Lost in Translation

I finished reading a free ebook on my Kindle last week called World Wide Rave, which the author offered free for a number of days on Kindle. What an interesting book! His basic idea is that you need to write something and offer it for free on Internet. If a ton of people start downloading it and talking about it, you'll soon be known as an authority on the subject. Then you can charge big bucks to speak at conferences, etc. Although his focus is different than mine, you can learn a lot about how today's culture works and how to spread your ideas better.

All that to say that he recommended negative titles in blogs. So you'll notice the word NOT in the title, which according to the author will drive more people to this post.

Here are a few reasons not to use a Kindle reading device (see my previous post on the Kindle to hear my initial reaction):

1) You don't want to read great Christian classics for free.
I had wanted to get Calvin's Institutes for a long time. The price tag was stopping me. Now I have it on my Kindle and I can read it lying down (try that with the print edition!). To access lots of free Christian classics, go to the Christian Classics Ethereal Library and download the book in PDF (unfortunately it can't be scanned images of the pages). Download the free Mobipocket eBook Creator and convert the PDF to an ebook. Then just dump the SRC file into your Documents folder on the Kindle and you've got a free Christian classic. But if you want to pay for all of those free classics or not read them, don't get a Kindle!

2) You don't want to get a feel for new/interesting/important books for free.
How many of you have read The Shack? Neither have I, but I have read the first chapter for free on my Kindle. You can always download the first chapter for free from the Kindle store. If I see a book that listed in "Books of Note," I'll often download the free content just to get a feel for the book. Or if I am reading in one book and it mentions another one that interests me, I'll just download the first chapter for future reference. But if you don't want to be up on anything new for free, don't get a Kindle!

3) You don't want to be able to take advantage of downtime on the spur of the moment.
Yesterday we were traveling back from Illinois and it dawned on me that I had some time to do some reading in the car, but I didn't have the book I wanted. I talked to Holly about buying it and went onto the Kindle Store and bought it within about 2 minutes. In our trip back I read about four chapters of my new book on apologetics. But if you don't want to be able to stock your library in a few minutes with a new book, don't get a Kindle!

Well, it's kind of fun to be negative, isn't it?