151–160 of 199 posts
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I assume it's a technical book? There are very few novels I'd pay even $10 for.
That's a pity, too, from the writer's point of view.
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…
I assume it's a technical book? There are very few novels I'd pay even $10 for.
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'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…
However, I think you're also underestimating the risk of all or parts of your stuff disappearing or getting destroyed in a house-burglary, fire, flood or another kind of disaster.
I'm not entirely sure what the actual risks are, but my gut feeling is that there's a higher chance of losing what you physically own than for it to disappear or get 'updated' as a digital / for-rent product.
If I have a digital copy, it's important for me to have a physical copy, as well. At different times, I prefer different media. Until I can buy a book and get a digital version for either free or for a (very) small added fee, I'm just not getting on board with kindles (or whatever e-reader device). Amazon did roll out some version of this book+ebook service a few months ago, but it included such a small number of vol…
It's dependent on publishers. At any time you can ask Amazon to search through your _entire_ history of Amazon print purchases and it will give you free access to the Kindle versions, if the publisher enabled this feature.
The complications between Amazon and publishers are deep and messy and I surely won't get what I want as a consumer for some time, if ever.
Just thinking about the ideal situation for me, however unrealistic it is.
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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.
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I hear you on this, and am in sympathy with your point. But this bothers me less than Amazon selling Kindle books does, because at least this is clearly marked as rental. All your points are just as true about the Kindle books that Amazon sells to people -- you lose the right of first sale( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine ), so you can't re-sell or lend your books; they're tied to a specific DRM sche…
Well, Amazon TELLS you that you lose the right of first sale. That has yet to be tested in court. EVERY industry (seriously, try to find one this isn't true for) has tried to kill the secondhand market in their particular corner of the economy. And every. single. one. of them failed utterly. Digital goods purveyors are going to fail just as spectacularly. It will require lawsuits, of course, but eventually digital pr…
The gaming industry has already done this kind of thing with on-disc DLC, incidentally.
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Show me anyone's MySpace profile from 2006. Tell me again how good the Internet's memory is.
The issue isn't about making a value judgment on what's worth having and what's not. Whether you like it or not, a person's social media profile is a part of their life. I'm sure you don't care about someone's photo album, or their diary, or the box full of concert ticket stubs they keep in their closet, either. But they matter to the person who kept them. Except that now, we've grown accustomed to keeping our person…
What they were, the things they possessed, are all just gone. I am not sure if that's a good thing or not, but the idea that digital storage is ushering in a new age of ephemerality is not justified.