I Love my Kindle, but . . .

what I really miss is the browsing, The wandering up and down the aisles, checking out new genres, new covers, new authors. It isn't as easy on the Kindle. Oh, they offer suggestions for new stories computer generated by the stories you've already bought, but it just isn't the same.

Sometimes I want to read something completely different.

That was how I 'discovered' Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden. I picked up White Night, the seventh or eighth in the series and enjoyed it. I then purchased the preceeding books and anxiously await the next one. I made the mistake of loaning the first three books to a friend, only never to see them again. Yes, I emphatically stated that I wanted them back. After a while, I gave up asking for them.

NEVER loan a book that is a 'keeper'. You will never see it again. Jus' Sayin'.

There's something magical about the smell of books. Not the dusty, musty old books, but the clean, "new car" smell of paper and ink of a paperback. Randomly picking up a title and reading the blurb on the back, or opening it up to read the snippet inside the front cover, or the first page or two.

Or for those of you who are like me . . . checking out the ending. I truly miss flipping to the last page to see if the hero and heroine managed to get together in a romance. Yes, I know that's how the story is supposed to end, but sometimes I want to make sure it's going to happen! This doesn't ruin the story for me, but it confirms why I want to spend the time reading their journey.

The Kindle allows for this function, but it isn't the same.

It's tough these days for many bookstores to survive. Even the big name stores are having a tough time getting merchandise to appeal to the masses. Our local Barnes and Nobel store has started offering toys for all ages along with the obligatory coffee shop. This is a huge store, but it probably offers only 5% of all the books offered on the Kindle. They simply can't house that many books. So they have to be picky about what books they showcase.

Which is why they lean toward the guaranteed sellers, the big name authors. Which is why publishers pay big money for their books to be 'featured' in one of those cardboard thingies--sorry, I forgot the name of those things! Every now and then, I've stumbled across one of my recently published author friends. It's rare, but it happens. Sometimes if an author has only a few books that sold 'okay', but hasn't cranked out more than one a year, they will disappear from the shelves.

Oh, many times the store says they'll order a book for you, but it's easier just to go on Amazon and do it yourself, plus you get it delivered to your door. Or you spend ten seconds to upload it to your Kindle.

I've never willing purchased a hardback fiction book. I could never justify the cost, though there are a few of them in my saved books, namely a couple of the later Harry Potter books. At the time that I bought them, they were just as cheap as a paperback book at a Sam's Club, so I bought them. Personally, I don't see how a publisher can make money on a fictional hardback. I'm sure they do make their money back, but the overhead is so much higher than an electronic book.

So the question becomes . . .

How do you discover new authors on your Kindle? Is there a trick that I just haven't figured out?

Curious minds want to know.

Later, Peeps!

Things that I'm Pondering

A friend and I were e-chatting the other day and she asked me if I had read a particular book yet.
Uh, no, you should see my TBR (to be read) pile, I responded, plus I haven't made a B & N run in a few months.  I had errands to run, so I thought I'd purchase that book along with several others and start reading.

I happily troop through the store to the romance section.

It wasn't there.

Science Fiction and Fantasy had been put in place of romance in the center of the store.  I looked down the next row--More SFF.  The next row--Anime, Manga, Graphic novels.  The next row--mystery.  And the final row--true crime on one side and YA filling the wall that separated the adult and children's section.

Imagine my surprise when I HAD TO ASK WHERE THEY MOVED THE ROMANCE SECTION!

It was to the far, far right in never, never land, the dark hole of the corner behind the coffee shop.  And there were less shelves than before.  Hmm.  I decided to do a totally-unscientific study.  What I am calling a 'shelf' is roughly five feet tall and four feet wide with six(ish) rows.  

Romance--15 shelves
SFF (NOT including graphic novels/anime/manga 12)--16 shelves
Mystery (NOT including True Crime 2)--12 shelves

I didn't count YA, though they had at least12 shelves of 5' high racks, BUT they also had shelves that were roughly 7 feet high.  They did account for a huge amount of space and I would definitely say they were in the similar amounts as these other sections

Many of the authors shelved in the SFF and Mystery sections were familiar to me as they used to write Romance.

Does this mean more writers are branching away from romance? 

I wondered about this because I've noticed a trend in Romance that I find slightly disconcerting.  The language and graphic nature of the 'act' (I'm using this term because I don't want to get tagged by freaks and have to delete their comments)  has become more prominent along with the ability for authors to explore various cross-genres, especially paranormal, while I feel the true romantic aspect of the story is becoming less and less.


So are the authors that are being shelved in other areas of the store still including romance in their stories?

I'd have to say, probably yes, but romance isn't taking the lead role that it once did--at least not in their stories.  The mystery, Urban Fantasy, steampunk, etc is at the forefront.

Is it is because romance is becoming too erotic?  Do authors want to tone down the sexual aspect of the story to write a plot that doesn't focus on how many times your characters hop into bed with each other? On a side note: Two of the three romances that I bought were re-issued Jayne Castle (Jayne Ann Krentz)) books from 1998, while the other was a newly issued book.

I won't get into what the clerk said about YA (And yes, she named a particular author who is shelved in SFF, Romance, and YA areas), but let's just say she's very upset that they are also very graphic in nature--in other words, not really suitable for most fourteen-year olds.  And yes, I know many of you snuck your mother's romances and read them, but I KNOW I wouldn't buy them for my kidlet.

 As I said, this is a very unscientific study, but it did make me curious.

What do you all think about the topic?

Write on!