Why are people unwilling to vote with their wallets?

[Apache]

Just as I stopped buying books from B&N when they removed the ability to download books, I have also done the same with Amazon. I have a large back log of books that I want to read, and I like to reread good books.
Apache

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by theducks

I do feel sorry for the Authors that have to have lost sales because we can no longer convert to another format and stopped buying their titles.

Well, actually we still can. There are a couple of methods still working. But I guess most people aren't really interested - they either read on their Kindle/in the Kindle app or buy elsewhere.

[DNSB]

As with Sirtel, I still buy a few books from Amazon, mostly books for my spouse which were written by authors who are Amazon exclusive. For myself, I prefer to obtain the books from Kobo or other ePub suppliers if possible. Doing so saves me from having to convert to ePub before editing and allows my saved search collection in Sigil to be used to simplify most cleanup operations though some of those also apply to KF8/azw3 to ePub extractions.

I have never purchased my ebooks from a single source though Baen, Kobo and Amazon are likely my most popular sources (Baen more for historical versions). I also purchase a growing number of my ebooks direct from author stores since it means they will get a larger chunk of my purchase.

Everyone is free to support whom they prefer.

One acquaintance of mine purchased a Kindle Colorsoft a few weeks back which cost him a few dollars more than the Kobo Libra Colour. He now kvetches to me about calibre not properly supporting the Colorsoft. As near as I can tell, he was not listening when I told him on several occasions that Kobo is a more open system that calibre works well with with compared to the walled garden that Amazon offered him which limits what calibre is able to do. Admittedly, he looked at my Kobo Libra Colour before the purchase and never managed to notice the Colorsoft he purchased did not have buttons and had only 16GB of storage which limits the number of mangas he can store on it (most of his manga are colour and in the ~80MB range so about 160 manga fill the ~12GB available storage). OTOH, he can still download his KU loans directly. You makes your choices and you pays your money.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by issybird

Again, do you have to read exactly that book?

Yes, it's exactly that book when I want to read when I want to read that exact book. Otherwise I won't bother at all.

[drofgnal]

I guess I'm one of the slow to migrate due to inertia. I'm still buying amazon books. I can still easily remove DRM by downloading direct to calibre from either one of two kindles a voyage and an Oasis.

The fact is that for all the work put into using Calibre to store books, remove DRM for portability, I've never actually used calibre to load a book onto a reader. They just sit there. The times I've done rereads of my favorite books, if it's not on the device, I just redownload from Amazon. I wonder why I bother with calibre at all.

I did take the first step in maybe moving to Kobo; I downloaded the kobo app to an iPad mini. I haven't bought a book from them yet though. Old habits die hard....

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by theducks

I do feel sorry for the Authors that have to have lost sales because we can no longer convert to another format and stopped buying their titles.

I suspect this doesn't really move the needle.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by drofgnal

I did take the first step in maybe moving to Kobo; I downloaded the kobo app to an iPad mini. I haven't bought a book from them yet though. Old habits die hard....

I still read on my Kindles and in the Kindle app on my mobile. If it's a book I bought from Kobo, I just send the file to my Kindle account using Send To Kindle.

[Deskisamess]

Amazon meets our needs. We read public library loans, and I read a good deal from KU. We don't actually purchase that many books, at least for the last 2-3 years.

So I guess we are voting with our wallets, by using what works for us.

[issybird]

As for KU, I agree that what applies to purchased books doesn't necessarily apply to a subscription model. Some might prefer not to give Amazon any business at all, but I get that deploring Amazon's lockdown of digital files isn't relevant to KU where the books are explicitly only borrowed and must be read on a Kindle platform.

Originally Posted by rcentros

Yes, it's exactly that book when I want to read when I want to read that exact book. Otherwise I won't bother at all.

I did acknowledge that in the quoted post you truncated:

Originally Posted by issybird

Of course if you have to read exactly that book, then you’d go for it. But I suspect that those purchases are rare.

In part, my point with all this is that we always live with limitations on what we read. I vastly prefer digital books which means that I am almost never willing to read a book in paper. Price is another significant filter; if a book costs more than it's worth to me, that's the end of it. So even if it's exactly the book I want to read and when I want to read it and I can neither afford it nor is it available as an ebook, then I don't. I don't understand "won't bother at all". Does that mean you just won't read anything at all? Seems unlikely to me, but perhaps it does. In my case, I'd just read something else. There's always something else (many somethings else) to read.

========

So for me the corollary is that if you loathe limitations on Kindle books and have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get around them and fully expect it to get harder still, why is that not just one more filter? If enough people acted on that in the aggregate, it might even have a good effect.

Noting that many who've posted in this thread have largely or entirely stopped buying from Amazon for this reason. I suspect that for those who do that sort of thing, one reason to crack methods is because it's fun/challenging. Like a crossword puzzle.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Amazon meets our needs. We read public library loans, and I read a good deal from KU. We don't actually purchase that many books, at least for the last 2-3 years.

So I guess we are voting with our wallets, by using what works for us.

Have you looked at Kobo Plus or other alternatives to KU?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by issybird

So for me the corollary is that if you loathe limitations on Kindle books and have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get around them and fully expect it to get harder still, why is that not just one more filter?

Because it's still easy enough to do on a regular basis (well, more or less) and for me personally, the point where I would no longer bother has not yet arrived. I do buy less from Amazon than I used to.

[cfrizz]

I stopped buying Amazon books about 3 years ago so it didn't impact me.

People simply get used to doing things a certain way and don't want to or think of changing.

As for authors, most stay because Amazon is where they make their money. I emailed an author I like and asked if he use any other stores and he said no it wasn't profitable for him. I told him that I wanted his last two books but I don't buy from Amazon since they no longer allow downloads to my pc. He understood where I was coming from, we wished each other well, and that was that.

You can't blame the authors, they have to go where the money is. So unless people decide to abandon Amazon, things won't change.

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

People simply get used to doing things a certain way and don't want to or think of changing.

That's a bit simplistic. It implies people are simple minded, or refusing to try new things. Some of us don't make changes if what we are doing is working just fine.

I'm not going to make a drastic change in this instance because some consumers are upset with Amazon's tactics. We buy much less from Amazon as times goes by, because of their increasingly crappy items. But I've had no reason to make a change in my reading habits, because for now, this is still working for us.

[DiapDealer]

I'm much the same. My reading (and book-buying) habits are not broken. They work fine for me. Change for the sake of change is not much of a motivator for me.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by issybird

I did acknowledge that in the quoted post you truncated:

Okay, I'm sorry I didn't fully quote your post. If it's any consolation I've probably bought less than five books from Amazon in the last three years. And no books since they stopped letting you download via USB. Not so much to boycott Amazon (though I have made it a point to buy books elsewhere if they're available) but because I'm just not buying many books now. When I did buy from Amazon in the last six or seven years it was either highly discounted books (like Narnia and Tolkien's stuff when it was sale) or old non-fiction books in the public domain that have been nicely formatted (I figured a dollar or two dollars was a good price for that service). Even when I bought cheap Tolkien books, etc., I usually bought the same thing on Kobo to test the two ecosystems. That's pretty much a thing of the past for me now.