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I would rather see my books get pirated than this

janefriedman.com

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Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#211

Post by mcphage »

kelnos wrote: post #139
VincentEvans wrote: post #128

Let me tell you how to buy a kindle book for my kid’s Kindle that is connected via a child account in “Amazon Household” to my Amazon account. (This opening sentence already signals how the rest of this will go). A child’s account can’t buy books - you have to do it for them. 1. I open Amazon app on my iphone and find the book - “This app does not support purchasing of this content”. 2. I open Kindle app on my iphone…

I agree that this is ridiculous, but blame Apple and Google for wanting their 30% cut of digital goods; I think Amazon is actually right to refuse to play ball on this. Regardless, though, once you know how to do it, you only have to do two of those steps, which seems... fine?

> but blame Apple and Google for wanting their 30% cut of digital goods

I imagine that Amazon did the math here and decided that the 30% is more than the lost sales due to the obnoxious process involved, but I struggle to see how that's true.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#212

Post by Nasrudith »

photonpsd wrote: post #38

Instead of "working" with Amazon to get one of these books removed (sounds super fun), here's a solution I could help an author implement: attach an NFT to each "official" book sold. Either at payment (for digital copies; might require marketplace buy-in) and/or via an NFC in the book binding. Use the token/NFC as a means of authentication, and a way connect with the author, other fans, etc.

NFTs would be overkill and a massive waste of processing power. All you really need is a cryptographic signature on your books. Now the hard part, as usual isn't even the implementation itself, but getting people to use it and look in the right place for your public key.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#213

Post by mcphage »

lathiat wrote: post #178
VincentEvans wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet I can buy entire contents of the amazon using the Amazon shopping app. Or Walmart app. Or Target app. Or Best Buy app. Opening amazon.com via Safari on an iphone is a throwback and a very odd experience - I haven’t needed to use a mobile version of amazon.com in ages - i use the app for all my Amazon shopping. And one other thing - I can’t stand Musk, but given my experience with Amazon in a world where WeCha…

The reason is that Apple specifically requires all digital only purchases to only use in-app payment and must give Apple 30%. You are not allowed to process digital purchases through an app with your own payment system. You also can’t tell people that or link them to the website. This does not apply to physical goods. Which is why all the apps you mentioned are fine. This is the same issue that has been talked about…

> The reason is that Apple specifically requires all digital only purchases to only use in-app payment and must give Apple 30%. You are not allowed to process digital purchases through an app with your own payment system. You also can’t tell people that or link them to the website.

> This does not apply to physical goods.

I don't really get this division other than "it's what Apple could get away with". As far as the payment processing is concerned, it seems like a distinction without a difference.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#214

Post by munchler »

VincentEvans wrote: post #128

Let me tell you how to buy a kindle book for my kid’s Kindle that is connected via a child account in “Amazon Household” to my Amazon account. (This opening sentence already signals how the rest of this will go). A child’s account can’t buy books - you have to do it for them. 1. I open Amazon app on my iphone and find the book - “This app does not support purchasing of this content”. 2. I open Kindle app on my iphone…

I understand your frustration, but what does this have to do with the article?

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#215

Post by orwin »

grogenaut wrote: post #172
VincentEvans wrote: post #128

Let me tell you how to buy a kindle book for my kid’s Kindle that is connected via a child account in “Amazon Household” to my Amazon account. (This opening sentence already signals how the rest of this will go). A child’s account can’t buy books - you have to do it for them. 1. I open Amazon app on my iphone and find the book - “This app does not support purchasing of this content”. 2. I open Kindle app on my iphone…

Step 1: go to amazon on a real computer and find book Step 2: click buy Step 3: in the post purchase confirmation it says "Want to start reading right away?" and a dropdown of your devices with a deliver button. It's a kids device they (and you) don't want your kid to be sent 50 shades of gray accidentally. The other flow is buy book. Go to kindle, "sync and check for new items". But again, it's a kids book, don't wa…

Instead, small authors who self-publish and give Amazon exclusivity, I'm entitled to 40% of the proceed of the book. For basically access to the marketplace.

If you go to some authors discord and make small donation (often half of Amazon's price), they'll send you drm-free ebooks. That's what you should do if you really want to support author and dislike markup from marketplace monopolies.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#216

Post by brigandish »

chii wrote: post #197
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the ends justify the means, matey? Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons? How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?

> deprived of sales but the post above explain an arduous process for a purchase, and i would expect that there's not an insignificant number of people who would've given up in the middle. So do you also feel that you need to make the same complaint of a lost sale to amazon? Why target pirates specifically? Whether they _consumed_ content or not, is irrelevant - in both scenarios, you would've "lost" a sale.

Arduous is overstating it by a long way. Frustrating, bothersome, annoying, inconsiderate, stupid, yes. Arduous? I used to carry a walkman, several tapes, and spare batteries with me every day; I used to carry a book to read in one pocket and often another, smaller book in another, and even occasionally a newspaper under my arm. Buying a book or any media online is not arduous, even if it's as described.

What it does show is that innovative businesses will, over time, become like the dinosaurs they out-competed, and leave room for something new. Piracy will probably always be there, even when buying is not arduous.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#217

Post by mattigames »

shinycode wrote: post #159
owlninja wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the majority of it is, what do you have that says otherwise?

Some people commented here on HN they created bots that played along as humans by answering coherent comments on random posts to train their AI with the ability to argue and dig into the discussion. There’s a thin line between this and fake posts

It seems they were talking about reddit content before 2023

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#218

Post by mcphage »

photonpsd wrote: post #85
mcphage wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that help solve the problem, especially given it's a problem that the marketplace isn't interested in solving?

only "official" books that were written by the author would come accompanied with a token that verifies it; to side-step marketplaces (at least on physical copies), publishers could embedded an NFC chip into the book, consumer taps it with their phone to auth it; token also gets access to special discord, early release of author's next book, etc

I think even without an NFC it's clear that it's not a real book as soon as you buy it. But it's still garbage, and it'll still be impersonating the author, making it look like they sell garbage.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#219

Post by corndoge »

brigandish wrote: post #216
chii wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> deprived of sales but the post above explain an arduous process for a purchase, and i would expect that there's not an insignificant number of people who would've given up in the middle. So do you also feel that you need to make the same complaint of a lost sale to amazon? Why target pirates specifically? Whether they _consumed_ content or not, is irrelevant - in both scenarios, you would've "lost" a sale.

Arduous is overstating it by a long way. Frustrating, bothersome, annoying, inconsiderate, stupid , yes. Arduous? I used to carry a walkman, several tapes, and spare batteries with me every day; I used to carry a book to read in one pocket and often another, smaller book in another, and even occasionally a newspaper under my arm. Buying a book or any media online is not arduous, even if it's as described. What it doe…

It's arduous relative to today's standards and relative to piracy.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#220

Post by orwin »

muzani wrote: post #195
dghlsakjg wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is not innocent here. They are incredibly predatory as a middleman

I buy a $10 book on Google Books, $3 goes to Google, $7 goes to the publisher. I buy the same on the Kindle Android app, $3 goes to Google, ?? goes to Amazon, Since Amazon had been selling books on the Kindle app for a while, I assume they made more than 30% to be worth it, or pushed the cost to the publishers? Or probably worked out some deal with Google, which seems a bit unlikely.

Amazon's cut is 60%, 75% if you're not in an Amazon exclusivity deal (you also won't get boosted).

So basically Google 3$, Amazon 4$, publisher 3$.

If you go to Amazon marketplace directly, Amazon gets 6$, publisher gets 4$.

Amazon complaining about predatory marketplace is rich.

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