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Not buying another Kindle

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Re: Not buying another Kindle

#271

Post by lokar »

BeetleB wrote: post #176
jmyeet wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can. An ebook has zero cost of distribution and no middlemen. A physical book has to be typeset, printed, shipped to stores, shipped to customers, marketed in store, etc etc etc. If a physical book is sold for $10 at least half that is printing, distribution and retail. Like the GP, the price fixing of ebooks at the Dane price as physical books mothers me as well, particularly because physical books can be s…

I, too, was once naive and thought that the price of goods is largely determined by the cost of production. But as anyone who has taken Econ 101 knows, the price is based on what people are willing to pay for it. The cost of production merely dictates whether it is viable to sell in the market. If most people are willing to pay $10 for an ebook, when the hardcopy is also $10, then $10 is what they'll sell it for.

You might argue that the convenience of an ebook would make people willing to pay more

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#272

Post by stevekemp »

broken-kebab wrote: post #253
stevekemp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. To be honest I'm on my third kindle, their life-span seems to be about five years for me. I don't love having to replace them, but paying €120 every five years is probably worth it. I mean that's €2/month, and I have a huge library of books which I load via calibre. I read daily, on the bus to work, at home in bed, and while there are "more free" ereaders I've become accustomed to the kindle and…

Let me ask to what exactly have you been accustomed? Reading as such doesn't seem to be different on pretty much any e-reader.

I've become used to the idea of having 10+ books in my bag at a time, instead of having to choose which physical ones to pack.

Plus over the years I've gotten very familiar with the UI of the kindles, they're comfortable to hold and work in a way that feels natural and no-effort.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#274

Post by georgefrowny »

idoubtit wrote: post #76
boplicity wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want to like the Kobo. I really do. But I've had such bad luck with their devices. For example, sometimes the pages randomly start turning, really fast, so I completely lose my place. It also never reliably syncs between devices. And the integration with Overdrive is unreliable, only working some of the time. I also read it in the bath sometimes, which supposedly is one of the features available due to the w…

If you have trouble with the default software on a Kobo ereader, you can install other applications aside it, then switch to them after boot. In my experience, the installation process is innocuous and straightforward. I use Koreader: after experimenting with various configuration parameters for a few days, the UI is now stable and tailored to my taste. Once in a while, I switch to another app: Plato is better at han…

You can also SSH into it because it's just running Linux.

So you could even just git push.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#275

Post by BeetleB »

lokar wrote: post #271
BeetleB wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, too, was once naive and thought that the price of goods is largely determined by the cost of production. But as anyone who has taken Econ 101 knows, the price is based on what people are willing to pay for it. The cost of production merely dictates whether it is viable to sell in the market. If most people are willing to pay $10 for an ebook, when the hardcopy is also $10, then $10 is what they'll sell it for.

You might argue that the convenience of an ebook would make people willing to pay more

Whatever the rationale: People will pay what people are willing to pay. If the price is too high, competition should bring it down. The price clearly wasn't too high.

When I purchase a book, I decide how much I'll pay based on what the book will do for me. I'll get the same entertainment/info whether it is printed or electronic. For some types of books I prefer printed, so I won't pay much for the ebook. For fiction, I prefer electronic (already have too many physical books in the house), so I'll happily pay for it.

Of course, smart people just use libraries :-)

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#276

Post by pyreko »

two_cents wrote: post #73

> We are still dealing with a home screen that prioritizes advertisements and promoted recommendations over your actual library. Navigating a large collection of books remains a chore, with sluggish animations and a lack of robust folder management that has been a standard feature on rival devices for years. Such claims make me think that this article is biased. There are two tabs on main Kindle screen - Home and Lib…

> Kobo

I've never had to interact with the Kobo store (which I guess is what you mean?) and just chuck the epubs I have manually, they all just work out of the box.

The only DRM-related thing I've dealt with is me hooking Libby up to it to read a book I borrowed.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#277

Post by xboxnolifes »

johngossman wrote: post #8

I can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.

What is the support burden? It needs to be able to sync with your ebook library. Thats it.

Kindles aren't like phones and computers, you dont need an upgrade every few years because software consumes the latest hardware. They just open epub files.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#278

Post by andrewla »

delecti wrote: post #49
andrewla wrote: post #17

In my view the death of the eReader is just the price fixing on ebooks -- that ebooks are sold at par with at a premium to physical books still bothers me, and I think is responsible for the fact that the Kindle is dying -- Amazon can't move enough ebooks at these price levels to be worth investing anything in interested new hardware.

Is the Kindle dying? A cursory check suggests otherwise. Checking the sources on the "Sales" section of Wikipedia, they sold $5bn of devices in 2014 [0], and then hit a decade-long high in 2024 [1]. Now that's much to go on, and could easily have been worded carefully to imply things that aren't true. But at worst it seems like Kindle sales are doing fine. At a ballpark of $200/device, and assuming 2024 is as low as…

This is a mea culpa on my part -- looks like the situation here has improved*.

I pretty much only buy ebooks now and the prices have been stable, but apparently print prices have been shooting up so the situation has now been corrected.

* improved in the ratio of ebook price to physical book price; ebook prices are still too high but that's just me complaining about how a quarter used to buy a loaf of bread or whatever.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#279

Post by andrewla »

Insanity wrote: post #170
andrewla wrote: post #17

In my view the death of the eReader is just the price fixing on ebooks -- that ebooks are sold at par with at a premium to physical books still bothers me, and I think is responsible for the fact that the Kindle is dying -- Amazon can't move enough ebooks at these price levels to be worth investing anything in interested new hardware.

I might be misreading your message, but most ebooks I buy are in the $5-15 range, whilst physical books I buy are usually $20-30 range. I'm reading your message as in "they are equally expensive" which is not the case. But I'm having a bit of trouble parsing your second sentence lol.

It looks like you're right -- what I've noticed is that ebook prices have remained steady (and too high) but what I failed to notice is that physical book prices have grown wildly since I was last looking at the situation.

So maybe the economics are shifting -- I certainly hope so. I don't know if there's a big market for a premium eReader (like the Oasis) or whether there's a push to improve the UX to the point where it's usable, but I would very much like both of those things to happen.

That said, Amazon is definitely making a streaming push and the UX for their "Fire Stick" is on par with the UX for an actual "Dumpster Fire" so maybe they're just really bad at it.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#280

Post by mingus88 »

adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #264
chmod775 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Kobo Glo, released in 2012, is still getting updates to the latest Kobo firmware version. In fact all Kobo e-ink devices, except the Kobo Mini, wifi, and the original one, are still getting firmware updates. Their android-based tablets with IPS screens are all discontinued though (as far as I am aware). This is more than Amazon ever did. They haven't updated the firmware on some of their devices that are official…

I don’t understand why anyone would choose a Kindle over the Kobo range of devices. When I bought the Kobo Clara it was also a significantly better device purely on hardware specs. It was slightly more expensive, but that’s more than paid for by how long it’s already lasted me, whereas my spouse’s kindle (bought before we discovered Kobo), is already e-waste. Kobo has also officially tied up with iFixit to provide of…

Kobo also integrates with public libraries via Overdrive

It’s amazing to check out a book from your library and have it sync to your kobo, all paid for with your library card

You literally would have to pay me to go back to a Kindle

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