![]() ![]() What I do remember are regular trips to the public library in Merrillville, Indiana, with my mom and twin sister.We’d enter the book fortress and make a beeline for the children’s floor upstairs. ![]() It would be too much like right.I grew up in the era of Toys R Us, when Geoffrey the Giraffe beckoned kids from across the parking lot or through the television screen to a wonderland that seemed to offer every toy imaginable. Yet, other than a vague recollection of toy-filled aisles, I have no specific memory attached to that store. Wouldn’t it be nice if books were donated to schools and libraries? Not that we’re holding our breath for such a thing. ![]() It wouldn’t be surprising if Amazon came up with a way for people to send in physical books in exchange for a free or cheap digital copy that doesn’t destroy the book. MatchBook is the first step toward making the physical with digital copy the norm for books. Most people would rather not go through the hassle of searching pirate sites or sending their books off to be destroyed, but they will if they have no other options. And, just as we’ve seen before, it may take the realization that they can’t stop pirating to force change. The book industry is facing the same pressures as the music, TV, and movie industries are. Now Blu-rays and DVDs regularly come with legal digital copies attached. Back then the very idea of giving people digital copies for free just because they bought the physical version was seen as absurd by content distributors. When he gave this advice three years ago Cohen got yelled at from almost every quarter… except for people who love e-books. Your subsequent downloading is akin to buying a CD, then copying it to your iPod.” Author and publisher are entitled to be paid for their work, and by purchasing the hardcover, you did so. “An illegal download is - to use an ugly word - illegal,” she writes. While many an author and publisher would balk at this, Randy Cohen, who runs The Ethicist blog at the New York Times, feels that it’s okay to do, legality aside. If the very thought of destroying a book makes you break out in hives, the only other solution right now is the technically illegal one: finding the electronic version of a book you own on torrent/pirate sites and downloading it. Scans are checked for accuracy, and the service can keep the physical book pages for a few weeks just in case you need a re-scan. And it’s easy to convert that to EPUB format. 1DollarScan sends a PDF, which is readable on most e-readers. I used a Kindle for the first time in 10 years and it totally changed how I readīook owners can purchase extras like higher quality scans and OCR (image-to-text) embedded in the final file. How to share Kindle books with family and friends What’s a book lover to do?Īre Kindle books free? How to read on your Kindle without paying a dime If you have shelves and shelves of paper books you bought from other booksellers, second-hand bookstores, or borrowed from friends, you won’t be able to get legal digital copies on the cheap. And then there’s the sadness that this only applies to Amazon books. Depending on how many book you bought and who put them out, your entire purchase history may not be available. The MatchBook program will only apply to books where the publisher has opted in. However, don’t get your confetti out just yet-there’s a fly in the ointment. This is a testament to how much clout and influence Amazon has in the book world, and may lead to something similar over at Barnes & Noble. This is a feature e-book lovers have wanted for years, though many didn’t think it would ever happen. The Kindle versions will cost just $1 – $3 or free, depending on the deal struck with the publishers. This applies to new book purchases as well as your entire order history back to the dawn of Amazon. Last week Amazon announced Kindle MatchBook, a program that allows users to buy a digital copy of a physical book they purchased through Amazon.
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