The eBook Test Note #1

I've gotten just ten authors done.

Ten!

I have ten ebook vendor search engines open in ten tabs at once.

I've already come to some preliminary conclusions:

1) Searching for ebooks sucks. Really, your sites suck. Your search engines suck. Your response times suck. You should be flayed alive, beaten with sticks, tarred and feathered. You are helping to destroy reading by making the discovery process sheer hell!

1a) Have any of you dopes heard of computers? Do you use them? Then why aren't search results in alphabetical order by book title? Is this a new freaking thought to you?! What bizarre notions are you living under that tell you such ordering would be unhelpful?!!? (Update for clarity: When searching by author name. Hello, McFly. What did you think I meant? Eejit.)

1b) See 1: You all suck!

2) Some of the prices I've seen are downright criminally confiscatory. There is just no excuse for an e edition costing more than a p edition. These publishers should be taken out and shot! You are sand in the gears of progress and must be washed away. I hope you all die die die.

3) Amazon's Kindle is kicking all of your asses. I mean, it's not even close. Your asses are being beaten as if you were little girls. Little autistic girls. Little deaf dumb and blind autistic girls who have been bound head to toe in duct tape. Again, see 1: You suck!

4) Apple is the only company that can come in and clean all of this up with great ease of discovery and sane pricing. No ebook should cost more than five dollars, period. There is no excuse for any ebook costing more than. Listen, you pack of short-sighted eejits. There are going to be ten million iPhones out there!! Do you want to make money or spitefully smother your authors as a by-product of your atavistic suicidal monopolistic tendencies? Deduct the cost of paper, deduct the cost of ink, deduct the shipping and warehousing costs, deduct the price of returns and five bucks is a damn good wad to make a profit from. You can't tell me otherwise, so shut the hell up.

5) This is not simply a weekend project. This is a multi-day project. Because see 1: They suck!

More notes of anger and frustration tomorrow and things progress through this slog of digital mud!

Apple, save us!!

Note to David Rothman of Teleread: This is why ebooks have gone nowhere. See 1: They suck!

-- originally posted at Mike Cane 2008 and Mike Cane 2008 Blogger backup blog