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Thursday, June 23, 2016

Ebook obsession

I read a lot of books; I'm sure that's no surprise to anyone. I read over one hundred books a year, sometimes more. This year I'm on track to read about two hundred. I don't buy physical books anymore. I really love ebooks. I remember when I had a Palm Pilot, I was thrilled to discover that you could read books on it.

Then along came the Kindle. I had one of the first ones that I eventually sold to my sister once I got an iPhone. Then I got another, better (and cheaper) Kindle, and then a Kindle Fire, and of course an iPad. Now, with the iPhone 6S, I read almost exclusively on my phone now. It's always with me. I don't have to worry if I have a book in my bag for downtime, I always have several hundred in my phone.

I read while waiting in doctors' offices, I read in line at the car wash, I read while eating in restaurants if I'm eating alone. I have felt guilty at times for buying so many ebooks, and I've gotten more picky about them lately. I subscribe to several free and discount ebook lists, and I download a lot of free and 99 cent books.

For the new release bestsellers, I usually put my name on the waiting list at the library, but I would really rather buy them. But I can wait rather than pay $15 for the ebook.

All this is leading up to the Apple pricefixing antitrust lawsuit settlement. The suit had to do with Apple allegedly conspiring with book publishers to charge artificially high prices. According to 9to5Mac, "Customers will receive $6.93 for every ebook that was a New York Times bestseller and $1.57 for every other ebook" sold by certain publishers.

So, I don't have any idea how many books I bought, but I got an Amazon credit of almost $350 in my account yesterday. So yeah, my ebook obsession actually paid off!