Category: books

Amazon – used books

Just for yuks, I put a couple of old books up for sale on Amazon today. Apparently, this is my storefront. (Impressive, huh?)

Looking at the way they handle used book sales, and looking at all the folks selling their books for a penny, there’s really no way for an individual small-time seller to make any money selling readily-available books.

I put my books up at $1. Amazon apparently takes a minimum $2.50 commission, but they credit you $4 for shipping. So, the end result is that I would get $2.50 total, which would have to cover my shipping costs. It looks like a one-pound media mail shipment costs $2.13 now, so that doesn’t leave much room for profit. Since they don’t charge for listing stuff, though, I guess it doesn’t hurt to list some stuff and see if anybody bites.

more Kindle thoughts

I’ve been thinking about the Kindle again. I still haven’t quite decided to buy one, but I’m getting closer.

Here’s a scenario that’s got me thinking:
(It’s kind of a long story, so bear with me.)
I bought the audiobook version of Brad Meltzer’s “Zero Game” from iTunes awhile ago. I’ve been listening to it in the car, and enjoying it quite a bit. I hit a point, though, where the audio just cut out and skipped ahead about five chapters. I went back and forth with Apple about it, and eventually got a refund. (They tell me that they’ve now posted a corrected version, so if you’re interested in the book, don’t let this glitch stop you from buying it!)

While I was going back and forth with support, though, I really wanted to just continue reading the book. If I’d had a Kindle, I could have just bought it from Amazon, and picked up reading the missing parts the same day I hit the glitch.

I did wind up buying a used hardcover copy of the book from Amazon so I could read the missing part. Now, while that obviously took longer to get to me than the Kindle version would have, it was a bit cheaper, and I can (theoretically) resell it, or just give it away, when I’m done reading it.

However, I’m sitting here right now looking at the book, and thinking that I’m probably going to just toss it on the floor in a pile of other old books when I’m done with it. The used book system on Amazon is great for buyers, but they’ve driven down prices on used books so much that there’s not much point trying to sell it after I’m done with it. And I don’t know anybody who’d really be interested in reading it who I could hand it off to. And I know I’ll never talk myself into just throwing it out.

I’ve got a whole bunch of books that fall into this category. Basically, books that I’m probably never going to want to re-read, and have almost no resale value, but I can’t bring myself to throw them out.

In some ways, the economics of this seem almost perverse, but I think I might be willing to pay a little extra to buy a book that doesn’t leave any physical footprint in my tiny little apartment. Something I can keep on a device, or my computer’s hard drive, or wherever, for however long I want. It’s annoying that the DRM scheme on any e-book reader (Sony or Amazon) will prevent me from loaning or giving away my old “books.” And it’s a little galling that the e-books generally cost more than a used copy in hardcover or paperback. But I’m looking at this apartment full of old books, and thinking that I could really reclaim a lot of space if I could just get rid of some of them!

Having said that, though, there are certainly still a lot of books I’d like to keep in hard copy form. Jasper Fforde’s books, for instance, wouldn’t work well on a Kindle, since he plays with fonts, footnotes, and other odd stuff that wouldn’t translate well into the single-typeface Kindle. In fact, Fforde’s concept of the “UltraWord” system, introduced in “Well of Lost Plots”, is, in some ways, a parody of DRM’d e-book systems. One of the characteristics of UltraWord was that you could only read any given book three times, then it would just refuse to open.

I’m aware that buying DRM’d e-books right now, for any platform, will probably leave me with books that I won’t be able to read again past, say, five or ten years, since whatever platform I buy now will probably be gone by then. I bought Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy in Microsoft Reader format several years back, and read them on my old Toshiba Pocket PC. While I still have those files around somewhere, I don’t have the Pocket PC anymore. If I want to read those books again on the Kindle, I’d have to repurchase them. (And, hey, I see that I can get them for the Kindle, for $3.19 each. That’s actually not a bad price. Cheaper than the average used copy, even.)

e-book readers and related topics

I blogged about the Sony Reader a couple of months back. The Amazon Kindle is out now too. One of the things I didn’t like about the Sony Reader was the lack of technical books. I did a little searching on Amazon, and they definitely seem to have a better supply of programming books available than Sony. The pricing on them isn’t great though. For instance, ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed is $36 on Amazon for the dead tree version, and $32 for the Kindle version. That book is almost 2000 pages, and weighs 6 pounds, so I can understand why the physical version costs so much, but I think they should really be able to deliver the electronic version at a significantly lower price. Leaving that aside for now, it’s still pretty compelling to switch from having a big pile of 2000 page, 6 pound books to having a single device weighing less than one pound holding multiple books. And I still think the idea of a partnership with Safari would be great, but I guess that’s too much to ask for at this point.

There have been some interesting reactions to the Kindle, from people like Scoble and Mossberg. One thing that concerns me is that both of those guys have pointed out some interface problems that make the device a little frustrating to use.

Cory Doctorow pointed out a few negatives on a post on BoingBoing, and talked about it a bit during an episode of TWiT from a few weeks back. His big problem is basically the DRM and TOS stuff. I don’t necessarily mind DRM, if it’s done well, and if I can trust that the company behind it will be supporting the system for a while. In other words, I don’t have a big problem with iTunes DRM, but I don’t really trust that anyone else’s DRM is going to be around long enough to make it worth my while to invest any money in it. Of course, I’d rather just not have *any* DRM, but that just doesn’t seem feasible right now. I know we’re getting there on music, but it doesn’t look like we’re anywhere near there on books yet.

I really like the wireless purchase and delivery system on the Kindle. That seems much better than the Sony system. I think that if they can get some of the interface kinks ironed out in the next iteration of the hardware, bring down book prices a bit, and maybe bring the price of the device itself down, then I’ll be ready to take the plunge and get one.

Happy New Year

I didn’t do much today, aside from watching football. I’m not making any major resolutions this year either. I did make all the arrangements to go to WonderCon today though. As usual, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to go this year, but a few things convinced me to go again. Basically, a good guest lineup, plus a general desire to get out of New Jersey for a few days. And a chance to see the Chinese New Year Parade again!

I haven’t really done much reflection on 2007. Normally, I would get kind of reflective on New Year’s Day, but I haven’t really been in that frame of mind. Well, just for the heck of it, here are some things I’ve done in 2007:

Books and comics I’ve read and liked:

  • Absolute Watchmen
  • Nextwave
  • David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Ready for Anything (though I haven’t finished RFA yet)
  • the first two Jasper Fforde “Thursday Next” novels
  • a couple of Jim Butcher “Harry Dresden” novels

Movies & TV shows I’ve enjoyed:

  • Paprika (my favorite movie of the year, for whatever that’s worth)
  • Once
  • Ratatouille
  • The Simpsons Movie
  • Rise: Blood Hunter (okay, not exactly high-brow, but fun)
  • Torchwood
  • Life on Mars
  • Heroes

Music I’ve liked:

  • Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
  • Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger
  • Paul McCartney – Memory Almost Full
  • Pizzicato Five – Made in USA (from 1994, but I’d never heard it until this year)
  • Derek and the Dominoes – Layla (I only just got around to buying this CD in 2007)

Pointless stuff I’ve spent money on:

  • new couch
  • iPod Touch
  • TomTom One LE GPS
  • Dell Inspiron laptop
  • MacBook
  • Microsoft Office 2007
  • Motorola SLVR
  • 19″ widescreen LG monitor
  • Toshiba HD-DVD player

Things I didn’t get around to doing:

  • buying a new car (the old one’s still working, but maybe not for much longer)
  • checking out the new Greek and Roman galleries at the Met
  • visiting the new Morimoto restaurant in NYC

Well, that’s just a bunch of random lists off the top of my head. I guess the two big things that happened in 2007 for me were the office move my company did (from Edison to Somerset), and my mostly successful implementation of GTD.

random stuff

I haven’t gotten around to blogging in the last couple of weeks. Things have been pretty hectic. I’m trying to relax right now, so I thought I’d just write up a few random bits.

I picked up a TomTom One LE GPS unit at Best Buy last week. I don’t really need a GPS often. Most of my driving is just back and forth to work. But, it will definitely come in handy once in a while. I used it today to help me find my way to my friend Paul’s house in New York. I’ve been there before, but not recently. The GPS was definitely a help. In particular, there’s one point where I need to make a turn onto a side street that’s pretty well hidden, until you’re right on top of it. The GPS takes care of that nicely by announcing the turn in advance, then again when you’re right there. It really makes things easier.

I’ve been working my way through the Thursday Next novels by Jasper Fforde. I’m on the third book now, Well of Lost Plots. It’s starting out quite nicely. I’m really enjoying these books. Lots of fun, weird, stuff.

I installed the trial version of VMware Fusion on my MacBook yesterday, and installed Windows XP into a virtual machine. It works pretty well. It’s a little slow, but a lot better than previous virtual machine products that I’ve used on the Mac. (Of course, this is the first time I’ve used an Intel Mac, so right there you’ve got a major advantage.) Oh, and I’ve got to say, I think it’s time for Windows XP SP3. I installed XP with SP2, and had 90 patches to install from Windows Update. Hey Microsoft, isn’t that enough patches to warrant a service pack? That’s one of the nice things about Apple that we maybe take for granted. OS X 10.4 went from 10.4.0 to 10.4.10, and each of those point releases is cumulative, so you never have too many individual patches to install on a Mac.

nine books

I started reading this post on the NY Times site earlier this evening. I had to stop and bookmark it for later, since there were so many interesting lists in the comments. If you’re looking for a good book to read, just run though the comments and pick one out! So many good books, so little time. I’d second the many recommendations for 100 Years of Solitude. Ditto for the Harry Potter books, the Dark Materials trilogy, Hitchhiker’s Guide, Shakespeare, Vonnegut, Borges, Bradbury, Flannery O’Connor, and a bunch of others.

And there are some interesting recommendations for books I haven’t read, but that might be worth adding to my Amazon wish list: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, for instance. I ran across a reference to one of his other books recently, but, prior to last week, I’d never heard of him.

The Road got a few mentions, and that’s another one I haven’t read. Looking at the description now, though, I see that there are cannibals in the book. I generally find that I’m disappointed by any book with cannibals in it, so maybe I’ll avoid that. And it’s got the Oprah stamp on it too, which is kind of scary.

And this list reminds me, again, that I still haven’t gotten around to reading Animal Farm. Sigh.

Sony Reader

I was wandering around Costco today, and saw that they had the Sony Reader PRS-500 on sale for $250. I almost picked one up, but thought better of it. I’m glad I did, since a little research reveals that the new model, the PRS-505 came out last week. It’s available for $300 direct from Sony. I’ve been mighty tempted to pick one of these things up since they were first announced about a year ago, but I figured I should wait for the second gen, at least, assuming there would be one. Well, I guess now there is.

It’s still not altogether that compelling. It does 8 shades of grey (vs. 4 on the old one). Supposedly the screen refresh is faster. The interface seems to have been improved a bit. It appears that it still doesn’t support full-text search within a book, though. I really think that a decent search interface, along with the availability of a large number of technical reference books, would make this a killler device for programmers and other tech folks. And a partnership with Safari would be great too. Imagine being able to sync all the books on your Safari bookshelf down to this device. Safari’s nice, but you can’t really just sit back in a recliner and read a book off the Safari web site; it’s basically just good for reference. (I guess you *could* read a book off Safari, but I’m not comfortable doing it, even with my iBook. Notebook screens just aren’t good enough for extended reading sessions. At least for my tired old eyes.)

It’s still an interesting device, even if it’s only good for stuff that you’re going to read in a linear fashion — novels, mostly, and maybe some non-fiction. I like the idea of carrying a nice small device around, rather than carrying, say, the 1250-page Essential Ellison. Of course, they don’t have much Ellison available at the Sony ebook store. Heck, they don’t have any Tolkien, or any of the Harry Potter books either.

Maybe I’ll wait for the third generation!

ACM

A few months back, I blogged about ACM’s deal with Safari and Books 24×7, where ACM members can access a subset of these online libraries. At the time, the book selection on both sites seemed to be a bit out of date. Well, they’ve updated the selection on both sites today, and there’s definitely more useful stuff up there now. They’ve (finally) got some ASP.NET 2.0 stuff, including the “ASP.NET 2.0 Core Reference” book by Dino Esposito, which is pretty useful. They even have some stuff on WCF and WPF.

The printing capabilities on Safari have gotten a bit more useful, too. I don’t remember exactly how it used to work, but it’s definitely easier to print a big chunk of text than it used to be.

I’m not sure that much has changed on the Books 24×7 site, though. I think there’s more .Net 2.0 stuff than there used to be, but I did a search on “Vista” and found nothing at all, initially. That’s not good. (I later found two Vista books that inexplicably did not show up when I searched for “vista”.) The Safari site has about four Vista books, which is OK, but not great.

Amazon history

I read a post on someone’s blog today that made me a bit curious. He mentioned that some other bloggers had been posting their first Amazon.com purchase. I decided to go back and check mine. It was on June 26, 1997, and I ordered two books: Mort, by Terry Pratchett, and the Sybase DBA Companion. Mort was a great, and very funny, novel. It was out of print at the time, and didn’t actually ship until May 17, 1998. At that time, Amazon had a service where you could order a book, and whenever a used copy became available, it would be shipped to you. I’m not sure if they do that anymore. So many people are selling used books through Amazon now, that it’d be pretty odd to find something that you couldn’t get from a secondary seller right away.

The other book I ordered, the Sybase DBA Companion, was pretty useful at the time, since I was just getting started on Sybase. I’ve since moved to Microsoft SQL Server, but a lot of the skills I developed working on Sybase are still useful, since Microsoft’s product was kind of a spin-off from Sybase, though it’s diverged a lot over the last ten years.

My second order with Amazon was on August 15, 1997, and was for a book called Programming for the Newton Using Windows . That sure brings back some memories! I don’t think I ever got around to writing anything more that a couple of trivial programs for the Newton, but it was fun to play around with Newton programming for a while. I’ve since given away my first Newton, and sold my second. I’m using a Palm PDA now, the i705. I still haven’t gotten around to giving it up in favor of a smartphone or anything like that. Maybe I’ll get an iPhone, and then I’ll have come full circle, in a way, back to an Apple PDA of sorts.