Kindle

I enjoy reading on my Kindle. It is easy to carry around and gives me access to a wide range of books. Shipping a paperback book from Amazon to New Zealand usually costs about $20.00, which is more than the book costs. A book has to be really good to justify the expense. Using my Kindle eliminates the shipping costs.

The other great thing about a Kindle is the ability to download a free sample of a book I am thinking about buying. I can read the table of contents, the introduction/preface and the first chapter of the book, before deciding whether to buy it. This supports a good decision.

Recently something annoying has started to happen. Christian authors have started filling the front of their books with vanity recommendations from big-name Christians. I presume that this is a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” activity, so I don’t take them seriously. Negative reactions will never get published, so the process is obviously biased.

I presume that publishers expect their authors to collect these recommendations. The problem is that most of them are so vague that they could be placed on many books and not look out of place.

I will not read a book because a big-name Christian says that it is good. The book might be helpful for them, but they do not know if it will be useful to me. I prefer to look at the content and decide if it is relevant to me. Unfortunately, this is getting more difficult to do, because the free sample is almost entirely made up of celebrity recommendations.

There are a few good exceptions. I recently downloaded a sample of The Devil’s Redemption by Michael J McClymond, which is a survey of attitudes to “universalism” throughout the history of the church. In hardcover, this book is 1376 pages long, so the free sample is quite substantial and not cluttered with junk. It included most of the first part of the book, which outlines his thesis and summarises his approach. Reading this gave me a good understanding of the book. The book is too heavy for me to digest, so I will not be buying it, but good on Michael for giving readers a useful sample.

I have several books available on Kindle. I refuse to fill the front of the book with recommendations. I want people to purchase my books, because they understand what the book is about and are interested in the topic. I do not want buyers being disappointed because they acted on a recommendation from someone who does not know them.