Help Convince Amazon to Open the Kindle Platform

[shalym]

Originally Posted by issybird

Ah. Well, then they can go there to read.

Exactly.

Shari

[Pizza_Cant_Read]

Originally Posted by Pizza_Cant_Read

I know lots of people here have had problems using Calibre and plugins to manage their Kindle library. Most of us want to host as much as we can locally without relying on cloud services and Amazon doesn't provide the tools to do that efficiently. Whether or not you use a Kindle, as a market leader they set a certain standard that other readers use as a baseline. Towards the end of convincing Amazon to give users better tools to organize and manage their library collection I have started a thread on the Kindle forum and I would appreciate it if some like minded people would contribute!

https://www.amazonforum.com/forums/d...-books-oasis-2

As these are issues users have had with Kindles and other publisher supported ebook readers I have no illusion that we will win this battle with an update tomorrow but I do believe it is important to be persistent.

I guess my largest point is that I never expected users who advocate a smaller feature set to comment. Typically, users who don't care about a requested feature are too lazy to comment and I specifically asked for like minded people who would appreciate said features to support my thread.

If one asks for jalapeños on a pizza and you don't eat spicy food, why try to steer public opinion against offering jalapeños?

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Pizza_Cant_Read

I guess my largest point is that I never expected users who advocate a smaller feature set to comment. Typically, users who don't care about a requested feature are too lazy to comment and I specifically asked for like minded people who would appreciate said features to support my thread.

If one asks for jalapeños on a pizza and you don't eat spicy food, why try to steer public opinion against offering jalapeños?

Here is the big why Amazon won't.
If only 1% want a new feature, it isn't worth the time and expense to retrain customer service.
Jalapeños on a pizza does not require changing ALL pizzas.
Opening a platform requires a lot of behind the scenes work.

Your idea is interesting.

[shamanNS]

@Cinisajoy: What is the the percentage of Kindle users that would want/like/appreciate/wouldn't mind having on/off option to have "book-cover-as-screensaver" (and/or "choose my own set of pictures of dogs/cats/children/anime characters/...)? That is something that people have been asking for 10 f-ing years now... and I bet that gaining that particular functionality covers at least 90% jailbreaks.

I agree that Amazon can't be expected to invest time and money for 0.001% Kindle users that want to run VNC, Dropbox, server for XYZ/... on their Kindle, or 1% that want to use external remote (or voice commands) to turn pages (but on the other hand Lab126 should not actively do their best to stop people for doing those exotic use-cases; I really can't imagine that a guy trying to do stuff like that will contact Kindle Support and complain if/when he soft-bricks his Kindle... he well get a serial port connection and fix it).


I don't consider as asking to much when people express a desire to have extra level of customization of their reading experience and are not satisfied with Amazon's "optimal defaults" (see font sizes [even now when there are 14 option, new additions begin somewhere around option 7... and I for example am affected by lack of middle-step in options 1 to 4], see margins]... or when people rightfully state that Kindle offers insufficient functionality regarding managing and categorizing his/hers book collection on device .

Yes there is Calibre and almost everyone has a computer.. yes Amazon website categorizes its catalog so you could go there and check things like genre. There is currently FONT_RAMP thing (that effect only 1 of the 3 total formats Amazon uses), there are metadata plugboards for trying to make Kindles shortcomings more tolerable. But all of those are clutches, and bad UX. People should't have to cram all that info into Title field.

What's stopping Kindle from pre-generating couple types of collection (like genre, author, series) while offering on/off switch for each of those? The needed info already exists on server (Kindle Store uses it) ... Kindle already uses bunch of additional files in ".sdr" directory... it would be simple for servers to pre-generate book categories/collections metadata, to avoid extra battery usage of doing all that on device itself. And document the format used for that metadata so if a "power user" knows how and wants to correct/edit a genre (i "no I don't agree this books is "urban fantasy", it's obviously "paranormal romance" [yuck] ) that user can do just that.

On/off switches aren't that much extra work for programmers and having a choice and fine-grained controls makes every user happy. And "defensive programming" against things like malformed data is a must even without leaving a window of opportunity for users to access and play with existing data. Servers can produce mistakes...


In summary: having (semi)functional workarounds that result in "now I can live with it" isn't the same a being satisfied with your device. Amazon should strive for the 100% basic functionality (like correctly rendering em units) done right before spending programmers time on stupid things like Word runner.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Here is the big why Amazon won't.
If only 1% want a new feature, it isn't worth the time and expense to retrain customer service.
Jalapeños on a pizza does not require changing ALL pizzas.
Opening a platform requires a lot of behind the scenes work.

Your idea is interesting.

But, Amazon should be looking at why others are buying Readers that are not Kindle. What is it about the other brands that make Kindle not a viable choice? One reason people go for Kobo instead of Kindle is more options in the Aa menu and the ability to add in fonts you want to use if they are not in the default font list. Without ePub, if people use Overdrive outside the USA, then a Kindle is not a good choice because you won't get Kindle eBooks.

It's not just what the users want, it's also what can be added to get more users. That make a a lot more people wanting similar things.

Oh and one more thing. Let the Kindle be turned off. Just standby is not good for the battery. The T1 (for example) has a really nice feature I ave not seen elsewhere. Two days with no use, it turns off.

[Alohamora]

Originally Posted by Pizza_Cant_Read

I guess my largest point is that I never expected users who advocate a smaller feature set to comment. Typically, users who don't care about a requested feature are too lazy to comment and I specifically asked for like minded people who would appreciate said features to support my thread.

If one asks for jalapeños on a pizza and you don't eat spicy food, why try to steer public opinion against offering jalapeños?

If you had started with "I love jalapeños, who's with me?" I would have ignored the post. Instead, it was more like "Most people like jalapeños, come with me to talk to the chef" and my answer is, uh, no we don't.

Could Amazon provide better tools for organizing series, metadata and collections, yeah I think they could,
and hope they will. But I'd still expect any such enhanced features will end up being proprietary and cloud based.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But, Amazon should be looking at why others are buying Readers that are not Kindle. What is it about the other brands that make Kindle not a viable choice? One reason people go for Kobo instead of Kindle is more options in the Aa menu and the ability to add in fonts you want to use if they are not in the default font list. Without ePub, if people use Overdrive outside the USA, then a Kindle is not a good choice because you won't get Kindle eBooks.

It's not just what the users want, it's also what can be added to get more users. That make a a lot more people wanting similar things.

Oh and one more thing. Let the Kindle be turned off. Just standby is not good for the battery. The T1 (for example) has a really nice feature I ave not seen elsewhere. Two days with no use, it turns off.

What you said makes more sense than the open platform the OP wants.
Yes, I would love more fonts myself.

Would there be enough other country readers to make Overdrive available to them?

Also oh yes, power off please.

[knc1]

and it can be turned off.
use the search bar command to put it in 'shipping mode'

Ah, but wait, a person would have to have one to know that. - guess that lets our 'Kindle expert' out of the loop.

[HarryT]

I have to confess that I can see no benefit whatsoever to Amazon in making the Kindle an open platform. The Kindle is sold first and foremost as an Amazon content consumption device; how would Amazon benefit from making it easy for people to use content purchased elsewhere on it?

[darryl]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But, Amazon should be looking at why others are buying Readers that are not Kindle. What is it about the other brands that make Kindle not a viable choice? One reason people go for Kobo instead of Kindle is more options in the Aa menu and the ability to add in fonts you want to use if they are not in the default font list. Without ePub, if people use Overdrive outside the USA, then a Kindle is not a good choice because you won't get Kindle eBooks.

It's not just what the users want, it's also what can be added to get more users. That make a a lot more people wanting similar things.

Oh and one more thing. Let the Kindle be turned off. Just standby is not good for the battery. The T1 (for example) has a really nice feature I ave not seen elsewhere. Two days with no use, it turns off.

I would be surprised if Amazon is not keeping a very close eye on why some prefer other devices. In particular, Amazon is clearly familiar with the font weight issue and obviously decided that enough people cared to actually do something about it. I don't know why they did not go further, but clearly they did look at it and made an informed decision.

I suspect the reason why they don't implement other features named are usually either that not enough people care, or the features would not fit in with their overall "ecosystem". Certainly epub support is just not going to happen, as Harry's post quoted below makes clear. I also doubt library borrowers outside of the US are of any real concern. If they ever become of concern, which I doubt, they will almost certainly implement by making their own formats accessible for borrowing rather than supporting epub. The fact that this hasn't been done to date, even in a market the size of the UK, together with the fact that Amazon apparently does not provide ebooks of even its own imprints for library borrowing anywhere indicates to me that this is not a priority for them.

Originally Posted by HarryT

I have to confess that I can see no benefit whatsoever to Amazon in making the Kindle an open platform. The Kindle is sold first and foremost as an Amazon content consumption device; how would Amazon benefit from making it easy for people to use content purchased elsewhere on it?

Exactly. Just as the 'Big Publishers take account of the whole of their businesses, including paper books, when making decisions about ebooks, Amazon must take account of its whole "ecoystem", which seems to be remarkably healthy right now. This is why they won't open up the platform or support competitive formats. Their ideal customer profile is someone who just uses only their "ecosystem" for all their reading needs. And it appears the vast majority of their customers fit this profile. I also suspect that Amazon likes to keep control over the quality of the reading experience. The more choice offered on the core platform, the more complex the device becomes to operate, the more support that is required, and, of course, the fact that people not using features properly will blame Amazon. This means that Amazon is not likely to add or change features unless there is a real and significant demand.

[latepaul]

Let me offer a slightly different perspective.

I like the idea of an open platform. I like it as someone who can program and therefore might make use of it personally. However I have two observations:

1) It seems unlikely that Amazon will do this for all the reasons people have already given.

2) There are already ereaders based on Linux where the software stack is mostly open. By which I mean they may have proprietary software for readers etc but there are few or no barriers to loading your own programs.

Amazon's market share vastly outnumbers the vendors of the second type. So one might credibly argue that

a) the two things are connected and as there already is an "open" option the current market share (more or less) reflects the general interest in it.

b) if one wanted to promote the open option, one might be better off encouraging the existing products i.e. buying them, rather than trying to persuade Amazon - who clearly believe in their proprietary strategy - to change.

Now the response to a) might be that more people don't choose the open option because they're locked in* to the proprietary one. Which may be true but that's a DRM issue and that being the case it may make more sense to campaign against DRM. I actually think that could change in time but the inertia is such that it'll take a while - just my opinion.

(*I'm talking about the perception more than the reality. But I think there's enough 'friction' to stop people casually switching brand of ereader.)

[Pizza_Cant_Read]

Eh, 'open' has many connotations. I hate to sound live a sell out as Richard Stallman is a personal hero. Open source would be great, but providing an API to allow us to manage our collection or not intentionally stifling plugins like Kindle Collections or would show a certain benevolence as well. Even just the ability to sort by series would have been enough to avoid me ever bring it up.

To those familiar with the Open Source world - I know the difference between freedom and free beer. But with this application and device I would be satisfied with the free beer. We have all read about the animated cereal boxes...Kindles/Kobos/whatever are just a clunky stepping stone towards that future.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Pizza_Cant_Read

Even just the ability to sort by series would have been enough to avoid me ever bring it up.

That's essentially a matter of history. Both Kindle and ePub books use what's called the "Dublin Core Metadata" standard for storing a book's metadata, and unfortunately that standard does not include series information in it. I wholeheartedly agree that it would be a very useful addition!

[Pizza_Cant_Read]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's essentially a matter of history. Both Kindle and ePub books use what's called the "Dublin Core Metadata" standard for storing a book's metadata, and unfortunately that standard does not include series information in it. I wholeheartedly agree that it would be a very useful addition!

Thanks for that, I will have to learn more about the standard later! As far as information stored in the format I am a clueless end user without any understand of its limitations. However there are other means.

They *could* allow me to assign 'weight' to certain collections and/or exclude books found in other collections and/or letting me fake it through some other means. It is obvious they don't want to encourage excessive compatibility with Calibre but the UI could compensate. Its not an ideal end game but would be an acceptable workaround.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Pizza_Cant_Read

Thanks for that, I will have to learn more about the standard later! As far as information stored in the format I am a clueless end user without any understand of its limitations. However there are other means.

They *could* allow me to assign 'weight' to certain collections and/or exclude books found in other collections and/or letting me fake it through some other means. It is obvious they don't want to encourage excessive compatibility with Calibre but the UI could compensate. Its not an ideal end game but would be an acceptable workaround.

Little food for thought.
Most people read one book a month or less. So again not much call to change collections.
Then there are US who average 12 books a month or more.