Sunday, January 8, 2012

Barnes and Noble Ebook Guilt



I've been feeling guilt over my ebook reading lately. Why? Because when I go in a Barnes and Noble brick and mortar store these days, I buy nothing. Ok, I occasionally buy magazines or a manga volume that I cannot get on Ipad. What I usually end up doing is seeing a book in Barnes and Noble that I want to buy, but instead of purchasing it, I write down the title or memorize it. Then, when I get home, I promptly visit Amazon.com  and buy it for my Amazon Kindle Touch. End of story.

Lately, I've been feeling guilty about that. I've been thinking about buying a Nook Simple Touch, which is pretty much the equivalent of the Kindle Touch I have right now. Same price, but "supposedly" the Nook pages turn faster, has better text display, and longer battery life.

 It also says the Nook has "no annoying ads" which I guess is a dig at the Kindle. Yes, I bought the Kindle Touch that comes with "Special Offers" but the ads are NOT annoying. If anything they are beneficial. There's like a tiny strip down at the bottom of the Kindle screen, much like the little strip you see when you play a "free" game from the Apps store from Apple. It only appears when you are on your library page and never appears while you are reading. If you want to see the offer, you touch it, and if you want it, you just get the offer sent to your email. The only other thing is that when your Kindle is in sleep mode a fullscreen ad comes up instead of pictures of authors. Actually, the original screensaver was just an ad for Amazon so who cares. I've actually saved money by USING the special offers, like getting an ebook for $1 or getting a $5 off an Amazon order offer. They also localize your offers as well, so you can get savings with merchants near where you live. Like right now I have offers like $29 for a month of unlimited Yoga classes at a place near me. So I actually think the special offers are GOOD.

I love the Kindle. I actually prefer reading ebooks on it now instead of reading an actual print book. But let's leave that whole thing for another blog entry.

So I've been wondering whether I should buy a Nook even though I really have no need for one. Why? Because I feel that the right thing to do is that if I see a book that I want to buy in Barnes and Noble, I should BUY it from Barnes and Noble instead of coming home and downloading it from Amazon. Especially since their ebook prices are the same as Amazon.

So I don't know. It's just something I'm thinking about. Feel free to give advice.

2 comments:

  1. I don't know. I've used both and I really enjoy my Nook, preferring it over the Kindle, but I can't recommend that you purchase one over a feeling of guilt. It seems like a waste of money.

    Now if you were looking for a recommendation on getting either the Kindle Fire or the Nook Tablet, I would say you should pay the extra $50 and get the Nook because it is faster and more functional than the Fire but you aren't asking that so... I'd say deal with your guilt in some other way.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, I've pretty much decided to get over my guilt and not buy one. Maybe I'll just sell my old Kindle on Ebay and get a Nook with that! lol

    ReplyDelete