The new Dresden book Changes comes out tomorrow. I was originally planning on getting it for the kindle, just like all the books I read. Unfortunately, it was pulled a couple of days ago because the publish is being a dick. This all stems from the publishers preference to the “agency” sales model for digital media. They prefer this because while they get fewer profits they have more pricing control. Why does this matter? Well, Amazon has been purchasing licenses for books at their whole sale prices (around $13 for new releases), and then turning around and selling them for $9.99 in the kindle store. What does this mean? Well, having cheap books helps bolster the sales of Amazon’s ebook reader, the kindle. Publishers don’t like this because they think it “destroys the value of digital books.”

While other ebook publishers, have given in to the agency model (Sony, B&N) others, such as Apple demand the agency model. Sadly Amazon is the last hold out. As a reaction to penguin refusing to release new books to the kindle unless Amazon agrees to the agency model, Amazon has begun canceling preorders and reduced the price of hardcovers to $9.99.

Please help Amazon “destroy the value of hardcovers” by choosing to purchase their loss leader $9.99 hardcovers rather than paying full price elsewhere.

Changes (Dresden Files, Book 12)

I just received a newsletter from Barnes & Noble trying to drum up pre-orders for their new eBook reader, the Nook. As you can guess by the graphic above, the first thing I noticed was the fucked up line spacing in their promo shot.

The shot on the left was from the newsletter I received. It’s a pretty good shot, and makes the device look attractive, but it sadly falls flat on its face if you actually look at the most important part: the screen. The featured book is Pride and Prejudice (which seems to be a defacto advertising standard for ebook readers…go public domain), and you can clearly see that the line spacing is messed up as the first five paragraphs are all bunched up.

Now, if you look at the screen on the right, you will notice that the line spacing has been corrected. So, I find myself wondering, how will these books actually perform on the device? Is Pride and Prejudice really screwed up, or did somebody notice and fixed it in photoshop? Or, was it just an early prototype that was not rendering correctly?

Based on my experiences trying convert some books to mobi reader format for my kindle, getting the paragraph spacing correct is a bit of a nightmare. I think that ebooks are basically just a compressed markup format, and the styles that get applied are related to the markup used. For example, the equivalent of the <br/> tag always seems to equate to a single line break, rather than a paragraph break regardless of how many you have.

I first came across this when I was converting some essays that were in PDF format. Occasionally my importer would split some paragraphs with two <br/> tags instead of using <p> tags. When this happened, the paragraphs ended up jumbled like the left promo shot. I assume this blunder has put the developers on their toes, and I would expect this to be right before launch.

Generally speaking, I am pretty excited about launch. I love book stores, and haven’t really been in one since I picked up my kindle. And, I really like the idea of having the in store perks for Nook owners. The Nook also has a couple of other interesting features, it looks sexier than the kindle, it supports wifi, has over one million books available, and it supports a replaceable battery. But, it isn’t all rosy.

I am concerned about the lack of qwerty keyboard. Granted, I don’t use it often on my kindle, but when I do, I cannot imagine functioning without. I am wondering if they have some kind of input system using the color touch screen in the bottom. Speaking of which, am I the only one thinking that would be pretty distracting while you’re reading? Hopefully it turns itself off when not active.

The Nook is expected to launch in late November, and should be available in a B&N near you for a test drive. I plan on giving it a once over in person, and with low price of $259 (same as the kindle), it deserves some level of consideration.

A few minutes after returning from Family Video with a video game, the power goes out. This is extremely uncommon, as we are on Grand Haven’s independent grid that nearly never goes down. So, I sat in the dark for a few minutes assuming the power would come back on at any moment (99% of the time is back in in five minutes).

After few minutes of waiting I finally decide to start scrounging around for a flashlight. Jesse found one, and we used it to find another. To be clear, we had enough time to wait a little while, find a flashlight, find another flashlight with dead batteries, find batteries, figure out how to open the flashlight, and put the batteries in the flashlight. And, the power still wasn’t back. This was unheard of.

So, of course the first thing I want to do is write a post about the experience. But, ultimately I decided not to, because I obviously could not post it since I had not internet access. But, more importantly, my laptop gets quite warm so I only use it when I can have a fan blowing on me to prevent my brain from boiling. No electrify = no fan.

At this point, I am figuring that I can survive without internet access for a little, because certainly the power should be coming on at any moment. I figured that it would be a good time to get a little catch up reading done. So, I grab my kindle only to say “battery is empty.” Ugh. I swear, whenever I want to use that thing the battery is dead. I really need to remember to turn off wireless when I’m not using it.

Next, I figured I would grab my iPod Touch, and see if everyone’s power was down by scanning for wireless networks. After that I was going to listen to some tunes. That thing was so dead that it wouldn’t even show the “charge immediately” screen. I swear, when the internet goes down, or in this case the power, all my electronics instantly die.

My last resort was to pull out an analog book, and attempt to read with one of those little book lights. I haven’t tried to read with one of those in ages. The light I use works pretty good with the kindle, but doesn’t work to well with a regular book, unfortunately. I managed to get through a chapter but it caused to much eye strain I was feeling sick to my stomach. At this point an hour had pasted.

So at this point I’m searching the house for a length of rope, and trying to figure out which branch would hold my weight the best.

After 90 minutes of unbearable horror, Jesse and I went to Wal-Mart. We wondered around for a half hour or so, and picked up some flashlights and portable fans. We got back to the house at a little after 12:30. Thankfully, during the time we were out the power came back on.

According to the blinking light on the stove, the power had come back on 11 minutes before we walked through the door. In order words, over two hours from the time it went out. Unfortunately for us, those two hours felt like an eternity.

For those of you that did not already know, I pre-ordered one of the new Kindle 2′s. It looks pretty sweet, and I’m eager to get it. Unfortunately the USPS has other designs.

According to Amazon, the device left their facilities on February 23rd.  I was quite surprised when I saw it was shipping from Indiana, and the projected delivery date was a week after it first shipped. And, yesterday when the USPS finally got around to updating the status of the order I was less surprised. Apparently, they decided to send the device straight up the center of the state and make a right, instead of left. If the USPS thinks it is faster to ship things to the west side of the state through the east side, its no wonder they are going under.