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Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print

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Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print

#221

Post by justeleblanc »

criddell wrote: post #120
toyg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple News is the unhealthy model Amazon is trying to follow. Yet again, Apple leads the market into digital feudalism, and their fanboys are happy to lead the charge.

It’s hard to say if it’s unhealthy or not. It’s basically the same model as Spotify. Is streaming music bad for the music industry? It’s not obvious to me what the answer is. I subscribe to Apple News and the $120 / year is far, far more than I was spending on magazine subscriptions in the past.

You can't compare entertainment (music) with journalism. The economics are completely different. You'll listen to the same song dozens of times, you're not going to read the same news article dozens of times, for example.

I guess it does say a lot about the state of the press if people conflate the two so easily, though.

Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print

#222

Post by pungentcomment »

mabbo wrote: post #150

There's something to be said for today's business model that much of big tech uses: "First we build it, then we get customers who love it, then we try to figure out how to monetize it- and kill it if we don't". Google is, of course, the king of this model, but it feels as though the entire industry fully embraces it. I'm waiting for the day my Alexa shuts itself off forever because I still don't see how it makes a di…

I read somewhere that it's a huge money loser for Amazon. Alexa being such a big part of Amazon's identity, could they shut it down without losing face though?

Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print

#223

Post by WalterBright »

ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #80
cygnus2512 wrote: post #77

Back in 2015, I had a opportunity to work with a group of volunteers (non-profit organization that focused on community development in rural areas of Africa) and started using Kindles loaded with newspapers and magazines from the Kindle Newsstand as part of an education program. The whole group would visit villages and set up reading stations with the Kindles. That program over time, became so successful that it attr…

Around 2013 our university digitized their newspaper displays. Prior to the renovation, newspapers were posted daily in large vertical glass-covered display cases in the student lounge of the library (the library would buy and post two copies so all pages were face up). Tens of students at a time would slowly walk down the row of newspapers reading during their study breaks and quietly chatting while sipping on coffe…

Every once in a while on HN, somebody posts about having taken a very large e-ink display and hooking it to an arduino to, daily, just post the front page of a newspaper. The thing is then just hung on a wall.

I'd love to have that, but those displays are $5000 or so.

If a business has a waiting room, it would be a fine thing to hang on the wall there.

Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print

#224

Post by ilyt »

Ensorceled wrote: post #156
SentientAtom wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems there is a psychological effect at play. I imagine a social ritual of standing and reading something that is always in-focus requiring no scrolling is far more appealing.

Scanning in that fashion is also far faster, more comfortable and efficient. I used to flip through newspapers rather quickly scanning the headlines and first paragraph and reading more interesting articles in depth. Scanning this way is almost impossible digitally. Also headlines were more useful and articles actually had informative first paragraph instead of just "scroll some more" hooks.

It is pretty possible digitally, at least I haven't had much problems doing it with PDFs on good fast reader.

Just not in the web way where going further almost always incurs some load time so it is impossible to skim, and it always wants to shove ad in-between

Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print

#225

Post by massysett »

bookofjoe wrote: post #177
jabroni_salad wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That glass display sounds extremely cool. Due to bus scheduling I would always have 20 minutes to kill before some classes and I would definitely have visited that. I appreciate the reason for the kiosks (decently private, better access for those who need it) but they are competing with my personal laptop.

Newseum closed at the end of 2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newseum >The Today's Front Pages Gallery presented daily front pages from more than 80 international newspapers. The Today's Front Pages Gallery is still available on the Newseum's website [ https://www.freedomforum.org/todaysfrontpages/#1 ], along with a few other galleries. When I went to Washington, D.C. (a couple times) I'd lose myself in front of th…

I work blocks away from the former Newseum and would routinely walk over there to look at the front pages. As years went by it seemed both increasingly anachronistic yet still relevant. The sheets of paper were static in a nice way that countered the ephemeral nature of the ticker that scrolled inside the building.

Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print

#226

Post by robk »

mdavidn wrote: post #2

I am really disappointed by this. These days, I mostly use my (fifth) Kindle when flying on aircraft, and there I mostly read The Economist or The Atlantic. They don't publish offline media for laptops. I don't own a tablet. My phone battery is precious on trips. I guess I'll just look for paper copies at the terminal again...?

Calibre from command line + email to Kindle works fine if you have any kind of machine that's online (or even a free tier Oracle VPS)

Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print

#227

Post by thazework »

braunboffel wrote: post #193
thazework wrote: post #52

Cutting off access to information in such a barbaric, offhanded way is the logical conclusion of the monopoly structure that enabled Amazon to do this without repercussion. A triple monopoly in this case Amazon/Kindle/ E ink. This will disproportionately impact those who do not live in the US/UK and rely on their subscription as the only reasonable means of timely access. I urge you to write to write to jeff@amazon.c…

> monopoly structure that enabled Amazon to do this without repercussion What monopoly structure?

Eink: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779

Combine that with Amazon's newstand dominance in Eink news delivery, and the end result is that newstand's closure leaves readers with no viable alternative.

Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print

#228

Post by frosted-flakes »

ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #213
SentientAtom wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems there is a psychological effect at play. I imagine a social ritual of standing and reading something that is always in-focus requiring no scrolling is far more appealing.

I can't quite pin words on it, but just intuitively it feels like there is less barrier to reading and more of a break from studying when the newspapers are printed and sitting there than when you have to swipe on a screen.

It's the size of the page. You can never replicate holding up a huge newspaper sheet with a digital screen. I really miss physical newspapers.

Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print

#229

Post by JohnFen »

ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #80
cygnus2512 wrote: post #77

Back in 2015, I had a opportunity to work with a group of volunteers (non-profit organization that focused on community development in rural areas of Africa) and started using Kindles loaded with newspapers and magazines from the Kindle Newsstand as part of an education program. The whole group would visit villages and set up reading stations with the Kindles. That program over time, became so successful that it attr…

Around 2013 our university digitized their newspaper displays. Prior to the renovation, newspapers were posted daily in large vertical glass-covered display cases in the student lounge of the library (the library would buy and post two copies so all pages were face up). Tens of students at a time would slowly walk down the row of newspapers reading during their study breaks and quietly chatting while sipping on coffe…

It's really hard to nail down, and even harder to explain to a lot of techies (who tend not to even believe it's a thing), but there is something about print-on-paper that just doesn't translate over to electronic displays.

I don't think it has to do with the actual appearance of the page, or even the feeling of the page when you touch it. I don't know what it is. But I know a lot of people (including myself) who react differently between the two media.

Printed words-on-paper is more immersive, somehow. There's less separation between the writing and the reader. I assume that's not true for everyone, but it's true for a substantial percentage of people.

Re: Amazon shuts newspaper and magazine subscriptions for Kindle and print

#230

Post by criddell »

justeleblanc wrote: post #221
criddell wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to say if it’s unhealthy or not. It’s basically the same model as Spotify. Is streaming music bad for the music industry? It’s not obvious to me what the answer is. I subscribe to Apple News and the $120 / year is far, far more than I was spending on magazine subscriptions in the past.

You can't compare entertainment (music) with journalism. The economics are completely different. You'll listen to the same song dozens of times, you're not going to read the same news article dozens of times, for example. I guess it does say a lot about the state of the press if people conflate the two so easily, though.

You’re missing the forest for the trees. Do the details of pay per play vs pay per read really matter?

The point is that because of service X, business Y gets more money from me than they would otherwise. How typical am I of service X subscribers? As a group, are rights holders getting more money from us or less?

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