Ranting about ebooks

I have read all the books in Kim Harrison's "The Hollows" series, and was looking forward to the latest, "Black Magic Sanction," which was released in February. I don't buy hardback books anymore (except for Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" books that I buy for Bob); I either put the book on hold at the library and wait, wait for the paperback, or, increasingly, wait for the ebook version.

Publishers are now tending to hold the ebook version for a period of time after the hardback comes out; this seems to have started with Stephen King's "Under the Dome" (which I ended up buying in both hardcover, audio, and ebook versions). Before that, it seems that the ebook versions were released at the same time as the hardback. But I can understand the motivation--it appears that the publishers believe that if the ebook version isn't available, people will just go ahead and pay for the hardback version, although I don't think that's true.

In any event, it isn't true for me. I'll wait. I was looking forward to Ms. Harrison's latest book, and the release date for the ebook version was April 6. I could have pre-ordered it a month or so ago at $8.65, but since most Kindle books at Amazon are $9.99, I figured that wasn't a huge savings, and I might as well just wait and pay the money when it comes out. But April 6 came and went, and now Amazon is showing the ebook version of Black Magic Sanction as "no longer available." I also noticed that the Kindle version of Charlaine Harris' "Dead in the Family," her newest, due to publish in May, also appears as "no longer available," and the Kindle version of "Changes" has disappeared also, although I see that the hardcover version is listed at $9.99. I ordered it for $12.99 at WalMart, plus a couple of dollars shipping; with all the book pricing volatility it's just impossible to know if you're getting the best deal or not.

When Black Magic Sanction was theoretically available to purchase in ebook form, the latest price at Amazon was something like $12.65, and another book that I'm interested in reading, Jennifer Crusie's "Wild Ride," is $12.99. When I saw those prices, I thought, well, I'll wait and they'll come down, like the hardcover prices tend to do. Ebook version of most backlist books are available at Amazon for around $6.50. But after reading this, I suppose they won't, or maybe they won't for a year or more. I just have no idea.

I guess one thing I don't understand is, if Amazon and other online retailers are discounting the hardcover versions so steeply, what difference does it make if you pay $9.99 for a hardback or $9.99 for the ebook version? I don't pretend to understand or know anything about the publishing business, but it would seem to me that publishing a hardback book would cost quite a bit more than producing an ebook version. I'm not going to get into that argument, because I know you're not paying for the paper itself, but for the work that went into writing and producing it, but an ebook, being only bits, obviously contains less physical production cost, so if they're being sold for the same price, why not release them at the same time?

There's a page at Kim Harrison's blog where she has opened up comments for people to rant about their dissatisfaction with ebook pricing, ebook delayed releases, etc. Either of things are certainly not the author's fault, and I hate to see people direct their comments at her, or at any author. They're as much a victim here as anyone.

I just wrote an extensive review of iPhone ereader apps over at my iPhone blog yesterday. As I said, I love books, and I love ebooks. I love the convenience of reading books on apps on my iPhone. I'm very conscious of price, though, and will very seldom pay what has, up 'til now, been the "normal" ebook price, that is, $9.99. Still, there are a few books that I will pay that price for. I bought Patricia Briggs' "Silver Borne" last week, and I see that it's still listed at $9.99 for the Kindle version at Amazon. "A Local Habitation" by Seanan McGuire is $6.39, but there was no hardcover version, it was released in mass market paperback.

While I was reading Kim Harrison's blog yesterday, I discovered that I could buy the "enhanced" combination ebook/audiobook version of Black Magic Sanction for $16.99 in the iTunes store. I do have about $6.50 worth of credit in my iTunes account, so that would make it cost about $10, but I was going to buy Swankolab . . . And the thing is, I hate the idea of buying a dedicated app for one book. I don't have that much real estate space on my iPhone, I definitely don't want to start loading it up with an app for every book that I want to read. I guess I could read them, then delete them, but I kind of like hanging on to the ones I like.

I don't know. I guess it will be an interesting issue to follow. I hope they figure it out soon.

Update: "Black Magic Sanction" came out in Kindle on April 7, just one day late. I still haven't bought it, though. I think I may wait to get it from the library.

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A weekend off

Sadly, the high winds that we had here on Thursday knocked the wreath off the nail that it was hanging on, and broke the eggs that were in the nest. When I came home Thursday evening I saw the wreath lying on the front porch, and asked Bob to go out and look. I don't think he was going to tell me that there had been eggs in it, but I had to ask. I know it's stupid, but it made me cry.

The day had just been awful. I've got a former client threatening to sue me, and saying terrible things about me, and I've been worried about the medical bills that are piling up. Coming home to find the little nest on the ground was kind of the last straw, I guess. I cried a little bit, then shook it off and changed my clothes, and we went out and ordered a pizza, then drove around a little before coming back to pick it up. It turned out to be a nice night anyway.

After the stress of last week, I ended up really taking the weekend off. I got the oil changed in the car on Saturday, did some grocery shopping, went out and saw my folks today, cooked chicken and rice for dinner, and read three Kindle books on the iPhone.

I've been having trouble sleeping; it seems that no matter when I go to bed, I wake up at 4:00 or 4:30 and can't go back to sleep. It happened Saturday morning, so rather than lie there sleepless, or get up, I got my iPhone and read. I read Patricia Briggs' "Silver Borne," which was great. Briggs is one of my favorite authors. Silver Borne is the latest in her "Mercy Thompson" series about a shapeshifter--Mercy shifts into coyote form--who was raised with werewolves. The series is really well written. She's started another spin-off series called Alpha and Omega which is wonderful, too.

Then I read a couple of books that I had gotten for free. Publishers have started offering Kindle books for free to introduce their authors and hopefully generate some interest in their other books. I don't download all of the free ones, but if I see one that looks like it might be interesting, I do. I read You Can't Stop Me, by Max Allan Collins and Matthew Clemens (although I see that it's no longer free), and The Dark Tide, by Andrew Gross (which is still free).

I enjoyed both of them, and ended up buying a second book by Gross, Don't Look Twice, which I'm reading now. I really like reading on the iPhone. If I'm in bed, and I don't want to turn on the light and wake Bob up, I switch the font to white type on a black background, and increase the type size a little. I like that I can hold it in one hand and touch the screen to flip the pages. It's getting so I don't really want to hold a big book, I'm so used to reading on the phone.

After I came out of surgery, I really felt pretty good. I actually thought that once I was home I could start working and expected to get a lot done the week I was home. Ha. That turned out to be VERY far from what actually happened.

The surgery was on Sunday, and I got to go home on Monday. The way they do laparoscopic surgery, they blow your abdominal cavity up like a balloon with gas, then make several incisions through which they insert the surgical instruments, fiber optic lights, and something that feeds images to a television monitor. Or something like that. Anyway, they fill you up with carbon dioxide gas, and it takes awhile to dissipate.

It feels like really awful heartburn, and you just have to wait it out. We filled my pain medication prescription, but taking them made the heartburn worse, so after the first day, I didn't take them. Everything tasted awful to me. Bob had gone out and bought pudding cups and jello, and the first night I was home he made me a grilled cheese sandwich and cream of mushroom soup, but I couldn't eat anything. The only thing that sounded--and tasted--good to me was fruit, so he got me some canned peaches and pineapple and grapefruit, and I ventured out one day and bought some ready-made smoothies, and that's what I lived on for most of the week.

I couldn't get up enough energy to do anything at all, so I spent most of the week on the couch watching television. I watched a lot of television, mostly old sitcoms--The Golden Girls, The Cosby Show, like that. One day I ran across "Early Edition" on the SyFy Network, the show about the guy who gets tomorrow's newspaper each morning, and then goes out and tries to stop all the bad things that are going to happen. I must have watched five or six episodes in a row.

I had a hard time sleeping, and spent a couple of nights in the recliner in Bob's office, reading. One night I didn't sleep at all, I read Barbara Bretton's Laced With Magic, which she had sent me and which I had been saving. One day I stayed in bed all day and read Blackout, by Connie Willis, which I had gotten from the library.

I spent the whole week like that--watching television, resting, reading--and made a couple of short trips out to the grocery store for fruit and milk and cereal--Rice Krispies was the one other thing that sounded good to me, with bananas. An hour out was about all I could do before I started really fading, but Bob said it was good for me to get out a little and try to build my strength back up. I went back to work the next week, and except for getting tired easily, didn't have any ill effects.

I'm feeling fine now, and seem to be able to eat anything I want. I assume that the reason food was tasting so weird to me was the anesthetic still working its way out of my system; everything tastes fine now. I lost about 15 pounds while I was in the hospital, and have put 4 or 5 back on, but that's fine. I'm just glad to be able to eat again!

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Procrastination

There are two things in play here:

1. We never use the front door, we always come in through the garage.
2. I'm a terrible procrastinator.

Like I said, we never use the front door, but I do occasionally check to be sure that there aren't things stuck to the door, or that no one has left a package on the front porch. I checked this morning, and when I opened the door, a bird flew out of the Christmas wreath (see No. 2).

Yes, the Christmas wreath is still up. And now it's going to be up until summer, because a bird has built a nest in it.

When I drove myself to the emergency room, all I took were the clothes on my back and my purse. Unlike the last time I had surgery, I didn't have time to think about it, worry about it, or plan anything. I don't know what day it was that Bob asked me if I wanted him to bring me anything, maybe it was Friday. I asked him to bring me a couple of pairs of underwear, a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt so I would have something clean to go home in when the time came.

He asked if I wanted any books or anything, and I told him that there were some library books near my chair, and I asked him to bring me a notebook that I had left in my car. He went down immediately (my car was still in the emergency room parking lot) and got the notebook, and moved my car to the regular parking lot -- I was a little worried that they would ticket me if I left it right outside the emergency room for more than a couple of days.

He brought me the library books and a bag of clothes. He was so sweet, he said "I tried to color-coordinate" -- he had brought a pair of flannel pajama pants that are kind of a faded red and black plaid, a rose-colored t-shirt and a white one, and a couple of pairs of underwear. I pulled out a pair of underwear, and said, "Is this the only underwear you brought?" He pulled out another pair, and I told him that unfortunately the first pair was definitely too small, and the second pair probably was, too.

He said something like, why did I have underwear that was too small? I said well, I don't know, but in any event, I'm going to have abdominal surgery, I don't want to have to squeeze into my underwear to go home. So he said he would go home and lay out all my underwear and pick out the biggest ones, and he teased me about that the rest of the week, that he had to go home and get "big butt" underwear. Oh well.

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Week in the hospital

I meant to come back and write the whole saga of the hospital stay, but the days kind of got away from me. The time in the ER was awful because I was so sick; the ultrasound made me even sicker because I had to lie on my side. I just wanted the pain and nausea to stop. Everyone was doing everything they could, but I'm very susceptible to nausea and it's difficult to get it under control. They eventually were giving me two different medications, alternating them, and it finally helped, although it never completely went away until after the surgery.

It turned out that I had pancreatitis. One of the doctors--there were so many!--told me that, and told me that I was "very sick." I didn't really realize how sick until it was all over and I looked it up.

They were giving me the anti-nausea medication through IV, and pain medication, but weren't giving me anything to eat. I didn't want anything to eat, of course, but I was kind of worried about my blood sugar. I tend to have problems if I don't eat regularly, and I was worried that maybe some of the nausea was from not eating. But I realize now that they were letting my pancreas rest. After a couple of days they started giving me glucose in the IV, and then they started giving me insulin.

I didn't really understand that, either, I thought it was in reaction to the glucose, but I guess it was because of the pancreatitis. It was all sort of a blur, really. I just did whatever they told me to do. Once I stopped throwing up, it wasn't horrible. Bob was there every day, as much as he could, my parents came a couple of times, Bob's parents came, and my sister Lynn, and Anna from work and my friend Patti. I got flowers, and Bob brought my library books, although I couldn't concentrate enough to read.

I didn't even watch television except the last day when I caught a Pink Panther marathon, which was kind of fun. Mostly I tried to sleep, but of course, I only got to sleep about a half hour at a time before someone came in and woke me up to check my temperature or stick me with something. They were constantly sticking the ends of my fingers and checking my blood sugar; by the time I left most of my fingertips were bruised. The IV machine would start beeping if it was empty, or if I turned over and the IV in my arm moved, but as far as I could tell, the beeping was confined to my room, and it didn't turn on any alarms anywhere else. So it would wake me up, and I'd lie there for awhile, then call the nurse and tell them "the IV is beeping," and someone would come and fix it.

On Thursday they scoped me; the ultrasound had showed that there was a gallstone blocking the pancreatic duct, which I guess was what was causing all the problems. But the doctor said that there wasn't anything there; I guess it had passed by itself. On Friday the surgeon came by and said that my liver and pancreatic enzyme levels were better, but my white count was still high, and he wasn't sure why, and didn't know if they were going to be able to get it down. He said he might have to go ahead and operate over the weekend.

The ended up doing the surgery on Sunday, and only after thinking about it afterwards did I realize that I wasn't scared at all. It didn't even occur to me. I just wanted it to be over.

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Wow

Wow. Talk about your lost weekends. Although in this case, it was more like a lost fortnight. Apologies for the complete drop-off-the-face-of-the-earth for the past two weeks. It was completely unplanned.

I know I've mentioned that I think I have been having gallbladder issues for a year or two. The attacks hadn't been frequent enough for me to feel like it was imperative I do anything about it--it would happen every three or four months, last 8-10 hours, then would be okay until the next time. I figured I'd just keep trying to manage it with diet the best I could, and put it off as long as possible. I had an attack on Sunday, two weeks ago, that went away like they all had so far, so I thought I'd dodged the bullet again.

Then on Wednesday morning, the 3rd, I woke up feeling kind of bad. I had a meeting that morning, so I went ahead and got ready and went to that, then afterwards I called in to work and said I wasn't feeling well and was going to go home. That was about 11:00, I think. I went home, and the gallbladder pain started up again. Since I hadn't eaten anything that I felt would have caused it -- since I didn't feel well that morning, but knew I should eat something, I had had a piece of dry toast -- that was kind of scary.

The pain just kept on and kept on, and I tried to figure out what to do. Normally I try to sleep, but that wasn't happening. I looked back in my notes to see if anything had helped in times past; one time Pepto Bismol had seemed to help, so I took some, and I can tell you that me taking Pepto Bismol by choice is one of those things that means I'm really sick. It didn't help. Nothing was helping. I had talked to several people over the past year or so who had had the same issues; I think it was Stefani who said that one time, the pain just didn't stop, which is what sent her to the doctor, so I thought, well, I think I'm at that point.

It was so bad, though, that I knew I couldn't wait to try to get an appointment with someone. I threw on some sweatpants and flipflops--at this point, I was hurting so bad I just wanted it to stop, I didn't care what I looked like--and tried to figure out where to go. I know some of the guys at work don't have regular doctors, and go to urgent care offices, so I thought about that, then thought, screw it, and drove the mile or so to the emergency room at the nearest hospital. I wasn't sure what to expect, never having been to the emergency room before. I talked to (someone who I think was) a volunteer, who asked me what was wrong. I'm always hesitant to self-diagnosis, because I know that can be irritating to people who are, you know, actually doctors, but I said that I thought it was probably gallbladder pain.

The man, an elderly gentleman, said he had had that before, too, and said, "that's really bad, isn't it?" I nodded, and he called someone, and I was immediately whisked off to an examination room. I don't really know how long it took, but I saw a doctor pretty quickly. He was the doctor on call, an internist, and he examined me, ordered an ultrasound, and admitted me. I was kind of surprised at that, but glad, because I definitely didn't feel like going anywhere.

Once I knew what was going on, I called Bob's cell phone and left a message about what was happening and where I was, and called my parents. It was all kind of a blur from that point--I think I saw three or four different doctors, had the ultrasound, had IVs put in, got pain and anti-nausea medication, etc., and was in a room within a matter of a couple of hours. As soon as Bob got my message, he left work and came to the hospital, and I opened my eyes, and there he was.

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