I’m trying to move away from buying Amazon e-books. I read quite a bit, 60-100 titles per year. Most of those in the past years have been e-books from Amazon (some 1000 titles in my Amazon collection). Ideally I want my spending at Amazon to end, because Amazon.
The question is, what are alternatives?
And how much friction will changing things introduce in both acquiring and reading books?
Like in any silo, inside it things are frictionless, and there is a hurdle to leaving. The hurdle here is to a large extend the sum of Amazon’s practices towards publishers plus how book publishing and selling are organised globally and the resulting lack of viable alternatives.
There is very little generic e-book publishing (meaning you’d own the title outright). Amazon ties it to Kindle, the two major book selling sites in the Netherlands each tie it to a different DRM-infested channel (Kobo/Rakuten and Adobe respectively). You’re licensing a copy, rather than owning it as they can withdraw access at any time. It also means if they go out of business or leave your local market you’re locked out of your purchases.
For most e-books you are tied to specific apps or devices with their specific stores. There is no meaningful separation between the medium file and the reading device, they are mostly a package deal.
Another Amazon lock-in effect results from price. I check all books with other vendors before buying. They practically never (as in maybe once in a year of reading) beat Amazon’s pricing. For paper books this holds too, as the Netherlands uses a fixed book sales price. This effect is specifically aimed for by Amazon.
Finally, Amazon often is the only source available to me for an e-book, especially when it comes to English language science fiction.
So the preferred conditions are:
- e-books over paper books
- no DRM for e-books
- directly from author or publisher
- wide ranges of books in multiple languages available
- not needing several reading devices
- from an independent bookstore (paper)
Over the years I have bought e-books directly from authors (like Cory Doctorow who wrote the posting about Amazon’s practices I linked to above), and independent publishers (like Verso in the UK, for which I currently have a subscription), both e-books and paper books. I prefer e-books, especially for fiction, as I read fiction every evening in bed. An e-book reader comes with its own light and is easy to hold while lying on my side.
Non-fiction I’m more ok with paper, although I enjoy immediate digital annotation in e-books too.
Not many authors provide direct sales through their site, let alone e-books, and the same is true for publishers.
I do frequent independent book stores regularly/mostly (both online and in physical stores), but that of course is for paper books.
For e-books there’s no DRM free route it seems, so it boils down to picking a different Dutch/European silo next to Amazon. This reduces part of my Amazon lock-in and spending, but leaves wide swathes of English publications unavailable to me if I would move silos entirely.
I can afford to escape Amazon’s price lock in, although it would probably double the cost or threefold of my reading for titles I buy, as I’ve regularly used the steep reductions Amazon uses to under 5USD. The local library is of no use for non-Dutch books, e- nor paper. I did get myself a university library subscription allowing easier access to paper academic books, and electronic journals, both categories outside of what I use Amazon for.
Next to moving sideways into a more local silo for e-books, an additional step I think is weaning myself from the instant gratification of buying an e-book. Coming across an inviting title, and immediately grabbing it on Amazon to add to the pile of books to be read is how it usually goes. Likely better to allow myself time to search the best route to get them. For non-fiction I have notes about books I think are interesting, but haven’t acquired yet. For fiction I until now merely do that for titles that have been announced but haven’t been published yet. Keeping a list may help reduce my Amazon spending.
In summary:
- Start reading within the Dutch Kobo/Rakuten silo.
- Keep a list of titles I’d like to acquire and explore at later moment the best way to doing that.
I’ve bought 7 titles this January through Amazon (16 last December). Let’s set myself a challenge of keeping that number from rising!