eReaders, DRM, and market failure

by Doctor Science

Long time no blog! I went on vacation, and then I had to do all the work I didn’t do while I was on vacation. And now Labor Day, the school year, and the High Holy Days are charging down upon me, but I’m determined to get back on the horse.

One of the things I took on vacation was the used Nook I recently got from a friend. I hadn’t had it for very long, but I was already becoming used to taking long fanfic with me instead of always having to read it at my desk, and to reading larger print when I feel like it. The Archive of Our Own lets you download stories in various formats, so I’ve been saving them as EPUBs and loading them onto the Nook.

So of course one of the things I *did* on vacation was get the Nook wet. Not even in the ocean — my water bottle opened in my bag. I rescued the Nook almost immediately, put it inside a bag of rice and left it there for a week, but I think I killed it — when I plug it into the computer the computer doesn’t even recognize that there’s anything *there*. The Bronte sisters’ faces just keep mocking me.

Nook

Nook, we hardly knew ye.

“Crumbs, I said, “maybe I’ll look into getting another one. All I want is something to read black & white text on, I don’t need WiFi or a color screen. How hard can it be?

I can hear you laughing, you know.

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