hugh Howey is one of them. I only read the Kindle sampler of 'Wool', and it wasn't good enough for me to spend real money on it. (This was before it was picked up by a publisher.) I did read First Shift, however, as it was free at the time. I came away from it wondering what the fuss was all about and thinking that Howey, or at least the society he created (which was meant to be our society in the mid-20th century), was incredibly sexist. *sigh*  But a lot of other people love his work, so what do I know? :)  I only can hope that 

Occasionally, however, there will be good books for free -- sometimes the first book in a series will be free for a short while to try to lure in readers to buy the rest.

>
> I will always avoid Amazon whenever possible. As previously noted. I'm
> not picking on you here Sibyl, this is simply because I dislike Amazon
> and try to get the word out on alternatives whenever possible.

I know, I know. If it weren't for the Kindle I own, I would avoid Amazon even more than I do now. It's not just what they're doing to book and music sales; it's also about, at least in the UK, how they mistreat their floor employees and how they avoid paying UK, German, French taxes, and even, to some extent, American tax by having a headquarters in Luxembourg. 

Sadly, Kindle has its claws well into the UK. For a while, before reading books on mobiles and tablets were the norm, Kindles and Sony e-readers were the big thing here. Waterstones sold Sony e-readers to try to compete with Kindle. Borders UK had the Kobo, but then Borders UK (and soon Borders USA) died. Smiths later picked up the Kobo, but it was a while after Borders closed their doors over here. The Nook only made its UK debut in November 2012. Foyles and Blackwells are among the places selling Nooks in the UK. Waterstones now sells Kindles, btw; they dumped Sony with a change in management and picked up the Kindle in 2012. Their demise was predicted from the start, but so far they're still there. I have noticed, though, that smaller Waterstones, such as our local one*, have reduced the Amazon space in the store from what it was originally.

Perhaps the advent of reading books on tablets and phones will change things.

* Yes, our local bookshop is a Waterstones. When I first moved here, it was an independent bookshop that had been in the family for ages, but they sold it to Ottakars, which was a small chain of British bookshops that didn't tend to be located in big cities. Waterstones later bought out Ottakars. Someone I know in local Pagan circles has a daughter who used to manage an Ottakars and now manages the same shop under the Waterstones name. My friend reports that her daughter makes more money under Waterstones than she did with Ottakars, but that's really the only positive. With Ottakars, she got to decide what books to order and which books to feature in her store for her customers. Unfortunately, Waterstones makes those decisions for local managers, which is one reason why so many Waterstones look the same. On the other hand, I'm glad that we at least have a bookshop in town.

Ellen

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