My household has three Kindle Fire tablets (two of them HD). Obviously they are used for things besides reading books, but the main reason for their purchase was as text delivery devices. If I an extra house to store physical books and a manservant of some sort to manage the collection, I would be very happy with “dead tree.” I had a professor years ago who admitted he had an extra house which he ended up filling with his enormous book collection, to the annoyance of his wife. I can’t imagine being in that situation, but my “book habit” was getting out of control by the middle years of the 2000s. Moving was starting to become a major chore which I dreaded because of the boxes of books. And I don’t miss lugging around large numbers of books when I’m going on a road trip. I am well aware that there are unintended downsides to signing on to the e-book revolution, and Amazon in particular. But the convenience factor is just too high. And yes, I’m a pretty big user of Amazon Prime; I never liked physical shopping.
So I was curious when Amazon launched a subscription book service. The New York Times reviews the pro’s and con’s, Amazon Unveils E-Book Subscription Service, With Some Notable Absences. Some people are calling it a glorified library card. If that was the case I would probably sign up. But looking at the collection of books I don’t see many recent academic press publications, which is the largest proportion of my reading. So as it it happens it isn’t a glorified library card. So I’m not signing up, even though the price point isn’t high at all.
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