Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Sampling Rocks!

Jeff Bezos probably doesn't like me...yet. (To be fair, I'm quite certain he has no idea who the heck I am, but that's beside the point.) Up to now I've managed to fight the temptation to go crazy and buy every Kindle edition that looks appealing. Every time I see that "Buy" button I tremble a bit, and then I scroll further up the screen and hit "Try a Sample" instead.

Yes, as of right this minute, I've only bought two Kindle editions but I've downloaded sample content from 15 other books. The only reason I bought those two is because they passed muster after I read their sample downloads. I'll probably pick up the purchasing pace here in a bit, especially since I have a couple of upcoming flights I want to get ready for, but I'm starting to realize that my purchases will only come after I read the sample material.

Btw, after reading samples from two other books I thought I was interested in, I quickly realized they're not for me. Delete and delete. I'm not the sort of person to sit down and read the first 20 pages of a book in the bookstore, so I've bought my share of duds over the years. Thanks to the Kindle sample download feature I'll bet my disappointment rate will drop to zero (or close to it) going forward. Very nice.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

C'mon Joe....just 2 books since you bought your Kindle? Loosen up man! By the way, for the tightwads among us, check out Feedbooks.com and ManyBooks.com for free Amazon Kindle version of old books made digital thanks to Project Gutenberg.

Tomlin said...

Amazon throws rocks too
So I sample
to see for instance
if you can read the formulas
in a beginning calculus book
Not without equals signs
and the formatting
is all over the place
Not to mention
The Table of Contents
is not linked
Don't have to buy all those samples
Keep them in the home page
until you are ready to read them
:>)

Joe Wikert said...

Yep, Feedbooks was one of my first stops on day one. I hadn't heard of ManyBooks till now though, so I'll visit them shortly. And yes, I'm the consummate tightwad!