The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[JBaby]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But what's wrong with going both ePub and Kindle? That gives you a bigger audience.

I think this author went Kindle Unlimited so that's why no more ePub.

But that’s not always the case. I have a friend who went wide. She makes more from KU than she did at all other outlets combined. I can’t blame her for going with KU despite the fact that I hate Amazon having so much control. KU led to more book sales too. This has remained the case even with new books that were never released wide.

In full disclosure I do subscribe to KU, but I always try to get books from outside of Amazon first. I prefer getting books directly from authors. I buy from Amazon as a last resort. KU is a like a streaming service. I have no issue with being subscribed.

[Quoth]

Grrr! Four ebooks today from Amazon with a : in the filename.

Where do I complain?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JBaby

But that’s not always the case. I have a friend who went wide. She makes more from KU than she did at all other outlets combined. I can’t blame her for going with KU despite the fact that I hate Amazon having so much control. KU led to more book sales too. This has remained the case even with new books that were never released wide.

An outlier. Many also have the experience that they sell as much or more wide as on Amazon.

Also KU is subscription. You pay even when you don't read. It invades privacy because of the stupid model. Amazon decides the pot shared to the page turns. Also unlike physical libraries (most of whom do ebooks now) they get the content free.

Your post, without any verified statistics, is helping a monopolist and hurting readers and authors. Support an actual library.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Quoth

An outlier. Many also have the experience that they sell as much or more wide as on Amazon.

Also KU is subscription. You pay even when you don't read. It invades privacy because of the stupid model. Amazon decides the pot shared to the page turns. Also unlike physical libraries (most of whom do ebooks now) they get the content free.

Your post, without any verified statistics, is helping a monopolist and hurting readers and authors. Support an actual library.

Quoth could you post a link(s) to some statistics, please?

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Grrr! Four ebooks today from Amazon with a : in the filename.

I think the thin edge of the wedge was when they allowed spaces in filenames.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Quoth

An outlier. Many also have the experience that they sell as much or more wide as on Amazon.

Every author I've asked about it says they got more income from KU than they did from being wide.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Also KU is subscription. You pay even when you don't read. It invades privacy because of the stupid model. Amazon decides the pot shared to the page turns. Also unlike physical libraries (most of whom do ebooks now) they get the content free.

Unlimited included Amazon Prime, which also has other benefits. So even if someone doesn't read every month they might be using those other things.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Renate

I think the thin edge of the wedge was when they allowed spaces in filenames.

Yes,_what's_wrong_with_naked_underlines?

[Gardenman]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

You know, I'm sure it is something I did, but I no longer get emails from eReaderIQ. I just have to go to the site daily. I've marked them as not spam and there are not emails from them in the spam file. I just appear not to get them.

Same here. Nothing I do makes the emails come

[ownedbycats]

Are either of you using Outlook.com? Sometimes it just outright eats emails without sending them to spam.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Renate

I think the thin edge of the wedge was when they allowed spaces in filenames.

Spaces in filenames are evil.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Spaces in filenames are evil.

Case specific filenames are even more evil.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Case specific filenames are even more evil.

It's a feature. There is a longstanding convention to capitalize directory names so that subdirectories are listed ahead of regular files. New fangled collation schemes threw the baby out with the bath water.

[Lukusaukko]

I've been trying to download summaries/descriptions of some PD books to my Calibre library, and getting what looks like AI-generated garbage. The summaries have barely if anything to do with the actual contents, and the sentence structure smells of AI (overcomplicated, scholarly, etc. not like something written by a non-academic person who's actually read the book). It's even worse than those that just include a good part of the first chapter or the like, because those AI summaries can be downright hallucinatory.

[JBaby]

Originally Posted by Quoth

An outlier. Many also have the experience that they sell as much or more wide as on Amazon.

Also KU is subscription. You pay even when you don't read. It invades privacy because of the stupid model. Amazon decides the pot shared to the page turns. Also unlike physical libraries (most of whom do ebooks now) they get the content free.

Your post, without any verified statistics, is helping a monopolist and hurting readers and authors. Support an actual library.

What makes you think that I don’t? I pay for the Stark County Public Library and I’ve done so for two years. Prior to Stark I paid for Brooklyn for years. Riddle me this, when have KU titles been in the library systems?

There’s no such thing as ethical capitalism. I try to be as ethical as possible. But I’m not going to deprive myself of books I want to read. I read a lot. I subscribe to the 2 year subscription to get the lowest price and I’ve paid three times now. Again I don’t see this as being any different from a video streaming service to the end user. It’s not like when you subscribe to a service you’re watching that service 24/7/365. If you subscribe and you aren’t reading enough to warrant the subscription then that’s a you problem. I read close to 200 books a year so it’s not a problem for me. It would be more, but reading isn’t my sole personality trait. I have other interests and hobbies.

Also, I don’t care about the perceived privacy issue. I’ve had 4 Kindles and none have been in airplane mode longer than a few hours total. I love Whispersync so WiFi stays on. Even while out and about I’ll connect via my phone’s hotspot to sync and then I’ll put it in airplane mode if I’m going to be away from home longer than an hour. If I were actually concerned about privacy I wouldn’t have a Kindle in the first place. Hell I wouldn’t have anything to do with Amazon in general at all.

Finally, where are your stats?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

How many books are you tracking?

One million!


Actually, looks like I am tracking 821 books, likely due to my laziness in removing books I have purchased already.

I wonder if there's an upper limit. I usually use the author tracking feature if an author has multiple books I want, and I only track a specific book if the author hasn't written anything else I want to read. This keeps the number of books I'm tracking way down, but sadly it also prevents me from setting a price ceiling, so I get e-mails about $15 books being on sale for $12 and the like, but so far, the e-mail notifications are still working properly, and the list of books I'm tracking is pretty small compared to the list of authors.

Could be. I do use author tracking as well.