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Digital Books: Availability and Attitude

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Walt

nooklibraryOver the past 10-11 months, I’ve become a definite digital convert. There was a time not too long ago where I couldn’t even begin to grasp the concept of buying or READING books digitally. I’m too much a fan of having the actual books, I thought. But after lugging around Stephen King‘s 11/22/63 for a couple weeks last year, after having done so with last year’s new Grisham book, and the trouble I had in acquiring the first Walking Dead novel, and so on, I’ve come to see benefits to ebooks…both on an actual ereader (I have a first generation Nook I bought used) as well as my phone (primarily the Nook app for iPhone).

For one thing, the ereader and/or phone are a fixed size, shape, weight. 200 pages or 1,000–size/shape/weight remain the same. The phone fits in my pocket, and I carry it with me pretty much everywhere anyway, so being able to have entire books on it is just bonus–and it’s so much easier to not have to haul a book around and remember to bring it with me and all that.

nookEqually important is availability, which has been the other selling point for me. Rather than having to run around to a bunch of stores looking for the book, all I have to do is go online and buy the book, and I’ve got access to it, full-text, virtually immediately. No paying extra for shipping, no waiting for shipping; no using gas to go to a physical store hoping they have it. It makes buying the reading experience–the text of the book–simple and convenient.

Or at least, if the book I’m interested in is available as an ebook.

The factor that really, until a few days ago, hadn’t exactly come into play for me.

astonishingxmenThere’s a new book out just in the last week or two–a prose novelization of The Astonishing X-Men: Gifted; the novelization is written by Peter David, no stranger to X-books. Not too long ago, I impulse-bought the novelization of Marvel’s Civil War, and quite enjoyed it; I was even excited at getting to read it while saving significantly from the $25 price point of the awkward squarish-dimensions of the print edition.

So I was quite surprised this past weekend when I resolved to buy this book to discover there’s no ebook counterpart. Not for the Nook, not for the Kindle…it’s hardcover in-print or nothing. Which is extremely disappointing.

This is not a book I’m prepared to buy in print, at least not first-run at full price; and there are so many graphic novels I’m after that I can’t see buying this instead at full price, nor having yet more shelfspace taken up by it. And this has stopped me dead in my tracks, as far as praising the digital format. I’m not interested in most of the ebook content out there, and it seems like week after week more new digital content (books and otherwise) get shoved at me, but now when I have a specific book in mind that I want to buy and read digitally…no one has it available.

brotherswarTrying to move past the disappointment and frustration, I decided today to look for The Brothers’ War by Jeff Grubb. I have the old mass-market paperback edition from 1998/1999 that I’ve read a couple times, but I want to re-read it. Though I would very much prefer NOT to have to re-read it as a MMPB, further cracking the spine, and having to wrestle the book to keep it open, constantly one hand firmly grasping it (if not both) to just read it.

But…there are maybe a dozen Magic: The Gathering books in ebook format, and it doesn’t look like ANY of the ones I’d be interested in (basically, the Artifacts, Ice Age, Masquerade, and Invasion Cycle-era books) are available digitally. I don’t know that I’d re-buy every book, re-read the ENTIRE series…but as I’m re-reading old MTG comics for a weekly piece I’m writing for a friend’s blog (Fantasy Rantz), I’m finding myself once again interested in the earlier MTG stories, including The Brothers’ War and possibly the rest of the Artifacts Cycle and maybe Invasion Cycle.

With none of these available and my aversion to their print editions for the moment…I’ve got some digital comics already on this phone, plenty of physical comics, and generally don’t NEED to buy any of these right now. Especially with another Walking Dead novel and the new Grisham book both coming next month, and I still have most of book 4 and all of book 5 of the Song of Ice and Fire series to get through…

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The Missing Dead: Why Amazon Wins

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Walt

halloweendisplayofbooksYesterday was the release date for the new hardcover prose novel The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor. I’ve been looking forward to the book for months.

I don’t buy NEW books in hardback often–usually I’m buying stuff from the used-books stores like Half-Price Books or M&P or using a coupon from Borders and picking up something recent-ish but not generally still classified as a new-release. But a few times a year, I’ll buy a brand-new hardback–usually the new Brad Meltzer book, or John Grisham in particular, or something that just really strikes me.

Rise of the Governor was to be one of those books. Go to the store, get the book, start reading, and I figure I’ll dive in right away.

BUT.

Two trips to Walmart–no luck. Target…no luck there, either. Walmart‘s offering it via their website–but I’d have to wait til at LEAST early next week for it to arrive, whether shipped to my apartment or using the Site-to-Store shipping.

Figuring despite my consternation over big retailers like that not having the book where I could expect a ~30% discount off cover price, I knew that surely Barnes & Noble, a dedicated book-seller, would have a new hardback novel based on one of the top cable television shows with a new season debuting in under a week. Surely, a new novel based on a hit comics-and-tv series about survivors in a zombie apocalypse would be available, given it’s October where horror and the like seem to get top billing genre-wise.

Nope.

Oh, you can order it through their website, and while offhand I forget the discount. But I didn’t want to order the book online. I wanted to buy the book in-person, have it already, take it with me upon handing over payment, and start reading the thing.

Even if I’d manage to find some independent bookstore (I don’t know of any near me) it’d likely be a “special order” and highly unlikely the store would be willing (to say nothing of whether or not they’d be “able”) to give me much of a break off the cover price, and I’d still have to wait for the book to come in.

So I was forced online.

Amazon wins. They had the best discount, I’m familiar with their services, and over the past decade they’ve successfully branded themselves as THE place to order new books online (and I’ve even had success with their 3rd-party sellers, but that’s a different post entirely).

Annoyed and frustrated from going to multiple stores, the simple fact no one seemed to stock this book physically, and the fact that I’d already resigned myself earlier to paying full price for the book to get it same-day, I noticed something rather interesting.

For $2 more than cover price, including SHIPPING…I was able to ALSO order The Walking Dead Chronicles, which I’d also been eyeing but was going to hold off on.

This morning I woke to an email saying my Amazon order has shipped, and ought to arrive Monday. The same wait I’d have ordering the book any other way…but here from a familiar brand/service, with another related book, and though I don’t get to read the thing “in preparation” for the new season of the tv show…I get to see the premiere, and on a Walking Dead “high” (assumably), get another “fix” the next day.

And I notice there’s a new Grisham book coming out soon, and a new Stephen King as well. Might as well order through Amazon–and save myself even the potential hassle of stores randomly not stocking it, or just to spite ’em (even if the only one who cares is me).

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