BookBub

Last week I tripped over a link to BookBub. I'll tell you what it is in a minute.

Over the last few years I've read more and more books on my tablet. In the beginning it felt really weird, but once I got used to it, it was regular books that started to seem weird. I still really like paper books, and I do read them, but the practicality of the ebook has won me over.

What hasn't won me over is the price of most ebooks. As it stands, most ebooks are as expensive as their paperback cousins, and it's ridiculous. With paper books you have printing, materiel, transport, middlemen, labor, you name it. It all costs money. But with ebooks you have a server and a webmaster and that's pretty much it. You can store an entire library in a closet, so real estate isn't much of a problem. This should drive the price down, but this is rare.

Amazon, the biggest retailer of electronic books understands this, but unfortunately the publishers don't. Or rather they won't. When Amazon started selling ebooks they wanted the price to be low, after all you're only downloading a copy of a file but the major publishing houses balked. They demanded to get the same prices as paper books. Whether this was out of fear of the printed market falling or just plain old greed I couldn't tell you, but Amazon had no choice but to agree to their demands. This is why you're paying as much for a file as for a printed book.

Of course the writer deserves a fair share, and so does the editor, but the rest of the costs are minimal, so that's why I was really happy to find BookBub.

If you've ever been to Amazon you'll know how huge it is. Unless you're looking for a specific author it can be really difficult to find something for you. Especially if you're just looking for good bargains, and that's where BookBub comes in handy.

You simply log in to BookBub with your email and then specify which genres and authors you're interested in, and then they email you when those books are on sale. And the best sale in the world has to be a free book. Yupp, I have downloaded several books for free and it's completely legal. Because with the messed up prices most ebooks have it's hard for me to give new authors a chance, but with prices from free to 0.99 cents I'm more than happy to go for it.

There are other sites like BookBub, but since I haven't tried them I can't comment. But if you like to read on your electronic device of choice, give BookBub a chance, otherwise you are going to have to sift through Amazon's kindle store every day on your own.

Until next time, read a book you haven't read before and have a great week!