Amazon doesn't want you to read free ebooks

[Rizla]

An interesting read here: http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20...ub/#more-41411

Here's a link to the quoted article which I found amusing and disturbing in equal parts:

Gutenberg Kindle Fire Review

Increasingly one has to wonder if Amazon's market dominance is a good thing...

[Graham]

Am I missing something here? Both seem to be chastising the Kindle Fire for not supporting ePub, but aren't most books on Gutenberg also available in mobi format?

Graham

[Rizla]

No, I think the articles state that the Kindle Fire make it very difficult to read material not purchased from them, regardless of format. I have read elsewhere that the KF treats side-loaded material like viruses.

Here's the link to that comment:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...2&postcount=11

We should be questioning if we want a company that adopts such an exclusive strategy to control a majority share of the digital book market. How can that be a good thing?

[JoeD]

As long as amazon don't ban alternative apps from been able to read drm-free or non-amazon format ebooks, I don't see too much of an issue with it.

It's their device, if they want to focus their attention on supporting their own store/format that's up to them. If users feel the experience offered by epub or other stores is superior to that of the apps that ship with the device, they'll install the app needed to use it/them. If users feel Amazon are going out of their way to make it difficult to do that, then I'm sure customers will start to look for alternatives in the future and it'll start to bite amazon on a HW level (as long as amazon continue to make kindle apps for other devices). I can't say I liked having to use wordpad or ms paint when I used to use windows, so I bought/installed better apps

Really it's no different to Apple pushing ibooks on the iPad. You can still download alternative apps to read kindle books or other formats/stores.

The issue I do take with Apple (don't have a fire, so I'm not sure if this also applies to Amazon) is the requirement for in-app purchases to always go through apple, so you can no longer buy content from within the kindle app unless 30% of the price goes to apple. In a way that problem is made worse by the locked nature of the device and inability to load apps from anything other than the Apple store.

It's a shame devices are locked to a single store though, but as long as apps are not arbitrarily blocked (which they often are) it's not as bad as it could be. I hope we see more open devices in the future, no problem with an Apple or Amazon store shipping by default, but customers should be free to buy apps/content from any store they wish and have the ability to run signed or unsigned code if they want to disable the added protection signing offers. (i.e how current versions of OSX work but on the tablets)

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by JoeD

The issue I do take with Apple (don't have a fire, so I'm not sure if this also applies to Amazon) is the requirement for in-app purchases to always go through apple, so you can no longer buy content from within the kindle app unless 30% of the price goes to apple.

<pedant>
You never could buy content from within the Kindle app, Amazon have never offered that as an option. All they did was have a Store button which opened Safari to the Amazon Kindle page. Now you have to open it yourself.
</pendant>

Edit: Oh, and yes, apps sold through Google Play must use Google's APIs for any in-app purchases, for which Google take 30%. I think the same is true for Amazon. I think the application is of a less blanket nature than Apple's restrictions though, which apply to all content.

[QuantumIguana]

I have a Kindle 3. I have often used the Kindle's browser to download public domain books directly from Project Gutenberg. I bought a Kindle Fire for my wife, and tried the same thing with the Fire's browser, but it didn't work. I understand what they are thinking, but it's short-sighted. Amazon offers free public domain books for the same reason that casinos offer free drinks: they want you to remain in the casino. If you leave the casino to go have a drink elsewhere, there's a good chance you aren't coming back. Similarly, Amazon would rather keep you in the Kindle Store as much as possible, even if you're only downoading a free public domain book. The more time you're in the Kindle Store, the more likely you are to buy a book that costs money.

So, Amazon doesn't offer free books out of the goodness of their hearts, instead they have a self-interest in doing so. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it's just that their interests are not necessarily mine. Encouraging people to remain within the Kindle Store is one thing, no one could object to that. But setting up roadblocks to people stepping out of the Kindle Store is another matter, and that some people are going to object to. There are a lot of tablets on the market for people to choose from, and a lot of e-book readers expect to be able to sideload books. Will Amazon gain enough by setting up roadblocks to make up for sales that go to competing products? It's hard to say. I'm more likely to sideload a book onto my e-ink Kindle than my wife is to sideload one on to her Fire, so it's not a big issue. But had I known about these roadblocks in advance, I may very well have purchased a competing tablet. It does make me less inclined to consider an upgrade to one of the Fire HD models.

[Barbara1955]

Have you folks Looked at the list of Free ebooks thru Amazons site.... 99% are the same as ebubs on G..Project! Also IF you get one direct thru G..P you can convert it in Calibre to read on Kindles.

[leebase]

Amazon is giving away the hardware. All that R&D money, all the money to manufacture...just to sell the tablets at cost.

It's completely fair for Amazon to lock down it's platform to make money on purchases of ebooks, movies and the like. That's the deal. Amazon doesn't make money selling the tablet, but does selling the content.

Razor - meet razor blade.

Lee

[Binko]

The best bet for anybody who has a long term interest in ebooks is to get used to using Calibre to manage your ebooks. Think of Calibre as your actual ebook library and your reading device as a backpack where you carry the ebooks you are currently interested in.

Amazon and other vendors want to lock you into their device and their cloud storage so they can keep you within the walled garden that they control.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

<pedant>
You never could buy content from within the Kindle app, Amazon have never offered that as an option. All they did was have a Store button which opened Safari to the Amazon Kindle page. Now you have to open it yourself.
</pendant>

Amazon likely could never off a true in-app store due to existing Apple rules though. The store button was considered by Apple to be a loophole that was plugged in a later store T&C update.

I was referring to the store button (even though it wasn't technically buying direct from the app, your pedantic point is correct though, I should have been clearer ), but really I don't think Apple should be able to take a cut of any app that decides to provide in-app purchasing where the app maker is responsible for all transaction processing and delivery of the content.

Apple argue that they're introducing people to the developers app so should always get a cut, but equally Amazon and other companies are making Apple devices a possible purchase option for their customers. I think Apple and others should stick to making money off the sale of the device and off the provision of services they're involved in, such as transaction processing for anyone buying with an apple ID or delivery of content that uses Apples servers/bandwidth.

If Amazon don't want their app experience to fit in with how everyone elses works on iOS devices, leave it up to customers to decide whether they want to sign up for another account just to buy a book/movie/some other in-app item, or to use an app that lets them buy it via their apple ID.

[WillysJeepMan]

Originally Posted by JoeD

As long as amazon don't ban alternative apps from been able to read drm-free or non-amazon format ebooks, I don't see too much of an issue with it.

It's their device, if they want to focus their attention on supporting their own store/format that's up to them. If users feel the experience offered by epub or other stores is superior to that of the apps that ship with the device, they'll install the app needed to use it/them. If users feel Amazon are going out of their way to make it difficult to do that, then I'm sure customers will start to look for alternatives in the future and it'll start to bite amazon on a HW level (as long as amazon continue to make kindle apps for other devices). I can't say I liked having to use wordpad or ms paint when I used to use windows, so I bought/installed better apps

Really it's no different to Apple pushing ibooks on the iPad. You can still download alternative apps to read kindle books or other formats/stores.

It is different than what Apple does.
Apple provides iOS apps for reading ebooks, playing music, displaying photos, and watching videos. Whether you purchase that media from iTunes or sideload it, all of the media is presented as a cohesive collection on the device.

On the Kindle Fire, sideloaded music appears under the "Music" tab. sideloaded ebooks will appear under the "Books" tab if the books are in mobi/azw format. (I'm ok with that...even though iBooks supports ePub and PDF). But sideloaded video, regardless of format, will not appear in the "Video" tab. Nor will sideloaded docs appear in the "Docs" tab.

The difference is that Amazon refers to the "Kindle Fire" as a service... in much the same way that cable TV requires a settop cable box. Granted, sideloading of media and apps are permitted, but are not "encouraged". For example, back in the early days of the KF, the Silk browser would redirect any APK store URL to the Amazon App store. Another example: to this day one cannot install an alternate web browser from the Amazon app store.

On the flipside, Apple isn't too concerned about the source of the media (although the obviously push iTunes), they are about the "destination". As long as the media ends up on an iOS device Apple is pleased. They are not concerned about making their media available on non-iOS devices though, which for some is the sticking point.

In a nutshell:
Amazon is focused on the source of the content -> Amazon services
Apple is focused on the target of the content -> iOS devices

That's the fundamental difference between the iPad and Kindle Fire. Although one is not necessarily worse or better than the other, they ARE different.

[Quexos]

Well, as far as I am concerned, they are failing


It obviously never is when one company dominates over the rest.

Originally Posted by Rizla

Increasingly one has to wonder if Amazon's market dominance is a good thing...

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by leebase

Amazon is giving away the hardware. All that R&D money, all the money to manufacture...just to sell the tablets at cost.

It's completely fair for Amazon to lock down it's platform to make money on purchases of ebooks, movies and the like. That's the deal. Amazon doesn't make money selling the tablet, but does selling the content.

Razor - meet razor blade.

Lee

Legal, maybe. Fair? That's not at all obvious. We aren't talking about Amazon locking out Barnes and Noble books. We're talking about downloading free public domain book. Whether you get that book from Amazon or Project Gutenberg, Amazon doesn't get any money from it. Thus we can dispense with the razor and razor blade analogy.

Sure, if someone puts a version of Oliver Twist that has added value, such as illustrations, an interactive table of contents or added commentary, then they may be able to charge something for it. But we aren't talking about such versions. We're talking about free versions.

Amazon has allowed side loading of books on their e-ink devices, you could even use the browser to download directly to your Kindle. If they have changed this with the Fire, they didn't go out of their way to actually tell anyone. Thus, customers would have a reasonable expectation that they would be able to continue sideloading e-books or to download them directly from the Fire's browser. Amazon doesn't offer free public domain books out of the goodness of their heart. If they were to stop offering free public domain books through the Kindle Store, they would probably be out of business fast.

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

Amazon has allowed side loading of books on their e-ink devices, you could even use the browser to download directly to your Kindle. If they have changed this with the Fire

They haven't, however. You just need to take an extra step (moving the ebook files) in order for the Kindle app to find the sideloads since browser downloads don't go directly into the library - apparently the Kindle app doesn't contain any sort of file browser so you can add them from within the app. (at least as far as I can gather from the Gutenberg webmaster's rant, linked to earlier)

And, of course, nothing is stopping you from using any other ebook reader app (except for Barnes & Noble's, though that's probably B&N's decision rather than Amazon's - Amazon has no problem offering Kobo's app)

[hbtaylor]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Edit: Oh, and yes, apps sold through Google Play must use Google's APIs for any in-app purchases, for which Google take 30%. I think the same is true for Amazon. I think the application is of a less blanket nature than Apple's restrictions though, which apply to all content.

The big difference is that Google doesn't preclude, for example, the Amazon app from having a "Store" button that goes through a separate purchase mechanism. Sure, Google offers in in-app purchase framework and takes a cut if you use it. But app developers aren't required to use it. That makes buying books in the Android Kindle app way more seamless ("less seamful"?) than in the iPad Kindle app. For the iPad I have to switch over to the browser myself, or to wherever I have a shortcut to the store site, and switch back to the Kindle app when finished. On Android I tap "Store", then choose "Home" from the menu when finished.

I don't begrudge Apple for charging for use of their in-app purchasing. What does bother me is forcing companies with have fully-formed store/purchase infrastructures to use the Apple one.