Rediscovering Kobo and other sites

Hiya

I’ve recently decided to start using amazon as little as possible from now on. This is generally not too much of a problem…until it comes to ebooks.

Ngl, they have made it so easy to get ebooks that they ended up being the default; especially since my ereader is an old 2nd hand kindle fire that I got cheap as chips. Luckily, I can load books onto it directly from my pc, but it does often mean that I have to jump through a few more hoops before I can read. If you have a later model, it’s much easier to install other ereader apps that allow you to read epubs and other formats.

What I’m trying to do is either buy books directly from publishers or authors if possible.

But, since that is not always an option, or practical, I’m compiling a list of other sites where I can buy ebooks, such as Hive, and Weightless Books, who are a great resource for books from smaller publishers like Small Beer, Apex and also many sffh magazines, some of which are nor impossible to find in print.

One alternative I’ve decided to start using is Kobo. I had a kobo reader many many years ago - my very first ereader, actually. And now I’m heading back there. It can be a bit of a process to convert epubs to mobis (I use calibre) so I can read them on my kindle, but as I say, I only have to do that because mine is so old. And the process, once you are familiar with it, only takes a matter of minutes.

So in the spirit of buying books from Elsewhere I added two new books to my digital TBR pile, these were my purchases for the week - two books I’ve been looking forward to reading:

That’s Alix E. Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January, and RJ Barker’s The Bone Ships, both of which together set me back about £6, so definitely bargains!

In the meantime, I’m dipping into the short story anthology Flotation Device, which I talked about in my previous newsletter, and very much enjoying it.

So, what are you reading, or about to start reading?

Do you have any recs to throw my way?

Cat

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