I got my wife a Kindle for Christmas. She always wants something to read - when she has time - but little time to actually go out and find books. I was kind of nervous about it, since she doesn’t have my penchant for electronics. But she vaguely mentioned the possibility of buying one. The good news is that I had a winner. The bad news is that it wasn’t a surprise.
She hasn’t really used it yet. We’ve been stymied by what to do with our accounts and the DRM. Namely, which of our accounts to put it on. It’s her device, so it would make sense to put it on her account. But my account is an Amazon Prime account, which means that there was some free lending. But putting it on mine meant I wasn’t sure what would happen if I got my own device. We went ahead and used her account, but didn’t buy anything until we knew what we were going to do. Instead, I downloaded some free books from the Project Gutenberg.
For those of you who don’t know, Project Gutenberg is dedicated to taking works in the public domain, digitizing them, and making them available. Thanks to our copyright law, these books tend to be really, really old. On the upshot, here is my chance to actually read War & Peace. There’s a similar project called LibreVox, which is dedicated to taking works in the public domain and putting them to audio. That could be cool.
Anyhow, I read up more on how the DRM and accounts work and determined that her device should be on my account. The problem is that once I changed the account, all of the books on the device disappeared. Even if they didn’t have DRM, they were all associated with her account. I copied them off and put them back on, but they wouldn’t reappear. I had to change the filenames.
You can share an Amazon Prime account within a household. Not sure exactly how that works for digital items.
Maybe you could still borrow from Amazon for both devices? You might only get one book per household per month, rather than one per device per month.
I also need to register an existing kindle to my wife’s account - but I have been afraid of losing the books on there, especially the ones I put on there just for her.
A4
Comment by A 4 — February 27, 2012 @ 12:08 pm
You can register more than one Kindle to an account. Both MG’s Kindle and mine are registered to my account. Best part? We can read the same book at the same time.
Comment by Abel Keogh — February 27, 2012 @ 3:36 pm
You can register more than one Kindle to an account. Both MG’s Kindle and mine are registered to my account. Best part? We can read the same book at the same time.
Yeah, that was what made me decide to put her device in my account. That way, if I get my own device, it too can be attached to my account.
Comment by trumwill — February 27, 2012 @ 3:41 pm
You can share an Amazon Prime account within a household. Not sure exactly how that works for digital items.
Huh. I need to look into that. It would be handy for my wife to be able to order stuff from her own account.
Maybe you could still borrow from Amazon for both devices? You might only get one book per household per month, rather than one per device per month.
The borrow feature has been a real disappointment. It wouldn’t have changed my mind if I’d known how limited it is (you can borrow one book a month, and if you screw up and borrow the wrong book, you can’t quickly return it before it’s downloaded).
Comment by trumwill — February 27, 2012 @ 3:43 pm
My local library also lends electronic books, sometimes in kindle format and sometimes in ePub. There is typically a long waiting list, but it is a nice service. I actually like going to the library, though, so I prefer paper books when I’m not on the road. There are other sources for free content, too. I like “Deliverreads.”
The sharing of free shipping is a nice feature of Amazon Prime. The free streaming video is maybe not good enough to get rid of Netflix, but it might be in the future - selection is not great, but a better user interface.
A4
Comment by A4 — February 28, 2012 @ 7:55 am