I LOVE MY KINDLE BUT...

I love my Kindle. I really do. It's so easy to buy a book at night when there's nothing around to read. It's so easy to make the text large enough that I don't strain my eyes. It's so easy to carry scads of books on trips in one tiny container.

But today Amazon sent me a Best Books of the Month ad that showed the book covers over the hardback price and the Kindle price. And I was amazed that publishers still don't get it.

The Still Point of the Turning World - Hardback $14.41, Kindle 12.99
Benediction - Hardback 14.36, Kindle 12.99
Between Man and Beast - Hardback 15.66, Kindle 13.99
The Drunken Botanist - Hardback 11.97, Kindle 9.99

Went into the Mysteries category and the same thing:
Six Years (a Harlan Coben pre-order) - Hardback 15.98, Kindle 14.99
The Golden Egg (Donna Leon pre-order) - Hardback 14.43, Kindle 13.20
Murder Below Montparnassee (Cara Black pre-order) - Hardback 15.71, Kindle 12.99
The Accursed (Joyce Carol Oates pre-order) -Hardback 16.62, Kindle 12.74

And so on.

Why should I pay 9.99-14.99 for an eBook when for 1-4 dollars more I can get a printed copy? And then I can loan it to as many friends as I like, I can donate it to the used book sale for the library, or I can trade it in at the used bookstore for credit to buy more books.

The eBook, on the other hand...Well, I think Amazon allows us to loan it once. And that may depend on publisher permission; I'm not real clear on that. But anyway, if you loan it to your sister, then your mother and cousin want to read it...Too bad!

Not to mention Amazon can evidently take back any of your eBooks stored in the Cloud at any time. Not that they would, I'm sure, but still...

And I don't blame Amazon for the unreasonable prices. It's the publishers. I understand that they're trying to cover their overhead and make a profit. But lots of smaller ePublishers are putting out books for half these prices and less.

So bottom line: I really have to want to read an author before I'll buy their eBooks. And I'm sorry to say, there are lots of authors I enjoy reading, but there aren't that many I like well enough to shell out ten bucks plus for. So I'll wait till the used paperbacks come down to prices I can afford and buy them then. And I'll stick to trying new authors on my Kindle, or wait for old authors I like to go on sale.

So long as I have something to read, I'm okay with that. Publishers might want to get on board with  our reading habits and adjust their thinking. I suspect they could sell a lot more books if they do.

Okay. Rant over. It's safe to come out now.

MAILINGS

Well, this morning we mailed out a hundred and fifty-eight first chapters of  TAXED TO THE MAX, my light mystery hardback. There should have been a hundred and fifty-nine--the number of tax commissioners in Georgia--but evidently we lost one somewhere.

Don't know where we lost it or how we lost it. We had 159 first chapters, a label for each county, and we put them together and stuffed them into a box. We took it to the post office, got a hundred sixty stamps, put them on and had two stamps left over instead of one.

So I counted the chapters and yep, there were only a hundred fifty-eight first chapters.

I hate it when things like that happen!

FINAL COVER FOR TAXED TO THE MAX

I'm very excited since I just got the final cover for TAXED TO THE MAX coming out in late December from Five Star/Cengage. Since it's a hardback, the cover's kind of wide. I'm hoping I can get it all in here!

Here's what it's about in case you can't read the blurb:

Auto tag clerk Corrie Caters hates the tax office. The customers are irate and her co-worker Delores is grouchy. If Corrie ever gets through college, she's waving bye-bye.

When rumored arsonist and delinquent taxpayer Billy Lee Woodhallen attacks the tax commissioner, Corrie decides to call it quits. Too late. The next morning she and Delores find their boss murdered.  Billy Lee must have done it to keep his property from being sold.

County officials want to appoint Corrie tax commissioner, but she's not that stupid. Then the man who jilted her at the altar in front of two hundred people—most of them local—shows up.  A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent, Bodie Fairhust thinks Billy Lee will strike again and tells her to refuse the job.

Like any self-respecting north Georgia woman, Corrie won't listen to a sneaky snake-in-the-grass. She takes the job to spite Bodie. But the snake was right. Billy Lee comes up with an alibi and is free to go after the new tax commissioner. Her.

Now obtuse deputies guard her 24/7, a state auditor breathes down her neck, and a pothead IT guy is doing heaven knows what to the tax digest she's responsible for. Not to mention Delores snubbing her and the weird tax office customers trying to do all kinds of illegal things. If Billy Lee doesn't do her in, the stress will.

A light mystery, TAXED TO THE MAX shows what really happens in property tax and tag offices.

ARC for TAXED TO THE MAX

Excited last week to open one (of two) boxes and find they contained the Advance Reading Copies for my light mystery TAXED TO THE MAX coming out in December from Five Star. This will be a hardback, but I still didn't expect such nice Advance Copies. They're like trade paperbacks.

Now I have to figure out places to send them out to for review. Five Star has already done the main ones so I must dig around and find smaller places. Can't remember if the Atlanta Journal Constitution still does book reviews or not.

Oh well. Guess I'll soon find out.