Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Delays and Favourite online Bookstores.

Well, I have a dozen posts half written, but have not had time to finish and polish let alone post them.

So until then I thought might be worth it to mention some of the online Bookstores who have been very successful in parting me from my money :-).

First on the list is Fictionwise
With some of the best prices and selection (as they publish many new and upcoming authors themselves) it's the place I buy most of my books.

There are however a couple of drawbacks with how the site works. First to get the best prices you have to be a member of it's Buywise club which costs about $30 a year.

The membership gives you a straight discount of 15% on all list prices as well as credit for one book worth $10 so it actually only costs $15. Still there are regular offers when you can get the membership more or less free as you can get the cost of the membership credited back as Micropay which you can use to buy books.

That brings to another slight irritant in how Fictionwise works. They regularly offer discounts on the publishers suggested prices but require you to pay the full price and then credit you the savings back as Micropay. The irritating part is that you can not use the micropay to get books which have deeper discounts, well not unless you don't want the discount.

These are minor points, but should be kept In mind as how irritating this can be is very much dependent on your buying habits.

The other option I use frequently is BooksonBoard
Their prices are usually somewhere between Fictiowise's regular and club prices. So if you just want to buy a single book once in a while, it may work out cheaper.

This Is because BooksOnBoard usually offers the discounts directly on the purchase price, without you having to tie up your money in Micropay, or Reward dollars as BoB calls.

Still it's usually worth it to compare prices at both places as sometimes some books are cheaper at one or the other.

There are many other stores and you can find links to them at the Mobileread Wiki

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

eReading

I've slowly been transiting to digital reading as I run out of place to store books.
(There is only so much space in a house to store books, and I reached the limit ages ago. :p)

What does that mean ?

Well, it means that instead of buying a printed copy, i buy a eBook version and download it to my computer or reader to read.

By Reader I mean dedicated eBook readers like the Sony Reader, Cybook Gen3, Amazon Kindle, etc.

I'll be posting follow up post on the different readers available, and my thoughts on the pluses and minuses of each.

If you are interested in eBooks or Digital reading the best place to go for information and help is

Http://www.mobileread.com

And the Wiki there at

Http://wiki.mobilread.com

Relaunch

Well, Its been a long while since I've posted and since then I've gone through a lot of changes in my life and interests.

I'll be posting more regularly now, focusing on everything that interests me.

I'm starting off by posting a series of posts on Digital reading over the next couple of weeks.

Stay tuned