I managed to stumble upon this 'Japanese bookstore in an iPhone app' somehow or other, and it appeared to have a fair few 'free' books.... alas, no, 　無料版 are samples, and all the 無料 books are such samples. But there was light at the end of the tunnel... when I went to try buying the full edition of 殺してもいい命, fully expecting to be rebuffed for carrying only western currency... I was actually able to purchase the book in US dollars.

I'm sure if I lived in NYC I could just pop down to BookOff and get a used copy for far less than $4.99 - assuming mystery novels hold their value about as well in Japanese as they do in English - but compared to international shipping + ludicrous yen conversion rates, this is a bargain for a Japanese novel for me Of course, it is on my iPhone which isn't quite as satisfying as a real book in my hands but I'm okay with it. Besides, they sucked me in with that 無料版 and I needed the next chapter now!

Anyway, with less than a thousand titles it's not all that extensive (yet? It's grown by three hundred titles in a week and is now -barely- under a thousand titles.)

So, that's my story! Now, some questions some of you might be able to answer -
Should I put down 殺してもいい命 and start from the beginning with 推理小説？

Also, is my story trivial because there's perhaps tons of other ebook vendors that I'm unaware of with huge libraries of cheap books? (In Japanese of course. I'm aware there's a ton of them in English... ) Anyone else avoiding the international shipping by going digital? (By which I don't mean illegal torrenting, ahem.)

I shouldn't even ask if BookGate exists on other devices 'cause I'm sure it does or will and that that question can be trivially answered by visiting their web site, but I haven't checked yet, so if you feel like talking about it you might beat me out at checking their site.

'scuse me, I have to go add the character names to my Anki deck now.

Last edited by SomeCallMeChris (2011 October 17, 6:43 pm)