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What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

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Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#51

Post by rzzzt »

shinycode wrote: post #40
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #4

> Well, from now on the workflow will be: > - Find the book I want on Amazon. > - Buy it. > - Find the same book on a torrent site. > - Download it. > - Physically copy it onto the Kindle via a USB cable. Wait a second... you're rewarding Amazon and the publisher for their bad behavior by continuing to buy from Amazon? Nothing about this plan is discouraging the problem. Cut out the middlemen. Torrent it and send the…

Actually if authors could sell directly I’ll gladly buy from them each and every time and cut off the middle man.

What is making it complex for authors to sell directly?

Edit: hah, only 15 minutes late with my attempt at Socratic spiel: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48810056

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#52

Post by lstodd »

shinycode wrote: post #40
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #4

> Well, from now on the workflow will be: > - Find the book I want on Amazon. > - Buy it. > - Find the same book on a torrent site. > - Download it. > - Physically copy it onto the Kindle via a USB cable. Wait a second... you're rewarding Amazon and the publisher for their bad behavior by continuing to buy from Amazon? Nothing about this plan is discouraging the problem. Cut out the middlemen. Torrent it and send the…

Actually if authors could sell directly I’ll gladly buy from them each and every time and cut off the middle man.

the decision is on you: if you like it, you send some cash. if you just send five bucks that'll be like what author gets from about a hundred "legitimate sales".

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#54

Post by paul7986 »

MaKey wrote: post #41
paul7986 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or use Cloudflare's "Pay Per Use," tech so real humans and or more so AI sucking up your content for free is forced to pay you something to gain access.

Cloudflare is just another middleman.

sure but it would be nice if AI paid it's fair share in many different ways for humans keeping it relevant. Open AI wants to provide all Americans stock options, which is one way but the more the merrier.

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#55

Post by rickdeckard »

It's an exceptionally odd decision, but planned for approx. a year now.

- First they stopped allowing download of purchased books for cable-transfer to kindle in 2025.

- Then they amped up their effort to avoid jailbreaking by suddenly releasing more firmware updates than before.

- Now they stopped supporting a wide range of kindles.

Amazon obviously assumes that they sufficiently killed the competition so they don't need to worry about customers leaving.

As for me, I managed to exit on-time, applied a jailbreak on my kindle touch and now buy my books elsewhere...

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#56

Post by tsujamin »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #4

> Well, from now on the workflow will be: > - Find the book I want on Amazon. > - Buy it. > - Find the same book on a torrent site. > - Download it. > - Physically copy it onto the Kindle via a USB cable. Wait a second... you're rewarding Amazon and the publisher for their bad behavior by continuing to buy from Amazon? Nothing about this plan is discouraging the problem. Cut out the middlemen. Torrent it and send the…

I ended up migrating to ebooks.com and importing them into Calibre (after some work to get Adobe Digital Editions to import nicely) and using that to manage my Kindle. Did the same with my old Amazon library too when they were talking about stopping you exporting the azw3's

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#57

Post by saaaaaam »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #48
Aarostotle wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very simple. They purchased the right to distribute the books on their terms. You don’t like the terms, so you call them predatory. You want the product, so you just take it on your own terms. Morally, that’s no different than your employer just deciding to pay you less than your contract states, because he decides he doesn’t like the terms of the agreement anymore. You don’t gain a right to take things just bec…

Your morality is pretty strange if it equates ignoring some of the more odious terms in a hundred-page click-through EULA to knowingly engaging in wage theft. I would honestly like to hear you explain that further.

Authors’ wages are paid by people buying their books.

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#58

Post by toomuchtodo »

mjhay wrote: post #7

Buying the physical book from Amazon isn’t a great way to stick it to Bezos. Just have your local bookstore order it for you, it’s easy.

With regards to buying physical books, https://bookshop.org/ or https://betterworldbooks.com/ are better options than Amazon imho if you're not going to buy from your local bookstore. Bookshop allows you to configure your local bookshop to receive a cut of your purchases from Bookshop (https://bookshop.org/pages/bookstores).

The public library is of course an option as many mention, assuming they have the book in their inventory. You might also be able to check it out from https://openlibrary.org/

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#59

Post by saaaaaam »

rzzzt wrote: post #51
shinycode wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually if authors could sell directly I’ll gladly buy from them each and every time and cut off the middle man.

What is making it complex for authors to sell directly? Edit: hah, only 15 minutes late with my attempt at Socratic spiel: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48810056

A lot of authors are not technical people and/or are busy writing. There isn’t a simple system with a large audience of potential book purchasers that makes it easy for authors to sell their books because Amazon became that place but now wants to irritate its users by mangling the kindle.

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#60

Post by ahf8Aithaex7Nai »

Great! You currently have just one other comment pointing out that Bezos is no longer CEO, as if that were a piece of information that would make even the slightest difference in this matter. Unfortunately, my comment isn't any more sympathetic either. These people couldn't care less whether you can continue reading the digital books you've already purchased on your existing device or not. And yet you insist on paying for these books instead of just pirating them outright. Sorry, but that's exactly what Nietzsche called "slave morality." You're making a virtue out of clinging to the very structure that disadvantages you. And that whole "commercial incompetence" thing can't really be true, can it? The company dominates e-commerce, and the guy has enough cash to fly into space in his own rocket. So the business hasn't gone under yet just because it missed out on a few book sales to nerds with old devices. I find your whole perspective kind of baffling. I realized right from the start that I would either buy digital books as fully functional PDFs or continue to buy paper books that I could put on my bookshelf, because anything else would amount to exactly what you're describing now. And a small suggestion for improving your workflow: first check to see if the book is available on a torrent site, and only buy it afterward.
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