Another reason 'sharing' may not be as big an issue...

[narbeauchamp]

Sharing would be a nice feature to have,my friends and relatives and I do have different tastes,but we do generally know what the others like,and often on recommendation will decide to read something.MUCH easier when there's a physical book to hand over,not so much so with the electronic form. I do want to get readers for two people in particular,and our tastes tend to overlap-so I'm wondering if I may end up getting them Sony readers,or if all three of us end up with Kindles or Nooks (with Kindle for Iphone and Mac/PC that could be an option for us to read the same books,and I could read on the computer *blech* or iPod touch or something....and the whole sharing thing,came up in convo earlier today at work with a colleague who was telling me her husband was considering a nook..etc

[rogue_ronin]

Sharing...

Back in the day, Palm PDAs could beam documents using IRDA.

Modern devices could do Bluetooth, IRDA... but don't. Guess maybe cellphones do...

m a r

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by narbeauchamp

if all three of us end up with Kindles or Nooks (with Kindle for Iphone and Mac/PC that could be an option for us to read the same books

You can have up to six kindles on one account, although I'm not sure if that includes Kindle for PC/iPhone. I'm also not sure if you can do the same with the Nook or other readers.

[darylbrayman]

My wife and I both have Sony 300's and we share a Sony store account. So we can access each others books seamlessly. That's not to say we do, some of her stuff is just crap, she doesn't belong to this forum (I hope) But we do share some of the same tastes in books and do share a lot of our books. I just wish I could send/loan my mother some of them to.

Regards, Daryl

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by ficbot

My sister and I are both gadget freaks and record-keepers. In celebration of her new iPod Touch, I sent her a list of the books I have bought from Fictionwise, telling her that if she wanted me to gift her one, (FW makes this very easy) I would. She in turn sent me a list of her books. And the result?

Sister thinks I buy far too much sci-fi (I feel I am more a mystery fan, but the recent binge on sale-priced Star Trek books has perhaps skewed the results) and is not sure how much of my 'reading material' she would care for. Out of the 200+ books on my list, there were perhaps half a dozen which interested her.

I of course was deeply offended by her diss of my reading habits. She seems to favour the hard-core weirdo romance genre and there was one book on her list (which was part of a series!) whose plot involved a woman going to a resort designed for hooking people up who want to have casual sex with vampires, werewolves and the like. So I really don't feel that someone like her is in the position to be lecturing me on literary taste :P Also, she buys too many short stories so I feel like her list would not have enough to keep me properly occupied.

So, out of the almost 500 books we have bought between us, maybe a dozen seem to be of mutual interest. Sharing is such a big threat? Not in my family!

I don't know if you listen to CBC's Cross Country Checkup but last weekend they had their annual Christmas book call in show.

http://www.cbc.ca/checkup/archive/2009/intro091213.html

I like listening to this for the very reason you've mentioned. I know that my family and friends have very different tastes in books. Most of the books that are mentioned are subjects that I have no interest in and I would never pickup in a bookstore but when I hear people passionately describing them it reminds me of someone I know who does have a similar interest. I occasionally find a book for myself but more often a gift for others.

They have MP3's up of the show (Dec 13th 2009)
http://www.cbc.ca/checkup/archives.html

I agree that sharing isn't as big of a problem as the publishers think. I think that it's actually in their best interest. When I share a book with someone it's because I think they'll enjoy it but know they wouldn't buy it on their own.