Ok, we’ve got our first Kindle online. It is Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty, the essay that blows up the whole of modern political designations. A thrilling piece. We’ve priced it absurdly low to test the demand. If you like it, buy it. Then tell us what we did right and wrong with this edition. We are just getting going on this, and if it works, expect many more, including Human Action and Man, Economy, and State, among potentially hundreds more.
See what you think.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/9679/starting-with-kindle/
Starting With Kindle
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I guess since I don’t know what Kindle is, I can safely ignore this post
Kindle is the relatively new e-book reader sold by Amazon. Unless you’ve spent the couple hundred dollars on the reader you won’t be able to use this new format.
Sadly, this means I am excluded as well.
“Unless you’ve spent the couple hundred dollars on the reader you won’t be able to use this new format.”
Amazon recently put out a free Kindle for iPhone app, which also works with the iPod Touch. That’s how I read my Kindle books.
This one looks good, but that great cover image didn’t make it into the book itself, so Left & Right ends up being one of the books in my library that displays with the words “No image available” instead of a thumbnail image of the cover.
FINALLY!!
I bought a Kindle last year for the sole purpose of reading Mises Institute books, but the only problem all this time was that most of the books on Mises are in A4 size PDF format and I have to go through a lot of trouble to convert them in kindle display size.
I hope you keep all the books that cheap, and if possible also release a Mises Instiute branded Kindle, it would be a killer combination.
You can use Mobi pocket Creator to transform the PDFs from mises.org into kindle format (or formats for other ebook readers).
I’m glad to see the Mises Institute branching out into Kindle format. Keep up the great work.
Wonderful, keep them flowing!
Personally, I wouldn’t use a Kindle to read most of our books here because you can’t exactly start conversations or educate people about Austrian economics by looking at an electronic screen. Instead of asking about who Mises is or about “Meltdown”, they’ll be asking about the Kindle’s view screen. (!!!!!)
Besides – we should be encouraging people to save in this economy, but it’s hard to do that when you’re spending like crazy yourself. Buying expensive, optional, cool toys we don’t need? Seems a little… wrong, doesn’t it?
But I suppose if you already have one it’s nice.
Excellent! Thank you! I’m going to buy it right now.
This is PRECISELY the kind of offering that would push me over to buying a Kindle. I spend a lot of time on the road, so ended up buying the paperback version of Human Action so I would not mutilate my gorgeous Scholar’s Edition by lugging it around. I’d pop for 8-10 books I’ve wanted to read, but thought they’d be too big in a briefcase — MES, for instance. In the mean time, it’s the iPhone app that I’ll be nabbing this evening to access my first LvMI title in portable digital!
Thanks for the tip, but that’s not the problem. The problem is what’s known as Reflow. That is, a pdf(in which most of the text on Mises.org exists) is not in plain text they have markup information embedded in it, and Mises.org documents are in A4 format which have to be reformatted to fit in kindle screen.
I don’t use it now. I don’t plan to.
DeCoster says some of why at http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/025353.html
But, it’s your org, your decision. G’luck.
I have a Kindle and am very happy to see Mises Institute works for sale. If you are a serious enough reader the Kindle is a good investment for supplementing your collection of reading material. You can read with one hand while you’re in line for lunch, on the train, or you can even prop it up on the display for the exercise bike and read while you workout without having to worry about proping open a physical book.
And just like Duncan says, you can save your nice hardcover copy of Human Action for the desk at home.
This is exciting as I spent $300 on a sony book reader…
This is fantastic for those who have Kindles, but I love writing in my margins and highlighting text. So I can’t justify the $400 purchase of a Kindle, in which case I’ll just continue buying physical copies from the Mises store.
Wonderful news…Keep the Kindle books coming.
In my opinion, e-books like the Kindle, are the future…much like how the iPod revolutionized music.
I’m sure it’s not cheap to produce the beautiful physical books that the Mises Institute publishes. On the other hand, digital copies can be produced extremely cheaply. So I’m happy to see the Mises Institute embrace it.
Tell me when there’s an eBook that can do speed reading (spreeder.com) and support letter size PDFs.
and if possible also release a Mises Instiute branded Kindle, it would be a killer combination
Mises branded iLiad would be better…just saying
The fact that it can’t just read pdfs from the internet and costs 300 to 400 bucks keeps me from buying one (also because its another electronic device).
On the other hand, Captain Picard always looked cool with his reader when reading Les’Miserables or Hamlet.
The Kindle is a novelty. I admire, to a small degree, those of you who have and use one. Do you wish they were more flexiblle in terms of format? Someone mentioned that PDF’s are troublesome to put on Kindle.
To tell you the truth, I think Kindle will go the way of Palm Pilots- a novelty that lasted for only so long.
Like anything else there are limitations on the gadget- dead batteries and pray that you don’t drop it! What if the Kindle “crashes” like all good computers do?
While I applaud this step, I would kindly (no pun intended) ask the people of the Mises Institute not to limit ebook sales to kindle, mainly because:
- you cannot buy the kindle device or approved reader applications outside of the US
- although it is technically possible to read kindle ebooks on “non approved” devices and applications, you cannot buy the ebooks themselves without having one
- trying to get around these limitations is illegal in some countries.
I would like to stress that I am not an opponent of DRM or Kindle per se, I just think that one should be aware of the strings attached.
If the sales figures are not that important, it is possible to provide ebooks in a kindle-compatible format for free and without having to deal with Amazon (I am not sure whether it is legal though so you should investigate before doing it).
This is certainly a step in the right direction. I would definitely buy a sony reader if mises.org made more content available for ereaders. The pdfs are ok but there is no way i’m going to burn my eyes out reading Rothbard’s History of Economic Thought on my iPhone or computer screen.
I am glad for this move too.
I previously converted some pdfs from the Mises Institute but the conversion often has flaws.
As a side question, will the books which are available as free pdfs also be released as free k-books for the Kindle?
If so, it would be great to ensure they are published DRM-less. Amazon touts that it supports this, but I have not seen it yet.
Here is some information for publishers to skip the DRM: http://www.teleread.org/2009/03/16/drm-on-the-kindle-an-update/
I am very happy to see you do this. I have been thinking about buying a Kindle for a while now, and now that Mises books are finding their way onto the platform, I am going to order one this week.
I travel a lot and considering Rothbard and Mises wrote some pretty big books, this is going to make it a lot easier for me to take them on the road.
Has anyone tried reading Mises.org pdf’s on Kindle DX? I am thinking about getting one of those and I am interested in hearing what people have to say.
I bought a Kindle a couple of weeks ago. I like the device, because it is the closest electronic device that reads as comfortably as a book. The screen is comfortable on the eyes for long stretches of reading.
As for the cost of the device, I was planning to purchase a set of the Harvard Classics for my personal library. On Ebay, a complete set fetches upward of $300. For $259, I have a device on which I can store up to 1500 different books/volumes. Plus, I am able to find sites dedicated to putting public domain books in eBook format at a cost of $0 to me. This is done by people who view doing this service as a vocation. As a result, I now have the complete set of the Harvard Classics including many other works. I am able to carry these volumes with me wherever I go.
I am also able to purchase newly released books at a fraction of the price charged for the hardcover and many paperbacks. This is great, because many of the books I read only get the “once and done” read through.
There are many different eReaders on the market or coming out on the market. I went with Amazon’s Kindle due to the excellent customer service testimonials and the prices of the eBooks.
What does all of this amount to? I would love to see Mises books and literature available in eBook/Kindle format. In fact, if the institute goes with a standard format like ePub, and allows the consumers to convert the files to Kindle format, the institute doesn’t have to worry about making the eBooks available for all formats. It merely has to be a format that is convertible to other formats.
I have a device on which I can store up to 1500 different books/volumes. Plus, I am able to find sites dedicated to putting public domain books in eBook format at a cost of $0 to me.
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