Comments on: The Kindle chapter preview: Which books benefit, which suffer and what does this mean for cap-L Lit?

By: Caleb

Caleb — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:31:49 +0000

Their reader is not available in Canada. Fortunately, I possess a jailbroken iPod Touch, so I installed it “illegally”. It is a very pleasant experience, reading books on it. You need not worry about formatting, because it is specially formatted. I feel fiction books will suffer. It is only in the later half of the book that the action becomes overwhelming. For fiction books reading some helps you determine the author’s style, and whether you like it. If it is an author you have read from before, the description is all you need.

Meanwhile, for academic books, the first chapter is invaluable. The first chapter outlines what the books is about, and has always been enough for me to determine whether I will buy or not.

By: Blue Tyson

Blue Tyson — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:51:03 +0000

Provide more than first chapter.

DOH.

By: karen wester newton

karen wester newton — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:01:23 +0000

I love the preview feature. I use it most often for books I simply would never buy without being able to preview them. The money aside, I no longer feel a need to continue reading once I lose interest in a book. Life is short, and there are too many books out there to spare my time on those I’m not enjoying.

But I agree that publishers really need to look at where the preview ends. I want to know the writer’s style, and if there is a 20 page intro by someone else, the preview can be worthless.

By: Mary

Mary — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 19:35:14 +0000

Books which do NOT benefit are those where a multitude of pages in the front of the book are taken up with long lists of the publisher’s other publications and all the chapter headings, in some cases marked as live links but which obviously aren’t, because the sample given does not progress past the table of contents. It would be better for Amazon to actually give you the actual first chapter. Sometimes they do, but only if the pages prior to it are few.

By: Al

Al — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:41:46 +0000

When I was taking a course in creative writing, the teacher taught that if you do not capture the reader in the first page, let alone the first chapter, the reader is likely to put that book back on the shelf and look at another.

My personal experience is that if the book is written in “text message” or other illiterate mode, I will reject it. If I find misspellings and grammatical errors I will be annoyed and probably not purchase that author again. This will weed out many authors who seem to feel that it is too much effort to get someone else to proof their book or to get an editor. There is too much good writing out there to put up with junk.