[Timboli]

My enthusiasm to buy Kindle has continued to decline over a few years, and is now at an all-time low. A few issues have contributed to that, not just this latest idiocy by Amazon.

Many years ago, I created a program, that was essentially a Wishlist one for Kindle ebooks at Amazon, and certainly worked far better than their own dopey Wishlist facility. And my version included price history, which became a huge help. It also allowed for multiple users, and saving purchased Kindle ebooks to a separate list for each user. Several other aspects were catered for as well, like Exchange Rate and links and setting favorites (Primary & Secondary) plus Pre-Orders. So at virtually a click of a button and a few minutes later, the prices of the ebooks I was checking on would be updated to the latest, and line colored with Orange (increase) and Green (decrease) and Yellow (minor increase or decrease) and Red for failure.

All of that meant I could keep a good close watch on prices etc on a daily basis, often twice a day (early & late). I could study patterns of price changes, and buy with confidence because I was well enough informed.

Over the years I have gotten a lot of incredible bargains due to my program. NOTE - It doesn't have to be a bargain for me to buy what I am interested in, just a fair ebook price. So any bargain is an un-looked for bonus.

But as always, website changes mean bug fixes, and I continued to do those. However, Amazon don't like you scraping their web pages, so keep making it harder, and now I have had to settle with a much slower process ... so slow, that most of the time I no longer bother doing it regularly.

The fact that I have been buying most of my ebooks from Kobo for a few years now, has also contributed. So in the end, Amazon loses, and the author still usually gets their money via Kobo. I mostly don't lose, except where I have missed out on a good discount at Amazon ... though Kobo usually matches price much of the time. Really I only lose out, when their isn't a discount at Kobo, and I aren't aware of a discount at Amazon for a Kindle ebook.

In any case, what can I do. I keep tabs on a lot of ebooks, and using the Amazon wishlist system, is just not a sensible use of my time especially regularly or even just on occasion.

Rather than scraping, I have looked into using some kind of Amazon API, but they've made that too hard, and reports I've read say price isn't included anyway, so no point to using it.

At this point in time, I am mostly relying on emails from authors I follow, that only provide their ebooks via Amazon. That's for their new releases.

From my perspective, Amazon keep shooting themselves in the foot. They certainly make me feel they are anti-consumer, with a number of things they have done.

I can currently get around the loss of the DOWNLOAD & TRANSFER VIA USB option, but it's only a matter of time before I stop buying Kindle ebooks altogether ... the writing is on the wall. I will of course be encouraging those few authors I follow, to also provide at Kobo etc or direct from their own website. One author already does that last one, giving his followers a week or two before his latest book is then provided to Kindle Unlimited and the exclusivity that entails.