A little belated, but Happy Lunar New Year to one and all!

We’re spending Tết in Can Tho with Kim’s family. This is my second Tết in Viet Nam. I’m hoping that next time I’ll be able to see what the celebrations are like in the Big City.

I have a couple of blog posts in me looking for a way to get out but, in the meantime, my Western clients are unaware that it’s a big holiday here so I actually have work that needs doing.

So Chúc mừng năm mới once again, and I hope everyone has a healthy and successful Year of the Tiger!

A while back, I wrote a blog post about why I wouldn’t buy a Kindle. At the time, I accused the publishing industry of forcing Amazon to hobble the ebook scene. It turns out I was wrong about that. The true story is much more complex, and convinces me even more that I’ll never buy a Kindle.

Charlie Stross, an author that I greatly admire, explains the latest happenings. There certainly is a fight between publishers and Amazon on ebook pricing, but Amazon is not the knight in shining armour that its customers would probably prefer it to be. Customers and authors are both caught in the middle of this, and that’s unforgiveable. There is much to admire about Amazon. Amazon certainly has a duty to its shareholders to maximize profits, and I certainly don’t blame them for trying. But using authors and customers as pawns is flat out wrong.

However this plays out, I will likely be reading ebooks on my Android phone for a while. I’ll wait, patiently, for a tablet that meets my requirements. And I’ll probably write about it when it arrives.

But I still won’t get a Kindle…