Saturday, October 25, 2014

Freading's still broken, but I'm having fun with Overdrive

I'm on vacation at the moment, and enjoying all the extra reading time. I wowed my mom by showing her how to get Overdrive books to open in any Adobe ID authorized app you want, rather than just the Overdrive app. I decided to check Freading, to see if they had fixed their "will only open in the Freading app" problem. Sadly they still don't seem to think its a problem, because it's still not fixed. Argh. I wish my local public library used Overdrive instead. I'm on my second vacation read (not counting manga) and may make it to a third.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

My Kobo purchase...is not a success

[Cross-posted from BookLikes]

So I just bought my very first book from Kobo. I used Dear Author's tips for making sure I knew what I was downloading. DRM-free EPUB, great! I bought it, downloaded it, checked it out in Calibre, and...it was not the right book.

What I was trying to buy was Silently and Very Fast by Catherynne M. Valente, one of the works I learned about while constructing my "Sci Fi/Fantasy Written by Women" list [located on BookLikes, and currently containing over 170 books]. It has an AI in it and sounds fabulous. What I actually got was Myths of Origin by Catherynne M. Valente. Right author, wrong title.

I've contacted Kobo's customer service, but I'm a little confused about what happens next, since the form I filled out directed me to a page instructing me to call between 9 AM and 9 PM from Sunday to Saturday (does that mean seven days a week?). I thought the point of filling out a form was that I wouldn't have to call, and would simply be emailed when the problem was fixed. I'm a little confused.

As a first Kobo shopping experience, I can say I was not impressed.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Samhain Publishing

(A quickie post, cross-posted from BookLikes. While I generally like Samhain Publishing, they've been trying my patience for several weeks now. Both of the books I purchased in the past month were corrupt when I downloaded them. I contacted customer service and was emailed working files, but I shouldn't have to do that. Then the store was down for almost a week - it was supposed to be up again this week Monday but didn't actually come back up until late Tuesday/early Wednesday. And then there was this that I wrote about below.)
 
I was going to post about a Samhain sale today, since it looked like everything on their site was on sale earlier this morning, possibly in honor of the site redesign. But there was no end date listed, and it appears it was a "until noon-ish only" sale. Or a mistake on someone's part. Dang it, I knew I should have at least bought Rose Lerner's books before leaving for work.

(And also, argh. Samhain, get your act together please. I think you're even confusing your authors right now. A bit embarrassing for the authors who just announced that their stuff was on sale, only for the sale to already be over.)

My first impression of the Samhain site redesign: I like that it puts Samhain's generally pretty covers front and center, and I like that the store is now the site's main page. I also think it's kind of cool that there's an "add series to cart" button on series pages. However, I'm not a fan of the text-less icons at the top (two circles with a heart is "Retro Romance"?). I also don't like that all the wonderful subcategories that used to exist are now hard to find and/or take multiple clicks to get to. If I want the Science Fiction category, I have to click on Romance, then Paranormal & Alternate Worlds, and then Science Fiction. And all of that is located in a tiny, easy-to-miss little area near the top right of the screen. And didn't there used to be a Science Fiction section that wasn't under Romance? Has that been lumped in with Science Fiction Romance now?