Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
I use Calibre and back up all my Kindle books. Sure it's easy but that's not the point at all that I was trying to make.
What if Amazon just sold the books and not the device! Then other companies would start competing with one another to make the best reader for ebooks. The smartest ones, probably the most successful ones, would be able to handle books from any store. So we'd have a wide variety of devices to choose from, one to match whatever our preference might be, and we could be sure it would work natively with whatever store we choose to buy ebooks from.
So I have my 5" Samsung Galaxy e-ink reader and I go shopping for books, right from the device, on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Feedbooks, Gutenberg, etc. and buy from the one that offers the book I want at the best price.
You go shopping on your 6.8" HTC E-ink 9 and do the same thing.
This would make for a far more rational ebook market and also would render DRM at least a little more innocuous.
Of course some of you silly people would probably buy the HP model and it would fall apart next week. Or the Apple version that would electrocute you if you try to go to Amazon to buy your book. 
Barry |
All *that* could have happened...
...if the market had been allowed to mature naturally.
The Agency Conspiracy and the four hour price war put an end to it in June 2010.
Now we deal with the consequences: walled gardens as far as the eye can see.