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Kindle Unlimited

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101–110 of 199 posts

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#101

I'm very disturbed by the steady erosion of ownership that has been happening for the past few years. Subscription models are an attractive way to get some digital content for a low price, whether it's music, software, movies, or books—but the internet has a notoriously short memory, and I fear that we're condemning ourselves to becoming cultural goldfish. I have books and records from my youth that sit on my shelf a…

Shall we also get off thine lawn? Having big stacks of books in your home is a relatively recent phenomenon. People used to borrow them from the library or circulate them from person to person. Mass availability of inexpensive books has only been with us for 100 years or so. How do you know Jeff Bezos didn't tweak a couple of sentences in your Kindle copy of Catch 22? I don't know, but I do know that detecting such a…

"Get off my lawn" is an intellectually lazy argument.

George Lucas has already famously done repeated "updates" to Star Wars. If it existed only in subscription form, you'd never be able to see the original.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#103
post #84

I'm very disturbed by the steady erosion of ownership that has been happening for the past few years. Subscription models are an attractive way to get some digital content for a low price, whether it's music, software, movies, or books—but the internet has a notoriously short memory, and I fear that we're condemning ourselves to becoming cultural goldfish. I have books and records from my youth that sit on my shelf a…

I can fully understand your sentiment, and to some degree emotionally connect with it, but rationally: my entire bookshelf of computer science and literary classics has gone untouched since my initial read through the vast majority of books. I keep looking around and I'm not sure that I'm happy with the "ownership" aspect of books, or a lot of stuff in general. (Having moved three times during the last six years, mov…

I recently purged 60-70% of my book collection. I considered getting the remainder scanned from some place like $1 scan. I might have done it except that most of those books are picture books (art, architecture, photography, childrens). I feel like I'd be happy to let those go if I could get a non-scanned version (don't want scanned halftone dots, I want the original source). And if I had a lightweight 20+inch HD-DPI tablet to view them on.

But yes, basically I wanted to get rid of "stuff". I have notebooks of DVDs and CDs, all of which are ripped. I only keep them as "proof of license"

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because Amazon is known more for their books than their movie/TV show selection. Also: Prime gives you access to the lending library, but you can only lend one book a month.

> Prime gives you access to the lending library I'm a Prime subscriber and I didn't know about this. It seems the lending library has 350K-500K books, not dissimilar to Kindle Unlimited. And like other commenters, it looks like both unlimited and the kindle lending library has pretty small intersection with my reading habits.

I'll agree with both points. I tend to like non-fiction books more than anything. But I imagine both the lending library and Kindle Unlimited are trying to hit the greatest percentage of the population.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#105
post #84

I'm very disturbed by the steady erosion of ownership that has been happening for the past few years. Subscription models are an attractive way to get some digital content for a low price, whether it's music, software, movies, or books—but the internet has a notoriously short memory, and I fear that we're condemning ourselves to becoming cultural goldfish. I have books and records from my youth that sit on my shelf a…

I can fully understand your sentiment, and to some degree emotionally connect with it, but rationally: my entire bookshelf of computer science and literary classics has gone untouched since my initial read through the vast majority of books. I keep looking around and I'm not sure that I'm happy with the "ownership" aspect of books, or a lot of stuff in general. (Having moved three times during the last six years, mov…

Show me anyone's MySpace profile from 2006.

Tell me again how good the Internet's memory is.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because Amazon is known more for their books than their movie/TV show selection. Also: Prime gives you access to the lending library, but you can only lend one book a month.

...and that book can only be read on a Kindle-branded device. No iPad/Android Tablets.

Ah yes, good point. You can see I don't use the lending library that much :)

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#107

I'm very disturbed by the steady erosion of ownership that has been happening for the past few years. Subscription models are an attractive way to get some digital content for a low price, whether it's music, software, movies, or books—but the internet has a notoriously short memory, and I fear that we're condemning ourselves to becoming cultural goldfish. I have books and records from my youth that sit on my shelf a…

> ... when it's so much more attractive to companies to rent their products to you for a constant stream of monthly income?

Which companies are you thinking of here? Amazon is still trying to drag book publishers into participating in this, and hasn't had much luck yet. Video subscriptions are more miss than hit. Spotify is the most mature, and (by your estimate) only has 60%-70% of what you want. And there's all kinds of complaints that Spotify doesn't result in the same kind of income that record sales did. I don't think the companies that own the products do like this model.

The reason they do it at all is because it's an effective way to compete with illegal downloading. The $10/month doesn't represent the actual value of the product (which for me at least is probably higher), but seems to represent about what the market will tolerate before it goes back to just torrenting stuff.

And that brings up a really good thing about these services: they address the market-efficiency losses of the copyright regime without needing to either break the law or change it.

For example, suppose the only way to get an ebook is to buy it, and each book costs $X. There are a small number of ebooks you value at more than $X, you buy those ones, and (in economic terms) positive value is created by each exchange.

But there is a much larger number of ebooks you value at more than $0 but less than $X. Those ones you would pay money for, and positive value would be created by that exchange, but the regime of "sell each ebook for $X" doesn't allow that value to be created.

Piracy fully reclaims that value, but has its own problems. All-you-can-eat monthly services also fully reclaim the value (as long as you can afford them and they allow the use you had in mind), but in a way that is mutually agreeable to everybody involved. That makes them a good thing to have around.

The real problem you're bringing up is that all-you-can-eat services don't allow some good and important uses, like saving stuff for later. But so far I'm not seeing any indication that they are replacing buy-it-and-own-it services -- or that content owners have any reason to want them to.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#108

Given that Amazon royally screws independent authors (not being a publisher, I can't speak to whether they screw larger publishers too) who want to price their works about $9.99 (if you're after a vertical market, Amazon hates you) I can only imagine they'll extend the screwing to authors who won't also make their works available via Unlimited. (How do they screw us? They cap the 70% less download fee royalty at the…

Do you think indie paper book publishers don't get screwed?

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#109
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can fully understand your sentiment, and to some degree emotionally connect with it, but rationally: my entire bookshelf of computer science and literary classics has gone untouched since my initial read through the vast majority of books. I keep looking around and I'm not sure that I'm happy with the "ownership" aspect of books, or a lot of stuff in general. (Having moved three times during the last six years, mov…

Show me anyone's MySpace profile from 2006. Tell me again how good the Internet's memory is.

We, as a society, put a value on MySpace profiles from 2006. Good riddance.

Re: Kindle Unlimited

#110
post #2

Very saddened by this: We're sorry. Kindle Unlimited is currently only available for US customers. Please visit us again when it is available in your country.

I still don't understand why, when content is digital and distribution doesn't cost anything extra, things like this are restricted to specific countries.

They want you to pirate so they can later sue you. More profitable biz mod than making something useful
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