Quote:
Originally Posted by SoCalReader
All I am saying is that people should be aware that buying a Kindle virtually locks you into Amazon. And that purchasing from Amazon, for the vast majority of purchases, means you are required to purchase a Kindle if you wish to use an e-reader. (Of course some people can reader for hours on a back-lit screen, many can not.)
All of this is fine, but users should be aware of the options. Since they generally don't, it is no surprise the majority of the book licences sold are from Amazon.
But if we are going to talk about dying industries, the entire e-ink industry appears to be in trouble which is too bad given that tablets just suck as e-readers. In which case this entire discussion is pretty much moot. Sigh...
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I totally share your opinion about eink vs tablets (for pure reading) and sadly, I think you are right. I guess is because tablets are more all around devices and hence, have a higher demand, at least for now. I cross my fingers and hope eink won't disappear.
Having said that, I think that a statement like "buying a Kindle" locks you out it is misleading. And I will tell you why.
You can buy MOBI format type of ebooks from anywhere, and as long as they are DRM free ebooks, the user has no reason to buy from Amazon. In fact, besides initial registration, there is no reason at all to buy from Amazon. I actually have lot of DRM free ebooks that I bought from O'Reilly and I use them on my Kindle, perfectly fine. They are even saved or uploaded into my Amazon's cloud space, as I legally paid for them.
What truly locks an user is DRM, but that's not something that Amazon only does. B&N does it, Apple does it. It is actually a way to force you to continue buying more ebooks from them. Do I like it? of course not. I think that if you browse the forum you will see that most of us are against DRM practices; it is good for the company but bad for the end user. But again, that's a totally different topic and will not block you from uploading and reading free DRM ebooks from other stores.