The e-book conspiracy

**Slightly tongue in cheek. Calling it a conspiracy, at least.....

**Visual aids ahead

What if there was a conspiracy to do away with the printed book and to force we readers to be reliant on e-books?

  I was at first totally dead set against e-books. I have mellowed a bit, and actually read a lot of them these days, but nowhere near the amount of physical books. There is just something about the feel of a book in your hands, being able to leaf through it, re-read favorite parts, to see books on your bookshelves, pull them off and leaf through them.....you miss all that with e-books.

 And yeah, I get the fact that they are convenient. I currently have 1588 books on my Kindle. No, that is not an exaggeration. And a huge majority were free, and a huge majority will never get read because I have so many physical books to read. 

And the idea of paying much for an e-book boggles my mind. I have paid a couple dollars on rare occasion, and 99 cents more often....but to pay $8 and up as I see a lot of prices.....man. If I am paying that, I want a physical book, not an electroic file I cannot hold in my hands.

The reading I do on my Kindle fire is primarily at work in my car while waiting to go in. I go plenty early to get a good parking place, and the Kindle Fire lights up, making it easy to see if it is dark or not quite light enough to read a regular book. So I actually subscribed to Kindle Unlimited and read books on it before work and on breaks.

But the whole push for e-books frustrates me. Amazon, especially pushes e-books over physical books. 

Here are the promised visual aids😃

Search Amazon for one of my favorite authors, Kimberley Woodhouse (only using her because I love her books and like her so well....this happens with all authors)

Now what do you notice - if you can read it....Two out of three books are showing the Kindle price and version. That is par for the course.

Now what happens if you click on one of her books in the search results:

Again, the Kindle version is what comes up automatically. 
Now let's go a step further, and go to her Amazon page.

Surprise, surprise, surprise: the Kindle version comes up as the first choice. 

When this e-book push really gets to me, is on preorders. Baker Publishing actually offers 40% off  preorders of most of their books, and I do take advantage of that.

However, that is not the norm. A lot of authors I buy books from self-publish, and Amazon always has the e-book up long before the paperback for preorder. Most of the time, the paperback does not even show up to order until release day, and sometimes not for a week after release day.

Here are two books I want to preorder. They are both due out August 8, 11 days from now. And only the e-books are available for preorder. I run onto this over and over again. I want to preorder the paperbacks, but Amazon does not put them up for preorder.

There is another author whose books I love, and she has been offering preorder buys on her last few books. Guess what kind.....if you guessed e-book, you should win a prize....if I had any......

Anyway, I asked a couple times about a preorder buy on paperbacks, and she replied not this time. But there is never a time she does. Sigh.

It is convenient to carry hundreds of books on an electronic device (wonder what the limit is? It is obviously more than 1588).

But I will always prefer physical books. And if an EMP ever happens, e-books will not exist, and all we will have is phsical books. Just like in the old days. 😎