Light My Kindle

I really enjoy Lewis Black’s comedy – his Comedy Central specials, his new show “The Root of All Evil,” his HBO special, etc. I picked up his first book, Nothing’s Sacred, and loved it. It was an autobiography of sorts with a running commentary about everything from politics to pop culture. When I heard he had a second book available I immediately went to the Kindle store to download it, but it wasn’t yet available. A couple of days later I bought it at Barnes & Noble (for full price, no less). But, as I explain in this post, I was happy to pay full price because I truly enjoy his work and I knew I’d like the book.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book. It had fewer laugh out loud moments than Nothing’s Sacred, but it was still funny. Black writes solely about religion in this book, a touchy topic to be sure. Some religious people could be offended by the book, but they should know what they’re getting themselves into. I’m not one to be easily offended, especially when it comes to stand-up comedy, so the book didn’t seem to cross any boundaries for me.

The book is funny in that smile-to-yourself kind of way, and has a few good laugh out loud moments. It’s an extremely fast read, with short chapters and an easy-to-read writing style. I’d definitely recommend it to fans of Lewis Black or to anyone that enjoys comedy poking fun at the seriousness of religion.

It’s now available in a Kindle edition, but you can also get it in hardcover.

Make your Kindle versions of books available at the same time as the print version. Pretty please?

I was extremely excited to see that Lewis Black had a new book coming out (titled Me of Little Faith). He is one of my top five favorite comedians, and I enjoyed his last book, Nothing’s Sacred. Naturally, once the book came out I searched for it in the Kindle Store. Unfortunately it wasn’t available.

I assumed that the publisher wasn’t going to make it available, and the next time I was in Barnes & Noble I paid the full retail price of $24.99 (minus my 10% B&N Member discount, of course). I didn’t mind paying that amount because I enjoy Lewis Black’s stand-up comedy and I knew I would enjoy the book.

Just a few short days after I finished reading the book, however, I spotted it in my Recommended For You section on my Amazon.com home page…in a Kindle edition. I was disappointed, because I would have liked to have read it on the Kindle (especially for the $9.99 price).

The moral of this story is that had the publisher made the book available in Kindle form at the same time as the print version, I would have bought the Kindle edition. I would think this would be beneficial to publishers thanks to the extremely low cost of production compared to the print version.

Lewis Black’s publishers aren’t the only ones. The highly anticipated Stephenie Meyer novel Breaking Dawn, the fourth in the Twilight series, was released in bookstores on August 2nd. The Kindle version (and other e-book formats) weren’t released until August 3rd. This obviously upset some fans. Some probably rushed out to join the midnight madness parties and bought the print version. Others, particularly those that aren’t hardcore fans, may have waited it out to see if/when the e-book version would be available. For a less anticipated book, some might have forgotten about it and wound up not buying any version. It’s something publishers should keep in mind when scheduling releases.