Quote:
Originally Posted by MrsJoseph
I no longer care that Amazon refuses sell books to me. I'm starting to wander away from Amazon - which hurts them a lot more than me, as I have been a great customer to them for a very long time.
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I'm not picking on this comment; it just neatly sums up the fallacy.
Amazon is not in the business of "refusing to sell books" to anyone: in fact, what they sell are books that speak the Kindle platform language. Most (not all, but most) e-books from Amazon are available from other vendors, typically in ADE ePub. No one is deprived. You want to buy Pepsi, they sell Coke: that's the way it is.
25% of Amazon's Kindle ebook buyers don't have a Kindle -- most are not pirating the DRM, most are reading on devices that aren't Kindles -- like an iPad, a Galaxy Tab, a Blackberry, a PC, a Mac etc ... and every one of those devices is "agnostic" when it comes to e-books, offering apps from ePub and Kindle formats.
Amazon would make a HUGE error supporting ePub on a Kindle: one of the best things about the purchase flow is that it is so simple -- all files are in just one format. Anyone who has ever bought from Smashwords, Fictionwise, BooksOnBoard, etc., have been faced with several hoops when all you wanted was
Slaughterhouse Five. (And no one is "forced" to buy from them, either.)