e-bollocks
I love my Kindle, but dang Amazon is making it hard to buy exactly the sort of book I like.
F’rexample, I love me some non-fiction crime and police books. I hate fictional murder mysteries and police procedurals.
You know how you tell the difference between true and fictional crime online? In fiction, the synopsis has adjectives. You know, “irascible police Inspector Slab Hardcheese” or “spunky detective Dick Trouble.” That’s it. That’s the only way. You’d think there’d be a fiction tag or or a subcategory something, but no.
To be fair, that’s been a gripe of mine for years — I belonged to a crime-themed book club for a while that made not the slightest distinction between true and fiction — but Kindle is worse, since only a tiny percent published books are available as e-books.
There seem to be three classes of book available for Kindle: really old (and often pretty lame, outside the classics) for free. Current titles, for the same money as a real book (yeah. Not going there). And a handful of desirable titles for small money that I really have to work to find.
Dear publishers: I can buy a used copy of your out-of-print book from Amazon UK for a penny (the seller makes his money on the shipping and handling and you make nuffink at all), or you can re-publish your back catalogue for $.99 a title and squeeze a little more juice out of that useless pulp. Choose wisely.
In that middle, desirable category — our own Ric Locke has Amazon-published a sci fi title. I read it (I’m mama’s little shit-hot proofreader, me). I promised him a real-live book review with, like, descriptions and shit…but for now, the short version is: I liked it.
And the picture? Why, it’s my new Eco-Nique Natural Hemp Kindle snuggy. I know, I know, but it’s so gosh-darned…snuggy.
June 1, 2011 — 10:21 pm
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