Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
The Amazon AZW3 format is a pretty good equivalent to EPUB, and the second of the two (not half a dozen) Amazon formats is MOBI which is only supposed to be a fallback for older devices and non-updated books. There is also AZK (iOS app only) which is the Google Play books of Amazon -- some incomprehensible app format full of javascript -- as well as the Print Replicas which fulfill the same role as Adobe PDFs.
All three formats (AZW3, MOBI, EPUB) are roughly the same sizes. If books are bigger, it is because there is more in them (either text, images, or embedded fonts) and not because the format is intrinsically bigger. In act, my few ADE ebooks average 3-4X the size of my Amazon books, for no good reason -- a conversion in calibre makes it much smaller. Amazon seems to have higher standards for using space in ebooks wisely.
In short, books are no bigger than they used to, except in terms of how the authors/publishers make them... a problem that applies equally to every bookstore.
Prime is not being shoved down anyone's throat. Please explain to me why I need Prime any more than I did 3 years ago. No old stuff is being made into Prime exclusives, only new features are being added to the Amazon ecosystem, and start off as Prime features. These are all also things that anyone else who does offer them charges membership fees for as well.
Amazon is fine with you having 1000 books on your ereader. This is possible with the PW1/2, and easily with the Touch/Keyboard which can hold about 3500.
At a certain point, they have judged that the vast majority of Kindle owners do not need the extra storage, based on the fact that they never use it, and have saved everyone money by lowering the cost of making Kindles, allowing them to keep charging the same low price after adding on new features (think frontlight) that people will actually use.
Don't keep all your books on your ereader. Keep them on your hard drive (dedicated storage exists for a reason) and merely keep the next few months worth of reading materials (taking into account lengthy TBRs, keeping favorites handy, eclectic tastes and being in the middle of 6 books at once, I manage to do precisely this) on your ereader. Rotate as necessary.
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Amazon uses more ebook file types than anyone else: AZW, AZW3, PRC, Mobi, HTMLZ. I see no reason why they couldn't just use Epub.
I have a Roku with the Amazon video app on it. Amazon just upgraded the app a few months back. The new app has Amazon Prime in two of the first three categories. To find your purchased videos you now have to go to the bottom of the page through all of the Prime movies and suggestions. Amazon is obviously pushing Prime, and this is not the only place I've seen it.