Starting today, many Target stores will carry Amazon Kindles. If you've been thinking about getting one, here is your chance to give it a hands-on test drive (or test read, as the case may be). If your Target doesn't have them in yet, they will within a few months.
You can drop it in the big red Target cart and start reading books as soon as you unload your groceries, or you can save a few dollars in sales tax and go home and order it from Amazon.
Why get a Kindle?
- Amazon's famous customer service. Download a book by accident? Just return it within 7 days for a refund. Cat knock your Kindle off the counter and break the screen? Call Amazon and find a new Kindle on your doorstep the next morning. (Free. True story.)
- Read comfortably on the non-glare screen in full sunlight (unlike the iPad, which you can't see at all in the sun).
- Carry up to 1500 books, with you everywhere
- Lighter and more comfortable than a paperback, you will rediscover the joy of reading and if you're like me, you'll end up reading faster.
- Over 500,000 books available through Amazon and other sources. No wi-fi or 3G charges to download anywhere in the world through Amazon's network (unlike the iPad, where you must be in a wi-fi hotspot or pay a monthly fee for 3G coverage).
- Download samples of books before you buy. The samples are always considerably more than I would read if I were standing around in a bookstore browsing through books.
- Go green, and stop filling your house with stacks and shelves of books which just sit there.
- Read your favorite magazines, newspapers, and blogs, all updated automatically.
8 people stopped folding laundry to write:
Love mine too! I've read at least 30 books on it since Christmas! :)
While I'm not anti-technology, I have to say that it's just another way Amazon is running the small business out of business. My husband works for an independently owned book store and they really are losing their shirts! People talk about buying local then run out and buy a kindle or ipad. One day we won't have a choice in what we get- it will all be electronic and we'll have to burn the books we once loved. Can anyone say Fahrenheit 451?
Angela, I do feel for your husband, but he is not the first to fall victim to changing technology, nor is such change necessarily a bad thing. Ask the man who once made beautiful buggy whips. They were the best buggy whips money could buy, yet the day came when people did not buy buggy whips any more.
Books are not being banned, as in Farenheit 451, in fact with a Kindle I now have more books to choose from than ever before. Who wins? Independant authors who are publishing on Kindle and finding an audience. Authors who found their backlisted titles out of print are now able to sell to a whole new audience.
It's a new world. I'm sorry the technological changes are having a negative effect on your family. It's not about the pleasant bookstore - it's about the pleasant content of the books that readers are able to access.
I wish you the best.
The thing about Kindle is, you can't share books. In my family, everybody reads books. Kindle is a one-person device. You can't share books with your family members. It's selfish and isolating.
Actually you can share books, either across different Kindles, so you can read them at the same moment, or you can let other members of the family pick up the device and read, just like you would with an actual book.
Kindle books can also be read and shared on ipods, ipads, blackberries, iphones, macs and pcs.
How is this more selfish and isolating than a regular book?
Interesting how this it such a debate. Like many choices in life, take it or leave it.
I have a Kindle and LOVE it. I used to be a reader, but for many years never touched a book. Since I got my Kindle last fall I have read almost a dozen books, so for me and my busy lifestyle it works!
I do want to know, where did you get the decal? Super cute!!
I got the decal at Decalgirl.com
I will admit, I wanted to cry with HORROR when I unwrapped my Kindle on Christmas morning. But I also knew my husband was convinced he had just given me the perfect gift so, I faked joy for his sake. Because he lives with me, I had to be seen using the thing and so, I gave it a try. I continued to go to the library weekly on the side and HID the books from him. I know, I know, it's pathetic. But then, the Kindle grew on me and now, I'm hooked. And I find myself actually purchasing more books now than I ever did.
And to your point about the independent author: my cousin was published last year and her book was only published electronically. Once it saw some initial sales, it was then printed. I don't think it would have been published at all if an e-publishing option wasn't avaialble. So, it worked for her.
Post a Comment