For a while, I've been recommending the Barnes and Noble Nook Simple Touch to my friends as an e-book reader. I was wrong, and I apologize… I purchased an e-book for way too much money a couple of days ago from the Nook store. I wanted it, and was in a hurry, so I was willing to overlook the fact that it was $10 more than on the Kindle store and actually more expensive than the physical book. I read the provided sample and was satisfied that it would be OK.
Having downloaded it, I found that the e-book conversion was really quite defective, to the point that the book was almost unusable. The conversion was full of tiny pictures of text which were unreadable on my Nook, and had a number of non-breaking paragraphs that were too long to fit on the screen except in the smallest point size font. My vision isn't too good, so these bordered on unreadable also.
I requested a refund, and was told that Barnes and Noble has a no-refund policy on e-books. I am not an attorney, but I am pretty sure that refusing to accept a return of a defective product is actionable; I'm going to find out whether I can get someone from B&N into small claims court.
In any case, I'll probably write off the roughly $100 of content on my Nook as a bad investment, and write the whole experience off as a lesson learned. The only good news is that apparently the Nook Touch can be jailbroken and turned into a fun e-ink Android tablet. When I get time I'll give it a try—if I break it, well, meh.
Someday the licensing and whatnot will be sorted out in such a way that I can leave dead trees behind. Until then, it looks like I'm stuck with them. I'm reading a lot less commercially-published stuff than I was 20 years ago anyway. I wonder if the entire industry will die before the publishers figure out what they can't get away with? (B)