Have You Kindled Yet?

I'm in LOVE. What do you mean, with who?? Who needs a man when I've got an Amazon Kindle to keep me company?? (I'm a word crazy author and reader--you should have seen that coming. LOL)

I received a third-generation Amazon Kindle 3G wireless ebook reader as a Christmas present and I've been dancing on cloud nine ever since. Granted, this is still the honeymoon phase. The wine and roses may give way to an ugly side after we get to know each other better, get too comfortable with one another...but for now I'm euphoric. As a voracious reader, how could I not be thrilled to have a palm-sized library in my pocket? Okay, so I haven't maxed out the 3500 book limit yet, but I'm workin' on it.

I'm not the world's biggest tech geek--the older I get, the more I seem to miss on the technology front, but even I had heard of the Kindle, Amazon's answer to electronic books. I scoffed. I pooh-poohed. My biggest irritation with ebook readers is that many of them only read specific formats, and the Kindle promised to be one of those inclusive readers, technology that would only work with Amazon products. What good would that do? I disregarded just how large an entity Amazon really is and how many books they have at their disposal.

I won't go into the specs--if you want an outline of Kindle's finer points, check it out on Amazon.com. They do a pretty good job selling it. ;) Mostly, I just wanted to wax poetic on what Kindle does for me. They have tons of free books and tons more titles for reasonable prices, which gives my penny-pinching nature a thrill. They have a great selection of kid's books--my five-year-old son enjoys the Kindle as much as I do. They've got freebie apps that allow me to read Kindle books on my PC, too. (Also free apps for Macs, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, etc.) How awesome, that people don't even need to BUY the nearly $200 machine to read Kindle books! That's a step in the right direction for ebooks, in my opinion.

Yes, as a reader I'm giggling like a schoolgirl over my Kindle. But the writer in me is also falling hard. I've discovered how easy it is to upload my titles into the Kindle database and be a published Amazon author. It's the perfect home for my older titles and shorts, works that publishers may not consider lucrative. And who knows? Maybe my newer titles will find a home there, too.

Yup. With Kindle in hand, the world's looking rosy. I'm in love for sure.
-M
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