Saturday, December 12, 2009

Can You Imagine Saying This about a Kindle?

Well, maybe so.

The Writer's Almanac : "Gustave Flaubert. . . said, 'I can imagine nothing in the world preferable to a nice, well-heated room, with the books one loves and the leisure one wants.'"

9 comments:

Henry Melton said...

Bill, I just completed the two of your books that I found on the Kindle store. Please tell your publisher that I want ALL of your titles there.

BTW, I loved the train chase.

mybillcrider said...

Thanks, Henry. I think that if the old titles got on Kindle, I'd have to do it myself. Which isn't likely.

Robert W. Walker said...

Bill - I placed up ten titles on Kindle and quite a few out of prints, three originals never before pubbed. If I can help you out with any advice along those lines, I would be happy to help. First, if you have a book as a doc file, it is quite easy; the troublesome ones are those older titles I did not have on my computer to begin with. But honestly you should take a peek at www.dtpamazon.com
As for the quote, you can find all manner of well light, warm coffee houses wherein you can read ebooks.

mybillcrider said...

Thanks for the info. I'm probably too lazy to do anything, but I'll check out that link.

Gerard Saylor said...

J.A. Konrath has put up all his old titles he has rights to. It is supposed to be pretty easy to do, as Walker says, without needing any extra computer savvy. Konrath has cheaply listed his books at anywhere from $0.99 to $3.99 and is paying his mortgage bills from the profit.

I'm not buying a Kindle anyway but this seems like a great way to make out-of-print titles available again.

Unknown said...

Lee Goldberg and John Stith have both put their older titles up on Amazon themselves. If you have a word processing file, then it's pretty trivial, if not, then it is definitely a bit more of a chore. I know of many people that are re-purchasing books they already own in paper form. It might be something worth considering for your backlist. A well-formatted DOC file takes only a few minutes to convert.

Of course, you need to have the rights for the ebook publishing.

Benjie said...

Here's a tangential question from the old-school, loves the feel and smell of old books corner: I have (believe it or not) been toying with getting an e-reader. My question is, if I go with Kindle, must I buy a Kindle format? Or would I be able to read any e-books formated for a reader? It may affect my decision.

mybillcrider said...

I'm not the expert here, but I believe you have to buy books formatted for Kindle. I don't think it will read Sony eBooks, for example.

Unknown said...

At the moment, if you purchase a Kindle, then you have to buy NEW books from Amazon (no big deal, they are less expensive there than other places). same for the Sony and the Nook (Barnes & Noble). Sony and B&N will both be supporting the same format (ePub) in a few months, and speculation is that Amazon will follow suit, although that's not a given.

Place like Fictionwise sell books in multiple formats for all the ebook readers and some smaller publishers do also (like Baen). Public domain books can be downloaded in any format.


If an ebook has no digital rights management (DRM), then it can easily be converted to just about any ebook format.

I like old books, also. I have 4,000 of them around the house. But I'm a convert to ebooks, and won’t buy another printed book unless that is just the only way it will be available. I don't miss the paper dust that made me sneeze and wheeze.