4 ms·

I resisted the Kindle for a long time because of the DRM/openness issues that you mention. They idea of not being able to share books, to not "own" what I had p

I resisted the Kindle for a long time because of the DRM/openness issues that you mention. They idea of not being able to share books, to not "own" what I had paid for, etc. really bothered me. Last year, someone bought be a Kindle for Christmas, so I figured I may as well give it a try. The Kindle quickly became one of my most cherished possessions. Some observations: 1) Yes, the DRM sucks, philosophically speaking. I would even pay a little more just to get DRM-free versions, but unfortunately that's not an option (yet?). 2) Over time, you save money on books. A dollar here, two dollars there; it quickly adds up. Pretty soon, even if you ever had some book removed from your Kindle, you would have saved more than enough money to just go buy the physical copy. 3) That said, the horror stories about books getting removed (like the ironic '1984' fiasco from a few years ago) or accounts being locked are extremely rare. Out of millions or tens of millions of Kindle owners, there are only a handful of stories about people being screwed by DRM. 4) Because of the convenient form factor, the ease of taking the Kindle everywhere I go, and the ease of buying books (a double-edged sword), I read 2x as much as I used to. In 2010, I read just under 40 books; for 2011, I'm on track for about 70. For me, this alone makes the Kindle worth it, regardless of DRM. 5) You can have several Kindles under one Amazon account. This means my wife and I can buy 1 book and read it at the same time on our individual Kindles. That's pretty sweet. 6) As others in this thread have mentioned, you don't have to buy books through Amazon. That lets you potentially sidestep the DRM issue depending on the availability of what you like to read. So yes, in theory, DRM sucks, and I would happily pay higher prices to truly own everything that I purchase. In practice, the cons of DRM are outweighed by everything else.

RexRollman 15y ago
I've heard the occasional story of Amazon freezing a customer's access to his books because of unrelated issues with the account, like returning too many items. If I do get a Kindle, which I am currently thinking of buying, I will probably create a separate Amazon account solely for use with it.
tspiteri 15y ago
2) Over time, you save money on books. A dollar here, two dollars there; it quickly adds up. Pretty soon, even if you ever had some book removed from your Kindle, you would have saved more than enough money to just go buy the physical copy. With the Kindle, I started to buy books more often, as they take no physical space. So even if they are cheaper per unit, I am spending more, not saving money.
- lpolovets 15y ago
  Touche. =) I guess it depends on what you are measuring. In terms of absolute spend, I agree that I spend more on books than I used to. However, given that I'm buying more books because I'm actually reading more, my "per-book spending" is a little lower.
dprice1 15y ago
Thanks for a well-reasoned first-hand account. So I guess we agree on most of these points: e-books are great; DRM, not so much. And I think most of what you've said would apply to all of the readers reviewed (not sure about #5). My lament about the review (and many MANY others I have read) is that it seems to heavily review physical form factor, page turn speed, button design, et cetera. All of which are important to some degree. But I think that degree has been overemphasized and is a distraction. Whereas really, when you adopt one of these (let's take sideloading, DRM cracking etc. out of the picture for the moment), you adopt at least: - A physical device (covered extensively) - A store infrastructure - Its payment system & trustworthiness, flexibility, etc thereof - Parental controls and/or spending limits - The DRM scheme(s) for the content it provides (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Rights_Management#E-books) - The license(s) under which the content is available - The format of the content (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats) - For periodicals: Access and deletion policies around back issues - The ability of the provider to give you good prices and a wide range of titles, periodicals, etc. - Provider policies about content sharing, family usage, et cetera - The device's ability to integrate with public libraries - The device's ability to integrate with 3rd party service providers (the review touches on this with respect to Instapaper) - The set of formats the device will read - Your ability to get content you paid for on and off of the device And probably a bunch of other things I don't know about. So to me, what is under-reviewed is the way in which consumers get to buy, trade, sell, borrow, lend, and use the content. That seems to me to matter much more. I spent this year buying a lot of $7 Agatha Christie e-books on various e-book stores and reading them on the respective apps on my phone (which is psychotic because each app has its own horrible quirks). I came away wondering if I would have been better off buying the $10 paperbacks, just so that I can physically distribute these books. (Aside: US copyright law is not helping here: "Murder on The Orient Express" will not leave copyright protection until 2046, 112 years after initial publication.) As others in this thread have mentioned, you don't have to buy books through Amazon. That lets you potentially sidestep the DRM issue depending on the availability of what you like to read. Two thoughts: First, from a user experience perspective, it basically sucks. I can buy an e-book on the Kindle Store/Nook Store/Kobo Store while sitting on a train, while trying to fall asleep, on the beach, etc. So convenience and immediacy has clear and tangible value. Second, from a business perspective, lots of people side-loading helps to create incentives for e-book retailers to create exclusive deals either with publishers or authors (clearly, there are other reasons for these deals as well). This happened last year (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/08/agent-amazon-partnership-ebooks-random-house.html http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/08/agent-ama...) although to a lesser degree than Mr. Wylie would have liked. AFAICT, if I want to read the ebook for "The Naked and the Dead" (Mailer) my sole choice is to get it through the Kindle store. Sorry for the explosion in length.

RexRollman 15y ago

I've heard the occasional story of Amazon freezing a customer's access to his books because of unrelated issues with the account, like returning too many items. If I do get a Kindle, which I am currently thinking of buying, I will probably create a separate Amazon account solely for use with it.

tspiteri 15y ago

2) Over time, you save money on books. A dollar here, two dollars there; it quickly adds up. Pretty soon, even if you ever had some book removed from your Kindle, you would have saved more than enough money to just go buy the physical copy. With the Kindle, I started to buy books more often, as they take no physical space. So even if they are cheaper per unit, I am spending more, not saving money.

lpolovets 15y ago
Touche. =) I guess it depends on what you are measuring. In terms of absolute spend, I agree that I spend more on books than I used to. However, given that I'm buying more books because I'm actually reading more, my "per-book spending" is a little lower.

dprice1 15y ago

Thanks for a well-reasoned first-hand account. So I guess we agree on most of these points: e-books are great; DRM, not so much. And I think most of what you've said would apply to all of the readers reviewed (not sure about #5). My lament about the review (and many MANY others I have read) is that it seems to heavily review physical form factor, page turn speed, button design, et cetera. All of which are important to some degree. But I think that degree has been overemphasized and is a distraction. Whereas really, when you adopt one of these (let's take sideloading, DRM cracking etc. out of the picture for the moment), you adopt at least: - A physical device (covered extensively) - A store infrastructure - Its payment system & trustworthiness, flexibility, etc thereof - Parental controls and/or spending limits - The DRM scheme(s) for the content it provides (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Rights_Management#E-books) - The license(s) under which the content is available - The format of the content (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats) - For periodicals: Access and deletion policies around back issues - The ability of the provider to give you good prices and a wide range of titles, periodicals, etc. - Provider policies about content sharing, family usage, et cetera - The device's ability to integrate with public libraries - The device's ability to integrate with 3rd party service providers (the review touches on this with respect to Instapaper) - The set of formats the device will read - Your ability to get content you paid for on and off of the device And probably a bunch of other things I don't know about. So to me, what is under-reviewed is the way in which consumers get to buy, trade, sell, borrow, lend, and use the content. That seems to me to matter much more. I spent this year buying a lot of $7 Agatha Christie e-books on various e-book stores and reading them on the respective apps on my phone (which is psychotic because each app has its own horrible quirks). I came away wondering if I would have been better off buying the $10 paperbacks, just so that I can physically distribute these books. (Aside: US copyright law is not helping here: "Murder on The Orient Express" will not leave copyright protection until 2046, 112 years after initial publication.) As others in this thread have mentioned, you don't have to buy books through Amazon. That lets you potentially sidestep the DRM issue depending on the availability of what you like to read. Two thoughts: First, from a user experience perspective, it basically sucks. I can buy an e-book on the Kindle Store/Nook Store/Kobo Store while sitting on a train, while trying to fall asleep, on the beach, etc. So convenience and immediacy has clear and tangible value. Second, from a business perspective, lots of people side-loading helps to create incentives for e-book retailers to create exclusive deals either with publishers or authors (clearly, there are other reasons for these deals as well). This happened last year (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/08/agent-amazon-partnership-ebooks-random-house.html http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/08/agent-ama...) although to a lesser degree than Mr. Wylie would have liked. AFAICT, if I want to read the ebook for "The Naked and the Dead" (Mailer) my sole choice is to get it through the Kindle store. Sorry for the explosion in length.