Any way to access Rick when we're already in Europe?

You can buy a kindle edition of the Germany guidebook but I wouldn't recommend it. He doesn't cover a lot of things in Germany that people like to see/do, and sometimes his hotel recommendations are not the greatest.

Where are you going? You'll get a lot of good hotel advice here if you ask. :) TripAdvisor and booking.com are also really good resources for reviews of accommodations.

Although Rick's books provide a level of detail I really appreciate, it's true that they don't cover all the places you might plan to visit on such a long trip. I supplement them with other guides that offer broader coverage.

You might be interested in scribd.com. The company offers an $8.99/month subscription to a wide range of ebooks, and there's a one-month free trial. If there are two of you, I guess you could do two trials back-to-back and have 2 months free. I first learned of this online, at which time scribd had access to the entire Lonely Planet catalog. I believe it still does. Here's their list of books on the topic of European travel. To sign up, go to the main webpage at scribd.com . I used scribd for a wide-ranging trip in 2015 and found I definitely prefer paper guidebooks, but there comes a point where they just aren't practical. In addition, scribd has a lot of other offerings, useful if you are taking it easy and have time to do some recreational reading during your trip.

You must remember to cancel the service or you will continue to be billed. I didn't have to jump through that hoop because mid-way through the trip my credit card was stolen, so I could not be charged. Therefore, I cannot comment on how easy it is to do.

For future reference--if you do another trip like this--you may find that your local library has a pretty decent list of travel guides in ebook form. If it does not, it may be able to suggest an alternative source so you don't have to buy everything you need or use scribd (though I think the latter is a very good deal). The tricky thing is that what you need may be checked out when you need it, just like hardcopy books.

Important: I assume you know about the 90-days-within-180-days restriction imposted by all the countries within the Schengen Zone.

Thanks for the info. I see that I should have thought to post here sooner! Now that I know I'll come back often.
Our hotel basics: Money is an object for full-time travelers, we don't need anything fancy, but we're old enough to need more comfortable beds than a hostel or the most basic hotels provide. We like to be near the train station/in the center of the city/public transport available within a block or two. We roll our carry-ons plus one personal item to our accommodations or take a taxi. We will not have a car.
We're going to Munich first--tomorrow in fact--and I just haven't seen any hotels that seemed clear front-runners, that's what made me think of Rick's guidebook. It helped us the last time we visited Munich, but that was over a decade ago. I'm sorry to hear the hotel recs aren't what they used to be. We're also visiting Berlin for the first time, Dresden&Leipzig and Cologne. We'll stay in each city 2-3 nights, maybe longer. The rest of our few weeks in Germany we'll be staying with friends.
Thanks for the recommendation for scribd. I'll check it out. The free trial is a great way to see if we like it. Sounds cheap enough to be quite worthwhile, so thanks again. We don't have a local library because we travel full-time--that's one of the few things we really do miss.
We have the Schengen thing covered with visas and strategically-spaced trips to the Balkans, etc, but it never hurts to remind folks of that pesky 90-day limit.

Tripadvisor.com is free, accessible from all over Europe, and contains a wealth of information about places to stay and things to see/do. RS is good, but it's definitely the holy grail of travel :-)

It sounds as if you are making your hotel arrangements as you go. I do that, too, except for first and last stops and expensive cities where I plan a lengthy stay. For my purposes, I need a quick way to find out what places are available on my imminent arrival date. A guide book isn't going to help much there, because the best places in guide books tend to be snapped up far in advance. I feel the same way about tips on web sites like this. The places people are most likely to recommend are the unusually good values, and they probably will not have a room available in the near future. These issues are worse if you are staying longer than the typical tourist does. One or two nights may become available at the last minute due to a cancellation: four or five nights are much less likely.

So I primarily use booking.com . I travel like you do except that I am loathe to take a taxi anywhere. I screen for location and price then read the reviews, verifying air conditioning for potentially hot locations and especially paying attention to negative comments about structural issues--things like non-working Wi-Fi, rooms on high floors in buildings without elevators, etc. I've still had some a/c problems (2 of the 3 having been apparently short-term equipment failures) and two or three rooms have been beyond the reach of the Wi-Fi router, but there haven't been any other serious surprises--no dirty rooms, no non-functional bathrooms (plenty of tiny ones, of course). Of course, I haven't ended up in many places one could call "charming", either.

A few years ago I started just buying the RS books in kindle form. That way I always have them on my phone and don't have to carry the book. I agree his Germany guide book doesn't cover a lot, but I have found his hotel recommendations to be spot on. If you pay close attention to his word choice in the descriptions they tend to be very accurate. Having said that I do also check out booking.com and trip advisor which both have mobile apps if you have a smart phone.

Lonely Planet lets you buy chapters for the places you're going. I did this online from Europe one recent year for someplace I'd not researched ahead of time. Worked well.

You may already have Munich set, but our RS tour stayed at Hotel Blauer Bock. Excellent location. Highly recommend.

In Cologne, we stayed at the Marriott because of points. It's very close walking distance to the train station, cathedral and most other points of interest.