Just read an article about someone having their Kindle
wiped and their account canceled randomly by Amazon and not being able to talk
to Amazon about the issue because they don’t discuss these things besides a
vague statement of why they did what they did. The crazy thing is this goes on
all the time and is just one example of what you have to accept in being an
ereader user with one of the bigger companies.
These types of situations are holding back digital publishing
as a whole. And this is one of the reasons I only read ebooks on my computer or
on Mar’s nook. I’m not buying one until the ereader manufactures back off this stance
were we don’t really own the things we buy and they can delete at well. I know
there are lesser known ereaders that are better in this regard but again, you
are buying a lesser known piece of technology and that can always be a risky
choice to make.
But why do we accept this sort of thing? Part of it is
because we care more about the status of owning a name brand device more than
the quality and user friendliness of said device. That type of thing is good
enough for people who are ready to toss around good money for bad tech, but for
the rest of us it just puts you in a bad position, leaves you buying something
you know is flawed and purposely so or you can choose something that maybe
total crap with not much course for troubleshooting when issues come up.
These examples as well as with a lot of others are what comes
into the conversation whenever I talk to people about buying and reading more
ebooks. As a publisher of ebook projects it’s really frustrating to see this
stuff day in and day out. In a lot of ways this type of thing frustrates me
more than piracy. The main things that get up my ass about piracy are that most
people just won’t admit that it’s stealing.
What companies like Amazon are doing I think hurts the
epublishing industry just as much a what pirates do because it shines negative
lights on the platform overall. It pushes away people who might be thinking
about making ereaders part of their reading experiences.
Whenever I release a new project people always ask me
what format, what devices can they read the materials on; which is the main
reason, besides ease of publishing, that I moved from LuLu to Smashwords.
Smashwords allows me and my readers so many more ways to find and read my work.
They can read it on a computer or an ereader. I also enjoy the fact that when
someone downloads something from Smashwords to their device they don’t have to
worry about it being deleted later for some reason.
It might be really
stupid, Hell it is really stupid but I don’t give a shit if my work is ever
sold in any Nook or Kindle or Apple store until they start treating their customers
with a little respect. As a publisher and a writer that disrespect of the
reader is also a disrespect of me and doing so is saying fuck you to the reader
and my message back is fuck you Amazon.
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