I love ebooks, but I hate the kindle way that ties me to Amazon and makes it hard for me to share my books. Effectively, I no longer own books, I only borrow them from Amazon.
Every now and then I get weak anyway and buy a kindle book. But often Amazon tells me I first need to switch my account from Amazon.com to Amazon.de. That is the reminder of what is wrong with it. Why does it matter where I buy my ebook? I want to buy my ebook wherever and whenever I want, and just have a device that can handle all my books. I know it is possible to get other books onto the kindle, but it is very cumbersome (I don't own a kindle, so the email transfer does not work). And they won't sync between devices, either, afaik.
I find this very depressing, because it seems unlikely to change in the near future. Everybody wants to own their customer, nobody is going to deliver a reader that is simply a good reader. Not the least because it would also require titanic negotiations with book publishers to make their content available somehow.
I believe there should be a law, or at least some economic disincentive to motivate Amazon (and other ebook providers) to export/import collections from their proprietary readers onto competitors. Ereaders should not be tied to a given collection -- it is an insane state -- imagine buying a CD or DVD that could only be played in players belonging to a single company or an appliance that would only run on selected utility systems. Why is this considered a natural and beneficial state for books?
Every now and then I get weak anyway and buy a kindle book. But often Amazon tells me I first need to switch my account from Amazon.com to Amazon.de. That is the reminder of what is wrong with it. Why does it matter where I buy my ebook? I want to buy my ebook wherever and whenever I want, and just have a device that can handle all my books. I know it is possible to get other books onto the kindle, but it is very cumbersome (I don't own a kindle, so the email transfer does not work). And they won't sync between devices, either, afaik.
I find this very depressing, because it seems unlikely to change in the near future. Everybody wants to own their customer, nobody is going to deliver a reader that is simply a good reader. Not the least because it would also require titanic negotiations with book publishers to make their content available somehow.