Taking on that Brave New World *The First Step*

Well, I did it! I tackled and conquered that brave new world of ebooks. Yep, I ordered not one, not two but three of them. Now I’ve been wanting to try an ebook for a while now. This from a reader who determined that nope – not gonna go there. I’ve been very happy with my hand held books thank you very much. But buzz works! So does not wanting to be left out of the ebook party. I think I mentioned that I was oh so close to getting an ereader in the fall but I had some unexpected expenses come up so I didn’t get one. So I decided to just load them on to my computer for now. Hopefully if I do take that next step and get a reader, I can move them over to it somehow.
I checked out quickly a couple of ebook sites and found Ellora’s Cave to be extremely helpful in explaining the different options and how the whole thing worked. So I downloaded Microsoft Reader in preparation. Or thought I did. I ran into a glitch when I tried (I thought) to open it and it wouldn’t open in Firefox. I kept trying and got all these pale icons all over the desktop; I think I had four of them at one time, but none of them opened. I have no idea what the pale icons are called; I’m sure some people who are more computer literate person than me are getting a chuckle right about now over my descriptions. Even Keishon tried to help – but it didn't seem to work. Anyway, in a fit of frustration I deleted them all. Then went “oh”. There was a full colour one and I thought “Houston, we seem to be good to go”. I decided to be a copy cat of the two Ja(y)nes and try ordering from three different publishers.



The first one I attempted was Banner’s Bonus from Fictionwise. This is a book I read years ago that the author had revamped and re-released as an ebook. I’ve been itching to try it for quite some time now. I went through all the ordering steps and waited and waited and waited.





While I was still waiting, I went to Ellora’s Cave – since they were so helpful in what I needed. Based on Keishon’s most excellent review, I ordered The Fifth Favor. It went very smoothly although I was amazed that somehow it downloaded straight into Microsoft Reader. For some reason I thought they would send it by email and I would have to download it myself. I don’t understand how their computer knew to send it to my computer, but then I don’t understand radio waves either. I checked back at Fictionwise and still nothing was happening.





Then I moved onto Liquid Silver for Bone Deep. Bam had given it such a glowing review. I didn’t find them quite as user friendly as Ellora’s Cave. I imagine they figured readers knew what they were doing. But, I still managed to upload it, again amazed that it went straight to my computer. Back I went to Fictionwise for the third book and still nothing had happened. Then I had another “oh” moment. I hadn’t hit submit. Once the light bulb went on, it uploaded fine too. So – three books, three successful downloads and I’m ready to start reading!!!



‘til later