In Which We Discuss the Kindle Paperwhite

Contents

• The Device
• Price
• Selection   
• Battery Life
• Wi-fi
• Apps
• Page Count
• Text
• Menu
• Archiving/Downloading
• Interactivity
• Subscriptions

The Device

The Kindle Paperwhite is a device made by Amazon.  It has a 6" screen which is good for reading but which is a little hard on my hands; after reading for a few hours last night, I had some tingling and nerve pain from how I'd been holding it.

The screen lights up with varying degrees of brightness which is easy to change.  The screen is clearly visible both in darkness and bright sunlight.

The Paperwhite comes in black, and you can buy decals from decal girl or a variety of cases from Amazon to decorate it.

I've just checked, and the device will fit into a jacket pocket. Theoretically, it fit into my jeans pocket too, it just wasn't terribly secure.

The touch screen is very responsive.

Price

The Kindle Paperwhite currently sells at £109. With built-in 3G access it's £169, but I believe you'll have that 3G access for life.

Selection

The Kindle Store has a huge selection, many of which are available for free.  However, you cannot read non-Kindle books on the device.

Kindle books can often be heavily reduced, so if you keep an eye on a site like Kind of Book it's possible to get great bargains. 

Battery Life

I read for 2-3 or more hours a day, and I doubt that the Paperwhite would stay charged for more than two weeks at that rate.  The USB charger is exactly the same as the Kobo charger, which is handy if, like me, you have both.

Wi-Fi

You can sign into Wi-Fi hotspots, pay £60 more for 3G access, or simply edit your library from the desktop application.


Apps

Both the desktop and iOs app work extremely well.


Page Count

The Paperwhite has a time-to-read feature which tells you how long you have left in your current chapter and in the book as a whole based on your reading speed.  Some books feature "real page numbers" which tells you which page you'd be on if you were reading a physical copy.  All Kindle books use 'locations' which really just annoy me.  I really don't find it encouraging to know that I'm looking at location 2247 out of 7768, and nor do I find it helpful when my bookmarks give their location like that.

Text

You can choose from a variety of fonts, font sizes, margins, and justifications.  They're illustrated with little pictures, rather than on a sliding scale, so you can see what it'll look like before changing it.

Menu

I hate the Kindle Paperwhite's menu screen.

In cover view, your menu screen will first show you three books in your library - in order of recently read, author, title, or collection - along with a 'we suggest' section at the bottom, showing four books they want you to buy.  You can also clearly see the little shopping cart icon, and what bugs me about both of these is the sense of being sold to all the time.  Sure, if I go to the amazon website I expect them to try to sell me things.  I don't want them to keep nudging at me every time I want to read a book.

In list view, you can, again, see your books in order of recently read, title, author, or collections.  Collections are like folders that you can put books into, only books can be in more than one at a time.  I  currently have Cookbooks, Light Fiction, Dark Fiction, Detective, Non-Fiction, Sci-fi/Fantasy, Short Stories, and Stephen King.

Archiving/Downloading

Like the Kobo you can either view books on your device or all books in your collection.  It takes less than a minute to download a book.

Interactivity

I haven't noticed any.  Oh, wait, they once did this thing where if you linked your Amazon and Facebook accounts you could win a prize.

Subscriptions

There are a number of subscriptions available for e-ink devices.  I haven't currently tested any, but I did just get a free subscription to a magazine, so I'll let you know how it works.  There are a few free magazine subscriptions available, but no free newspaper subscriptions so far.

 

In Which We Discuss the Kobo Mini

Contents

• The Device
• Price
• Selection   
• Battery Life 
• Wi-fi 
• Apps 
• Page Count
• Text
• Menu
• Archiving/Downloading
• Interactivity
• Subscriptions

The Device

The Kobo Mini is a very small eReader made by Canadian company Rakuten.  It has a 5" glare-free touch screen, and comes in white or black, with coloured snap-covers for the back in a variety of shades.  Plus, you can also get decals from Decal Girl, if you like.  It weighs 134g, and is 0.4 inches thick - about the same as a pen.  It is monochrome, and does not light up.

From personal experience, I can tell you that it easily fits into a coat pocket, and, a little more snugly, into a jeans pocket.  The screen is perfectly visible in bright light.  On the downside, I have found the touch screen to be a little unresponsive sometimes so I've had to tap twice or tap with a nail rather than a fingertip. 

Price

I got my Kobo Mini for £49.99 with a free snapback case (pink).  They generally retail for £59.99.



Selection

Kobo's website has a huge amount of books available.  However, many are also available in the Kindle store for the same price or cheaper.


Rakuten is very much of the opinion that "your ebooks are YOUR ebooks", and it's very easy to put non-Kobo files onto your eReader.  I generally use Calibre to convert them and/or strip the DRM and upload them, but you can also just drag and drop the files onto your device when you've plugged it in.  This means that you can download free books from Obooko.com and all sorts of other places - including the Kindle Store.

Battery Life

I read for 2-3 hours or more a day, and I doubt that the Kobo Mini would last a week on a full charge at this rate.  However, it recharges quickly.  It uses a USB charger which plugs right into the wall plugs I got for my iPhone.

Wi-Fi

You can sign into wi-fi hotspots, or edit your library using the desktop application.  If you don't have wi-fi at home, I fear that this could be a problem due to the buggy nature of the desktop app.

Apps

The Kobo desktop app is disappointing.  It's extremely slow and prone to freezing

It does make it easy to specify which books you want downloaded to your device, and which you wish to keep archived.  You can read books on it too, and, theoretically, get your recommendations or search for other books and buy them.  However, it's so prone to freezing that I don't actually do any of that.

The iOS app works a lot better.  You can choose which books you want downloaded and which you want archived, separately to what you keep on your device or PC.


Page Count

The Kobo Mini (and, presumably, other Kobo devices) will tell you how many pages there are in the current chapter, and what percentage of the way through the book you are.  You can't tell how many pages are left in the entire book.

By 'pages' I mean screens in your current font and size, rather than the real page count you may be used to with Kindle devices.

Text

You can choose to display text in a variety of fonts, and resize the text, margins, and line spacing.  You can also change the justification.

The variations in size, margins and line-spacing are all done on a sliding scale, so you won't see the results until after you've changed it.  This is in comparison to Kindle devices, in which you choose from a variety of sizes/spacing/margins which are shown clearly before you click on them.

Menu

I love the Kobo's menu screen, ie, how it displays your library.  At first it will show you four book covers, in order of most recently opened.   When you click on 'library' it will show you either your entire library, or only items currently downloaded to your device, in either list format or tiled covers.  The list format also shows you how big the file is, how much of it you've read, what kind of file it is, and a small image of the cover.  You can only see five items per screen in list format, or six per screen in tile format.  You can organise items by title, author, or recently read.


Archiving/Downloading

You have the choice of either archiving books or keeping them on your device.  On your menu screen, you can choose to view all the books that you own or only those currently on your device.  I generally split this into books I've read and books I haven't, so it's handy for me.  It takes a minute or two for a book to download.


Interactivity

The Kobo has numerous awards you can earn for various things, which are very sweet.  They're like the X-Box achievements, and you can see the list of the ones that I know about here. Unfortunately, Rakuten appear to have lost interest in updating and supporting them.

Rakuten frequently run competitions on KoboBooks.com, offering money and Kobo Glos as prizes.  These have typically taken the form of ten questions, with a new one released per day.  Answering correctly nets you a money-off code for between 10-75%, and answering all ten correctly enters you into the prize draw.  You can answer all questions on the final day, rather than checking back every day if you prefer.  So far, Kobo have been running competitions like that every six weeks or so.  You can't use these codes on every book - typically, they're used to push the slightly less best-selling ones, which are often very good.

They also ran a rather fun competition recently where they released three free short stories a week or so apart.  The idea was to use clues in the text and illustrations to locate a website, and finding all three would get you the information you needed to find the entry form.  I did try to take part in that, but it was too hard for me.  Stories were good though.


Subscriptions

The Kobo subscription service does not currently work in the UK.

In Which We Discuss Opal Kobo and Melinda Kindle

...yes, of course I name my electronics, don't you?

I bought my Kobo Mini back in December, just before going away for Christmas.  Before buying an eReader, I'd take piles of books away with me, which left barely any room for clothes.  Also, they were heavy and hard to carry around.  When I saw that Kobo Mini's were reduced to £49.99 I made a split-second decision that I'd rather pay £50 than cart books around with me for a week like I did in 2011.  If you were wondering, Opal Kobo is a reference to Opal Koboi, a character in Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books.  I reread them just before Christmas, so they were on my mind.

Melinda Kindle (a Paperwhite) I bought just yesterday.  I start work on the 29th (!), and a bit of calculation showed that if I am very careful not to eat too much I can afford to buy her now without being unable to pay my bills.  I was going to wait until my birthday, on the 12th of August, but then I remembered that I am a grown up and can give myself presents whenever I like, bank account willing.  I wasn't too ingenious with her name, I've just been watching a lot of Charmed lately.

I love my Kobo Mini.  It fits right into my pocket, has a touchscreen, and is so much lighter than physical books.  It's really convenient for reading on packed buses, and for general carrying about purposes.  It was also super cheap, and does this cool thing where it tells me how many pages are left in a chapter.

I wanted a Paperwhite to fill in a few gaps.  Although it is often convenient to have an eReader in my pocket, I wanted to have a bigger screen to look at sometimes.  I also wanted something that lit up - over Christmas, I stayed in a youth hostel, and it would have been nice to be able to read without a light on.  I've felt that urge at night, too.  I wanted a Kindle specifically because the chapter page count thing goes weird if you read a Kindle book on the Kobo, and I really liked the idea of the timing thing that it does - it tells you how long it'll take you to finish the current chapter and the entire book, based on your previous reading speed.  It needed to be touch screen, which ruled the original Kindle out.  That thing doesn't light up anyway.  I didn't feel the urge to go up to a Kindle Fire simply because I want just an eReader, not a tablet.

Of course, both Kobo and Kindle have iOS apps, and I have both of them on my phone.  I just rarely look at them.  I really don't like reading books on my phone.  I think it has to do with the size of the screen.

Anyway, my next two posts will describe both devices.  I don't want to put them into one post, because then it looks like a comparison, which it isn't.  If I thought one device was better than the other, I'd have sold one by now.

In Which We Discuss Another Kobo Competition

Go here to play.  Each day until the 26th of June, Kobo will be releasing one new trivia question based around film adaptations of books.  Each correct answer will get you a discount code for 10%-75% off certain books and answering all ten correctly puts you in a draw to win either the top prize of two Kobo Aura HD eReaders + $1000CA (approximately £640), or one of the second prizes of a Kobo Mini.  I have one; they're adorable.  Mine is called Opal.  Terms and conditions here.

No, I'm not going to tell you the answers.

In Which We Discuss Stephen King and Another Challenge

A few weeks ago, I thought of reading all of Stephen King's novels in the order they were published, like I did with Lisa Jewell's.  It's really interesting to watch an author change over time; Jewell went from being sinle (I think) to being married with children, and her books do reflect that.

King is a little more challenging, for a few reasons.  Firstly, he's written almost a book a year since 1974.  Secondly, he doesn't publish in chronological order.  In one book, a character who's also an author holds on to manuscripts when he writes more than one a year, and submits them to his publisher, sometimes years later, when he lacks other ideas.  I believe that, in the introduction to that one, King admits to doing the same.

A lot of my physical books I intend to buy either as Kobo or Kindle editions, in order to reduce weight.  Last time I moved, I had somewhere between 15-20 boxes of books.  It was insane.  I am never doing that again.  I've reduced the books I'm keeping to one bookcase, and most of those are either sets, which look so nice together - like Gollancz Sci-fi and Fantasy Masterworks, or my Point Horrors - or books which were simply never made available as digital editions, like Marlys Millhiser's The Mirror, or William Sleator's Singularity, both are which are awesome, and which I highly recommend.

I also have a collected edition of books published under Richard Bachman's name, Bachman being King's pseudonym.  I intend to keep those because they include Rage, which King and his publishers are no longer comfortable with republishing.  Rage is about a school shooter, and its similarity to actual school shooters is what makes King so uncomfortable.

I was going to write about how expensive old copies of Rage are to buy, which is still sort of true; new editions of the original run go for over a thousand, while used copies are over £200.  But Rage appears to be included in the Kindle Edition of The Bachman Books - it's not so clear from the description, but the 'look inside' option shows the introduction from the edition I have, and mentions Rage as being included.  The Kindle edition goes for £5.99.  Since I already have a copy, I won't be buying it, but that's still pretty interesting to know.  Plus, £5.99 is a steal for four Stephen King novels in one.

Anyway; I'll be reading in the order published rather than the order written, so here's the list, courtesy of wikipedia.  Books I've read before are bolded - all the rest will be new to me.  I absolutely intend to read other books between these - including trying to get my unread pile down - so this will take a while.

Carrie - 1974
'Salem's Lot - 1975 
The Shining - 1977
Rage - 1977
Night Shift - 1978
The Stand - 1978
The Long Walk - 1979
The Dead Zone - 1979
Firestarter - 1980
Roadwork - 1981
Danse Macabre - 1981
Cujo - 1981
The Running Man - 1982
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - 1982
Creepshow - 1982
Different Seasons - 1982 
Christine - 1983
Pet Sematary - 1983
Cycle of the Werewolf - 1983
The Talisman - 1984
Thinner - 1984
Skeleton Crew - 1985
It - 1986
The Eyes of the Dragon - 1987
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three - 1987
Misery - 1987
The Tommyknockers - 1987
Nightmares in the Sky  - 1988
The Dark Half - 1989
Four Past Midnight - 1990
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands - 1991 
Needful Things - 1991
Gerald's Game - 1992
Dolores Claiborne - 1992
Nightmares & Dreamscapes - 1993
Insomnia - 1994
Rose Madder - 1995
The Green Mile - 1996
Desperation - 1996
The Regulators - 1996
Six Stories - 1997
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass - 1997
Bag of Bones - 1998
Storm of the Century - 1999 
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - 1999
The New Lieutenant's Rap - 1999  
Hearts in Atlantis - 1999
Blood and Smoke - 1999
"Riding the Bullet" - 2000  
On Writing - 2000
Secret Windows - 2000 
The Plant - 2000      
Dreamcatcher - 2001
Black House (with Peter Straub) -2001
Everything's Eventual - 2002
From a Buick 8 - 2002
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla - 2003  
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah - 2004
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower - 2004
Faithful - 2004
The Colorado Kid - 2005
Cell - 2006
Lisey's Story - 2006
Blaze - 2007
Duma Key - 2008  
Just After Sunset - 2008 
Stephen King Goes to the Movies - 2009
Ur - 2009     
Under the Dome - 2009
Blockade Billy - 2010
Full Dark, No Stars - 2010
Mile 81 - 2011    
11/22/63 - 2011
American Vampire (with Scott Snyder) - 2011
"Throttle" (with Joe Hill) - 2012
The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole - 2012 
A Face in the Crowd (with Stewart O'Nan) - 2012
"In the Tall Grass"  (with Joe Hill) - 2012
"GUNS" - 2013
Ghost Brothers of Darkland County - 2013
Joyland - 2013
The Dark Man: An Illustrated Poem - 2013
Doctor Sleep - 2013

...so, I just spent the last half hour or so editing that (with a break to go to the library), and, Jesus Christ, what have I let myself in for?

I cut out a few of the reprints - the Salem's Lot and It 25th anniversary editions, for instance - and The Bachman Books collection, since I'll have read everything in it by the time I get there.  I have Carrie (and I'm already halfway through), I just borrowed Salem's Lot from the library again (the illustrated 25th anniversary edition, thank you very much), The Shining is in my unread pile, Rage is over on that shelf, and Night Shift is only £3.99 in the Kindle Store.  Wish me luck!

In Which We Discuss $5000 Canadian

Kobo are currently running (yet another) competition. In this one, you read three short stories, which are released as free ebooks on the 25th April and the 2nd and 9th of May. You must use the clues in the text and images of each story to find a URL, and then use information on the three pages to locate the entry form. Full rules are here. Remember that you must have all three books in your Kobo library to qualify for entry, so don't go deleting them once you've read them.  You don't, however, actually need to own a Kobo; reading the books on the desktop or smartphone app works too.  Entries need to be in by the 14th of May, and prizes will go to the first five qualifying entries; winner gets $5000 Canadian and a Black Kobo Glo signed by Dan Brown; four runners up get the signed Black Kobo Glo and $100 credit to their Kobo accounts.  Oh, and before I forget; you need to live in the US, UK, or Canadia, and be an adult in your country of residence, ie, over eighteen.  Possibly sixteen in the UK, I'm not sure.  I'm 24, that sort of thing hasn't mattered to me in a while.

Remember that you can always see Kobo Competitions advertised on their website, near the top, underneath the bar with 'Top 50 eBooks' in it.  In my experience, they generally run at least one a month.  My favourites are the ones where you answer questions and win percentage off codes (generally anywhere between 10% and 75%) with anyone who correctly answers all ten entered into a prize draw.  You can't use the codes on every book, but there are quite a few good ones that you can use them on.

In Which We Discuss eBooks

I've never really understood the romanticism of physical books. I've heard people go on about the pleasure of cracking a spine, or the smell and feel of the pages, and it just doesn't really do anything for me.

I put off getting an ereader because...well, I don't know why.  The cost, partly.  The fact that I'd have to buy all new books for it, and couldn't just magically import my huge collection (in the thousands).  I was a little squicked out by reading that you don't really own ebooks, and they can be edited at the publisher's discretion.  I like owning things, and having them in my control.  I also like sorting them.  I like being able to put an author's books together on a shelf, and to make piles of unread books, and so on.

I bought my Kobo (her name is Opal) last December.  I went away for Christmas, to work in a homeless shelter as I do every year.  In 2011, I took a bunch of point horrors.  I was able to finish one a day (actually, I can easily finish three point horrors in a day, but working in the shelter limited my time) so I had to take a lot.   It was a nightmare carrying that giant bag down to London (on a train, obviously, I didn't walk), and I worried about running out of books.  I think I also read Lorna Doone on my phone that week, but don't quote me on that.

Anyway, a week or so before I went, I was walking past a WHSmiths and saw that they had a sale on Kobos.  I don't think I'd ever heard of a Kobo before, but I went in and played around, and saw that the mini-Kobos were only £50, which was the cheapest price I'd ever seen for an eReader.  So I bought one, on a whim.

I love her.  I love that she fits in my pocket.  I like how she looks and feels.  I love the menu screen, which lets me indulge my love of organising things.  My brain doesn't work when things aren't organised, and a cluttered or badly designed menu screen would really put me off and ruin my enjoyment.  I like the Kobo Awards (post about that coming soon) though it annoys me that they're not as supported as they should be.  I like the Kobo website.  I absolutely adore the way that I can see exactly how many pages are left in a chapter; it splits books into little popcorn sized pieces, something I do with physical books by working out which percentage I'm at, and how long to the next third/quarter etc.  I like that I can put any kind of file on there (though it won't show the page count properly, so I prefer to read Kobo Epubs).

I'm planning to get a Kindle Paperwhite once I start work.  On that note, new job are now saying June.  This is my life right now.

...so I'll read a book, or maybe two or three, I'll add a few new paintings to my gallery, I'll play guitar and knit and cook and basically just wonder, when will my life begin?

The appeal of the Kindle Paperwhite is as follows; it has a bigger screen than Opal Kobo, and I think I'll like that, having a tiny eReader for ease of transport, and a bigger one so books seems like they have less pages.  It lights up, so I can read in the dark.  It works out how long it will take me to finish a chapter, and my brain likes the idea of this new data.  It'll show the page numbers in Kindle books properly.  And the menu seems less brain-irritating than in the normal Kindle (which I bought and returned; could not get on with that menu screen).  At some point I do intend to write a full review of the Kobo, so I might wait till I have both and compare. 

 This then gave me the incentive to start getting rid of my books.  That hurt at first.  I used to hoard books.  I'd read them once then keep them just in case I ever wanted to read them again.  When I moved here, I had something like twenty-five boxes of books.  It was a nightmare. 

From now on, I only want one bookcase of physical books, and that's mostly books that look pretty as a set, like the sci-fi fantasy masterworks and Series of Unfortunate Events, and books which are simply not available as eBooks.

As I said, decluttering hurt at first, but once I'd got rid of a few, it got easier.  I eventually reduced my books by two thirds.  Of those I kept, as you saw in a previous post, a good two hundred were unread.  I have my one bookcase, and the rest I intend to buy eBook versions of as soon as possible.  I don't ever want to have to carry around piles of books again.

I also intend to keep my unread piles more manageable in future.  I'm thinking something like only ten to fifteen unread books on any system (not combined, that's crazy talk).

On another note, I'd love to get a copy of Kim Newman's Life's Lottery.  It's a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story, essentially, but with a few interesting twists.  It's also aimed at adults, as opposed to the actual Choose-Your-Own-Adventure series for children, or the gamebooks, of which I have several (the latter, not the former).  I've borrowed it from the library several times.  Thinking about that book prompted this post; I was wondering if it would be possible for that sort of book to be on an eReader.  It might be, but I think this is one of the few books that I really prefer as a physical object.  I have a bad habit of folding pages over and marking choices with pencil just to make sure I don't miss anything.