Kirkville

Ebook pricing has evolved since Amazon introduced the first Kindle device in 2007. While they were not the first retailer of ebooks, they were the first company to provide an end-to-end solution for reading ebooks. You can buy ebooks from Amazon and read them almost immediately on Amazon devices or on Amazon apps. You don’t have to download and transfer books; all of that is automatic.

In the early days of kindle books, Amazon said that they would sell the majority of books for $9.99. Obviously, that has changed over the years, and inflation has increased the price of books. At the time of this writing, hardcover best sellers on Amazon, whose retail prices are $25 to $30, sell for about half that price in Kindle format. Some new trade paperback books are more expensive in Kindle format, because of the discounts Amazon applies to the retail price of print books. On the other hand, a lot of back catalog books cost much less than $10.

But these prices only apply to bestsellers. For self-published ebooks, it’s up to authors to choose the price.

Read the rest of the article on The L&L Blog.

To learn how to use Scrivener for Mac, Windows, and iOS, check out my book Take Control of Scrivener 3.

Some people upgrade to a new iPhone every year, to get the latest cameras or other features. But if you’re like most people, you keep your phone for several years before upgrading to a newer model. Perhaps you mainly use your iPhone for the basics, or feel that as long as it isn’t broken and the battery still holds a charge, there’s no real reason to upgrade. (In fact, Apple will even replace the battery for you at a reasonable price, if yours has lost too much of its capacity.)

However, you might not be aware that there’s a real danger in using an iPhone for too long. Specifically, if an iPhone can no longer run the latest version of Apple’s iOS operating system, it will miss out on a lot of critical security updates. Vulnerabilities that remain unpatched can put you at risk.

In this article, we’ll explain in greater detail why using an old iPhone can be dangerous, and which iPhone models are safe to buy in 2023.

Read the rest of the article on The Mac Security Blog.

When Amazon first released the Kindle Scribe, I bought one because I was curious about how it would be to read on a device that size. I have no desire to use any of the note-taking features, and, from the many reviews I’ve read, most people find them frustrating. At a starting price of $340 – with 16 GB storage, and what Amazon calls the “basic pen” – this is a very expensive device. I tried it for a few days, then returned it, because it was just too expensive to be used as a reading device.

Recently, I noticed that Amazon was offering a 20% discount on a new Kindle Scribe if you traded in an old Kindle. I had a very old Kindle Paperwhite that was sluggish, and received £20 for it, so the £330 price, after the 20% discount, dropped to £264. In addition, Amazon was offering a £30 voucher for Kindle books, which made the Scribe cost only £234. This was just a few pounds more than the Kindle Oasis, of which I have had two versions since 2017.

I very much like the Kindle Oasis, but it always felt a bit small to me. I like to read with fonts larger than in most print books, and this means that I have to switch pages very often. With the Kindle Scribe, I can have fonts the same size, yet the pages look more like real pages; the width of the lines and the number of lines is closer to what I see in a paperback book. (One thing I would like to see on all of the Kindles is more font choices. There are only nine fonts, and given the resolution of current Kindle displays, they could certainly add a few more that would be readable on an E ink tablet.)

I’m enjoying reading on the Kindle Scribe. It’s closer to the size of a hardcover book, and having more text on a page feels closer to reading a real book. Perhaps Amazon made a mistake: there are probably people like me who want a Kindle with a larger screen, but who don’t want to take notes, and don’t want to pay a premium for a feature they won’t use. After all, what made the Kindle successful was the fact that it was a single task device, for reading and nothing else. At the discounted price, it makes sense as a larger Kindle; at full price, it’s just too expensive.

I think the ideal Kindle would be somewhere between the size of the Oasis and the Scribe. While you get more portability with the Oasis, it feels cramped with larger fonts, because the line lengths are too short. (The optimal line length for reading is about 45–70 characters; in the photo above, the Oasis display about 50–55 characters per line, and the Scribe about 60–65 characters.) The Scribe is quite large: it’s almost the size and weight of an 10" iPad, is almost the same weight (433g vs. 487g), and doesn’t easily fit into a bag.

So if you want a larger Kindle, and have an old device to trade in, this could be a good time to try the Kindle Scribe. Even if you don’t have an old Kindle, you could buy one used on eBay; as long as it still works and isn’t visibly damaged, you should be able to trade it in. Even if it is damaged, I think Amazon will still give you the discount.

Note: After I published this article, a friend pointed out that it’s easy to add custom fonts to the Kindle.

I got a Google alert a few days ago for my name, which informed me that one of my books was available for free download on SoundCloud. While I’ve gotten alerts before for books available on sites that host pirated ebooks, this is the first time I’ve been notified that a book of mine is being given away for free on an audio platform. I contacted the publisher of the book, who sent a takedown notice to the site, and, when I checked a few days later, the book was gone. I did, however, find another of my books available for download on the site; one from 2004, that is so out of date that I don’t care. (And for which I don’t earn any royalties, having never earned out the advance.)

Read the rest of the article on The L&L Blog.

To learn how to use Scrivener for Mac, Windows, and iOS, check out my book Take Control of Scrivener 3.