Hee -I'm so glad Soulless turned out to be such a Buffista hit. When my MiL brought it back from the book expo for me my immediate reaction was "Hey, look at Jilli on the cover!"

The really funny part is the cover model is a friend of mine. Every time I see the covers, I'm all OH HAI DONNA. NICE PARSOL, GIMME.

I'm going to make him read your book (and maybe carry it on the bus).

Awwww. Brenda, you should! And of course the babybats are his favorites! They're generally well-behaving kidlings.

(Note: this is me, rambling after i should be asleep)

So, I read a lot. A lot. Fast. And I have no kids, and no significant other, and I spend a lot of time on planes, so...last year I read over a book a day, I figured, after I added it all up. And Sunday, in prep for my trip to Hawaii (for work!) I went to Half Price Books and stocked up on some $1 clearance books. And thought about how it'd be really nice to have an iPad or a Kindle to carry instead of a stack of literally nine books, expecting to buy more while I"m here. On the other hand, of those nine books, two are from the library, six were $1 each, and one was $3.50. So total cost was STILL less than ONE book from the Apple Bookstore. (Granted, there are programs I can check books out from my public library as ebooks). There needs to be some kinda way around that for me to have it be worth it! Book rental?? Will there eventually be clearance books (not likely)? "Used" ebooks (with some DRM)?

Meanwhile, I picked up a slew of paranormal romances from someone who'd won a RITA for one of them, and enjoyed them. (Robin Owens). They were all $1 clearances, but now am trying to decide if I actually want to spend money to buy the two that weren't in the "set", or the recent ones. SEE?? MONEY BEING SPENT!! (OK, not yet, but probably eventually)

Meanwhile, I was browsing through the store trying to find other things by authors I knew, or spark ideas of what to buy, or go to a new bookstore and buy...and was reminded while on Amazon to go see if a couple people had new books out or coming out. And ended up googling one...and discovering that the reason "Dawn Cook" had no new books out is because she is also Kim Harrison!! Oh.

The problem is that libraries *do* have ebooks, but it's a PITA to get them onto any currently available ebook reader, if it's possible at all. DIE, PROPRIETARY DRM, DIE!

I like the idea of eBooks and the Kobo e-ink reader at $150, but after reading about the various DRM schemes, I don't think it's time to bite yet. I'd rather just own my books instead of leasing them. Maybe it will shake out sometime. I really don't like closed systems.

I'm kind of into the prospect of leasing books - I've got a ton of paperbacks that I never really meant to give a home to, but that I haven't gotten around to getting to a used bookstore for credit so they are taking up quite a bit of shelf space meanwhile. If I start reading those types of books on an e-reader, my real estate for books I want to keep should open up.

OTOH, have not actually deleted any of the e-books I've read on my laptop. Or gotten an e-reader of any type. So this is all just theory.

OTOH, have not actually deleted any of the e-books I've read on my laptop. Or gotten an e-reader of any type. So this is all just theory.

I'm not sure about the other e-readers, but on the kindle even if you delete a book you have bought from amazon, they remember you bought it and you can upload it again. I want one badly.

Fictionwise allows you to download your books multiple times in different formats (for most of them), without DRM (when the publisher allows).

The Kindle sounds really slick. The iPad seems really versatile and with apps it can do Kindle and I believe Adobe ADE eBooks too along with being a general purpose device, it's heavier than I thought though. Since my reading is primarily on my back holding it over me, or outside while the kids play or have soccer practice (where the screen will get washed out) I don't think it would work for me, also I like the idea of days of battery life instead of hours. I like the Kobo Reader for it's price ($150) but it's probably the least slick in terms of user experience. Don't know enough about the nook.

Oh well, I don't have enough time to read to justify any of them.

The Kindle is very slick, interface-wise. My only real complaint with it is exactly what Jessica mentioned earlier - they seemingly intentionally make it difficult to put library eBooks on it. Most libraries use either DRMed Mobipocket or Adobe DRMed ePub books (the NYPL has some of both). It is possible to get the Mobipocket books on a Kindle without breaking the DRM at all (the books actually disappear after two weeks, the way they are supposed to) but not the ePubs, as far as I can tell. And Amazon intentionally makes it difficult to put the Mobi ones on your device by hiding the Kindle's PID (a number you need to activate the DRM on Mobi books) instead of making it easy to find.

Still, I figured out the process. It involves running a script on your kindle to find the PID, giving the PID to the library, downloading the files, and running one small script on them to make the Table of Contents readable on the Kindle. Then copying to the Kindle. Not a terrible process, but certainly not as intuitive as I'd like it to be.

I regularly strip the DRM off of my Kindle books and back them up as unprotected MOBI books on my own hard drive, but that's more for my own sense of ownership than any actual need.

Last week I was reading a book that made me laugh a lot. It's called "Sweater Quest"; the author is a writer who knits as a hobby. She'd decided that in the space of a year she'd knit a fiendishly difficult sweater and write about it. She'd met another writer whose subject was knitting at a convention and stayed in touch with her through the internet. The author contacted the other woman about getting some of the necessary yarn. At one point she headed off to stay with this other woman and her husband is concerned. The section of the book had her husband asking if she knew the woman. The author replies "I met her once. She sent me yarn. Besides, if she kills me and buries me in the backyard, she'll probably blog about it."

At which point I was chanting, "one of us, one of us".