A This and That Post

So many things, so little time.  A few things that have caught my eye this week:

For those UK readers considering the Kindle (and yes, that would include me), NextRead has an excellent post summarising what you will and won’t get.  After shipping and taxes, the cost is around $387 according to this MobileRead post.

I’ve decided to hold off for several reasons:

• Firstly, I want a UK store – why would I want to be held hostage to exchange rate fluctuations?  And pay for shipping and taxes myself?  And buy a UK power adaptor?  The launch does feel rushed.  They’ve certainly grabbed headlines by doing a massive worldwide launch, but there looks to have been some trade-offs.
• Secondly, I’m put off by the price: $387 roughly equates to £242.  Too expensive to be an impulse buy, and let’s face it, I’ve a perfectly-working Sony Reader.  And then there’s the surcharge of approx $2 on top of US retail prices.  I’ll be curious to see what the pricing is like – both for the reader and for the ebooks – when they do launch the UK store.
• Thirdly, and probably most importantly, I want a ereader that supports the epub format, because that is rapidly becoming the common format across the industry (both Waterstones and WH Smith, among others, sell epub books).  By only supporting the Amazon (Mobipocket-based) proprietary format, the Kindle will tie you in to buying books from Amazon*.

So I’m holding off for now, but I’m glad to see ebooks becoming more and more mainstream.

* Unless a store sells DRM-free (i.e. non-protected) Mobipocket books.

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A post on Word Wenches alerted me to the fact Jo Beverley and Mary Jo Putney are releasing their older books via a new UK publisher, Everlyn.  I think I already have the books listed so far, but the new covers are gorgeous and very very tempting.

Jo Beverley is doing a signing tour across England to support the re-releases (4-17 November 2009), and if I lived nearby, I would definitely want to go.  Very cleverly, it’s billed as “… retracing the steps of her characters as they flee across the South of England”.

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Recommended read of the week: Ilona Andrews’ “On the Edge”.  I love her (their?  I’m never sure of how to refer to two writers writing under a single pseudonym) Kate Daniels series, so this was an auto-buy for me.

The authors call it a “rustic fantasy”, as opposed to “urban fantasy”.  I sort of think of it as fantasy romance, and actually, it reminded me of Western historicals.  A very entertaining read, and I’m looking forward to the next book in this series.

And I know the cover is not universally loved, but I like.  The male model matches my mental image of Declan exactly.

Reviews are up all around the web: The Book Smugglers (7 – Very Good), Angieville (Angie quoted one of my favourite passages in the book, and has more review linkage), Literary Escapism (loved), Dorkgasm (3 1/2 out of 5) to name a few.

Let me know if you’ve reviewed “On the Edge” and I’ll add a link.

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