The dilemma

[ignis]

Hello,

I have been searching for an ebook version of Elizabeth Haydon's The Symphony of Ages series for more than 10 hours now. I am now left with 3 choices, none of which I find particularly pleasant:

1. Buy a physical book. I have been reading ebooks for nearly 10 years now, and the thought of reading fiction in a physical book is rather scary. I'm sure most of you will understand my reluctance.

2. Read a a rtf/pdf version downloaded from torrents. Someone scanned the books and put them through OCR software. the result is a horribly-formatted [obscenity deleted by MR Mod] of errors, broken lines, missing characters, etc.

3. Buy ebooks from kobobooks.com. The problem with that option is that there's simply too much unknown. I don't know if I'll be able to successfully make a purchase with my Norwegian bank card, even through a US VPN (that trick may work with fictionwise, but there's no guarantee it will work with Kobo). I don't know if I'll be able to read the ebooks in Stanza (which is the only iPhone reader app I have used, and I've used it since the day it was released), and even if that proves to be impossible and I'll have no choice but to use Kobo's own app, I don't know if the quality of text will be any better than those scanned torrent versions.

Kobo is the only online shop I found that sells iPhone-compatible copies of Haydon's books, so, as you can see, I am facing quite a dilemma here.

Any advice?

[geertm]

Originally Posted by ignis

Hello,

I have been searching for an ebook version of Elizabeth Haydon's The Symphony of Ages series for more than 10 hours now. I am now left with 3 choices, none of which I find particularly pleasant:

1. Buy a physical book. I have been reading ebooks for nearly 10 years now, and the thought of reading fiction in a physical book is rather scary. I'm sure most of you will understand my reluctance.

2. Read a a rtf/pdf version downloaded from torrents. Someone scanned the books and put them through OCR software. the result is a horribly-formatted [obscenity deleted by MR Mod] of errors, broken lines, missing characters, etc.

3. Buy ebooks from kobobooks.com. The problem with that option is that there's simply too much unknown. I don't know if I'll be able to successfully make a purchase with my Norwegian bank card, even through a US VPN (that trick may work with fictionwise, but there's no guarantee it will work with Kobo). I don't know if I'll be able to read the ebooks in Stanza (which is the only iPhone reader app I have used, and I've used it since the day it was released), and even if that proves to be impossible and I'll have no choice but to use Kobo's own app, I don't know if the quality of text will be any better than those scanned torrent versions.

Kobo is the only online shop I found that sells iPhone-compatible copies of Haydon's books, so, as you can see, I am facing quite a dilemma here.

Any advice?

To buy books from Kobo just use an US address as shipping and billing address. You do not even have to use a VPN.
Works fine from the Netherlands.

[rixte]

I've bought books from Kobo and they've always been well-formatted. They're actually not US based (I get charged a very small international purchase fee on my credit card, between 1 cent and 11 cents, depending on the amount of the book).

The Kobo iPhone app is fine, I doubt you'd have a problem with that if you read Stanza on your iphone, but there are tools available to convert it over to another format.

[Fbone]

I see that Tor has published the series in ebooks for US$7.99 each.

They claim they are available at Amazon, Kobo, B&N and Sony.

[JeremyZ]

Can you get a used copy of the paper book on Amazon? I like that option because the publisher doesn't get any more money for making it a paper book.

Going back to paper books is a pain in some ways, and sensory rich in others. I still love paper books. I think that one day, us early adopters are really going to miss paper books. I'm sure they'll be outlawed some day.

[ignis]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I see that Tor has published the series in ebooks for US$7.99 each.

They claim they are available at Amazon, Kobo, B&N and Sony.

B&N only have the 3rd, 4th and 5th books from the Symphony of Ages series (No sign of 1st, 2nd and 6th), and I couldn't find any of Hayden's books in the Kindle store. Sony ebooks are irrelevant to me since I don't have a Sony Reader and there's no way to read them on an iPhone.

Originally Posted by JeremyZ

Can you get a used copy of the paper book on Amazon? I like that option because the publisher doesn't get any more money for making it a paper book.

Going back to paper books is a pain in some ways, and sensory rich in others. I still love paper books. I think that one day, us early adopters are really going to miss paper books. I'm sure they'll be outlawed some day.

Not reading paper books doesn't mean I don't love them I have a whole shelf of hardcovers of my favourite scifi & fantasy novels, most of which are signed by the authors themselves and none of which I have ever opened to read. It's quite paradoxical, I know, but I love having a paper copy of a book which I have enjoyed reading in its digital form just sitting on a shelf.