161–170 of 199 posts
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I assume the same way they do with KDP Select where prime members can borrow a free book once a month. Amazon will set aside a pool of money and divide it among the books that were read each month as part of the program.
Yes. As a Kindle author, I got an email this morning stating that's how it will work.
To all the "this is just a 10 dollar library card", I ask you this: if library books are the way to go, why do people buy endless amounts of books from amazon. Amazon became successful by selling books. Audible is another successful company that offers a feature that according to you, can be achieved at a library. Clearly libraries are missing something or else we'd be using them more. Maybe it's one click instant ac…
> Maybe it's one click instant access. Maybe it's the larger selection, or that lack of having to wait. Yes. Yes. Yes. As well as book condition/cleanliness, and being able to keep books forever. My local library is also only open from 10am-6pm, and closed sundays, so unless I want to take time off of work, my only time to go to the library is on a Saturday afternoon. Usually when I buy a book via Amazon, it's sponta…
"We're sorry. Kindle Unlimited is currently only available for US customers. Please visit us again when it is available in your country" Again. Companies just don't learn. This is the Internet. If you sell digital content online, there is no "US customers". There are exactly two groups of customers: those with credit cards that are willing to pay you and all the rest. This whole idea of segmenting by country is not o…
The copyrights are often dispersed, with different publishers owning different rights. It's not a matter of just "arrang[ing] for worldwide licensing." It's dealing with a completely different set of owners who may have no interest in signing on. Of COURSE Amazon wants to access customers in other countries, it's not like they haven't thought of it!
Actually, I believe they are not fully aware of the adverse effect these kinds of restrictions have: as much as many people try to explain that it's not Amazon's fault (just observe the downvotes on my previous comment!), it is Amazon.com that rejects me as a customer.
But perhaps I should refrain from commenting, as downvoting based on opinions seems to have become the norm recently.
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…
There are a number of books I enjoyed in the paper era that I flat out can't find on Amazon now, and I tend to think of Amazon as "ALL THE BOOKS".
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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…
> to try to eke out a little more quarterly profit by doing something like requiring consumers to pay more to unlock content they already "paid for". The gaming industry has already done this kind of thing with on-disc DLC, incidentally.
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they're tied to a specific DRM scheme; I have an ebook available through Amazon and opted to have no DRM. I'm pretty sure this is still up to the author/publisher. I just got an E-mail about Kindle Unlimited and it had a link to make my book eligible. However, to do so you have to enroll the book in Kindle Select (or whatever it's called) and that requires that the book not be available from any other outlets. Well,…
UK and Germany antitrust regulators forced Amazon to drop their "price parity" clause for Marketplace sellers. If Amazon tries to use (monopoly) Segment A of their business to impose conditions on (emerging) Segment B, it won't help adoption or regulation. http://www.dw.de/german-cartel-office-ups-pressure-on-amazon... http://ec.europa.eu/competition/ecn/brief/05_2013/amaz_deuk....
It's their optional Kindle Select[0] special promo arrangement that says that to be eligible the work cannot be offered anyplace else. Joining Kindle Unlimited requires first joining Kindle Select.
Does anyone here know if the EU Kindle Select program has the same restrictions?
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Contracts. See this explanation by author Charlie Stross: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/07/some-ram...
But amazon have no problem selling me ebooks and audiobooks even thou in am located outside the us.
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…
Up until my mid-30s, I was all about collecting and accumulating things, but since then (~10 years) I've been much more focused on minimizing the amount of physical things I own. The sheer volume of it became oppressive to me. Among other things, I stick to digital media whenever possible. I still own way too much stuff but at least it's kind of under control.
It's all trade-offs, like just about anything in life. I give up some nice things by avoiding physical media, including all of the concerns you (and everyone else) are raising, but at this point in my life, what I get in return far outweighs what I'm losing. This applies to physical vs. digital media, and also to subscription vs. ownership models for digital goods. The weighting pros and cons for these things are different for different people.
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How'd you find the overlap between the two? I'm trying to do the same but can't find a simple way to do it other than checking every book.
Me neither - I just opened 60 tabs :)