[HN Gopher] Why "OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems" Is Not in Amazon'...
___________________________________________________________________
Why "OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems" Is Not in Amazon's Kindle Store
Author : zdw
Score : 277 points
Date : 2022-12-31 05:20 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mwl.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (mwl.io)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Are Kindles / Kindle store that much of a moat anymore? Because
| now everyone has a good smartphone and can read on that using
| whatever app. For a niche book I seek out I am happy to install a
| specific non kindle reader.
| awestroke wrote:
| You are completely disregarding E-ink screens
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The moat isn't the hardware; the moat is the user experience
| and relationship.
|
| If you want to set up your own ebook store it's actually fairly
| straightforward, at least technically. You just need a normal
| e-commerce website that sells access to PDF or EPUB files.
|
| The problem is that most people who buy ebooks do not want
| their collection split across multiple platforms. This is
| because each platform has their own DRM and app you have to
| read books in. If you get a new phone and need to redownload
| your collection, would you rather open up 200 websites to
| download each author's EPUBs or one app that keeps track of
| everything you bought?
|
| Yes, I know you can work around this with cloud storage. But
| that's extra steps; and extra steps add friction and keep
| people from buying.
|
| Furthermore, this all assumes you're willing to sell your book
| DRM-free. If you want DRM, or your publisher demands DRM, then
| you need to ship a mobile app instead of a website with
| downloads. And that poses a new problem: Apple and Google are
| not going to distribute your app unless you pay them the same
| royalties that you'd pay as an indie author on Apple Books or
| Google Play Books[0]. That's _their_ moat. So if you 're trying
| to create an indie publishing platform, you have to either
| charge two royalties and screw your authors, or make users jump
| through hoops to buy books on a website so it appears in an
| app.
|
| DRM is in fact so much of a trap for authors and publishers
| that some platforms just outright _refuse_ to distribute DRM-
| free books; Audible is the worst offender in this regard.
| Locked-down platforms also trap authors; in fact, the
| justification that Apple uses[1] for locking down the iPhone is
| that users can 't pirate apps if they aren't savvy enough to
| get developer creds. Oh, and your special locked reader app is
| never going to work on Kindle e-readers, because they don't
| support apps period.
|
| [0] I have no clue if Google even has a bookstore, I'm just
| assuming this is what it would be called.
|
| [1] To developers, not to the general public, of course
| knorker wrote:
| To me there are three reasons that reading on a phone is a
| nonstarter:
|
| 1. Screen is too small. And for everything except reading books
| "a large phone" is a bad. I've tried big phones. I don't like
| them. Other use cases either are best served with a phone-sized
| screen or a laptop.
|
| 2. E-ink. I could not imagine reading on non-e-ink. I'd rather
| buy the physical book, then, and that's a big ask. I'd _really_
| have to want to read this particular book.
|
| 3. No distractions. Notifications. "Just check my email real
| quick".
| [deleted]
| asicsp wrote:
| I have a more simpler reason for not using Amazon. They don't let
| you sell ebooks in PDF/EPUB formats. I don't mind Kindle for
| fictional books (I have KU subscription and even published a
| short story few years back), but for technical content I prefer
| PDF/EPUB.
|
| Gumroad/Leanpub give better rates too compared to Amazon. With
| services like Gumroad, it is also easy to build an email list and
| get in touch with your existing readers to promote new products,
| inform them of book updates, etc.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Kindle is switching away from MOBI and to EPUB. You already
| can't use "Send to Kindle" with MOBI according to the news
| articles I found.
| asicsp wrote:
| Good to know. So, if you get a DRM-free book on amazon, you
| can download it as epub?
|
| Also, I wonder if longer code snippets are still wrapped
| around or are they introducing horizontal scrollbars? (for
| those who read on Kindle devices, web/mobile app, etc)
| lxgr wrote:
| You can download it in Amazon's format, which (for DRM-free
| books) converts well to ePub in Calibe.
|
| I think at this point the difference between AZW and ePub
| is even mostly in the container format.
| lwkl wrote:
| Did Amazon change their DRM so it's harder to remove? I
| didn't have any issues with using calibre to remove the
| DRM from the e-books I bought on Amazon when I backed
| them up.
| Finnucane wrote:
| They take epub files from publishers, but I believe what you
| buy from them still gets a kindle wrapper.
| ilamont wrote:
| It's rare to get the 70% royalty, even if a Kindle book is priced
| under $9.99.
|
| TFA's linked Amazon resource page notes "UK Delivery Costs" are
| PS0.10/MB (it's $0.15/MB in the U.S.), so if a Kindle book has 5
| MB of images - not unreasonable for a nonfiction or technical
| book - that's $0.75 deducted from the royalty, regardless of
| whether book is priced $2.99 or $9.99.
|
| The idea that Amazon is still charging a "delivery cost" for data
| as if it's a 2007-era Kindle running on a built in 3G connection
| is ludicrous. Almost all Kindles use Wi-Fi now. There is no real
| cost to delivering the ebook data; Amazon never retired the
| "delivery fee" because it's pure profit on the backs of authors
| and publishers.
|
| Speaking of publishers: If an author is working through a
| publisher, the royalty cut will be eroded further. Is your
| publisher using a distributor for the physical copies, to get
| into bookstores? Distributors typically take a cut of ebook sales
| as well, _even though they add no value for ebook delivery or
| placement on Amazon_.
|
| Finally, when Apple was lauded for cutting the rate charged to
| indie developers for app store sales from 30% to 15% in 2020,
| indie publishers asked for a similar break from Apple for titles
| sold in Apple Books (formerly iBooks):
|
| _" While applauding Apple's decision to grant a bigger share of
| its revenue to independent software developers, the Independent
| Book Publishers Association (IBPA), representing more than 3,600
| independent publishing companies nationwide, calls on the company
| to extend the same benefits to authors, publishers, and other
| small businesses using Apple Books for Authors and other ebook
| publishing programs."_
|
| Apple did nothing. The company still takes 30% for any book sold
| on its platform.
|
| Source: https://www.ibpa-online.org/news/541675/IBPA-Calls-on-
| Apple-...
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > The idea that Amazon is still charging a "delivery cost" for
| data as if it's a 2007-era Kindle running on a built in 3G
| connection is ludicrous. Almost all Kindles use Wi-Fi now.
| There is no real cost to delivering the ebook data
|
| ???
|
| It's not charging the author for the cost incurred to the user,
| but for the cost incurred to Amazon. It doesn't matter if you
| have a 10 TBPS per second or are on your phone on edge, Amazon
| still has to serve the same amount of data to the customer.
|
| $0.15 per MB is huge, I'm not going to deny that, but it's
| pretty clear it is also a measure to prevent abuse by the
| authors.
| maximilianburke wrote:
| But shouldn't that be covered by the 30% haircut they're also
| taking? Do Apple or Steam charge developers additionally for
| bundle size?
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I'm saying that it is NOT because of the ongoing bandwidth
| cost, but rather as a deterrent to fraud.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| That's not what they were charging the fee for. They were
| charging the fee to cover each Kindle having an active SIM,
| which is a fixed cost regardless of the book price. They
| don't, for example, separately charge a store entry for the
| cost of delivering the high quality product images; random
| garbage like that is what their cut is for because it
| generally scales with the quality of the product.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| That doesn't make sense, why would the price be dependent
| on the size then?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Wow, that is absolutely fucked. The only way that those
| delivery costs can actually be _costs_ is if Amazon is
| delivering every book they sell via _satellite_. AWS egress
| fees aren 't even this fucked!
|
| Text with a handful of images in it is literally the cheapest
| thing you can distribute over the Internet. It's the reason why
| self-hosting a blog or Mastodon instance is even financially
| viable for most tech-savvy people, and why you have a Facebook,
| Twitter, LinkedIn, WeChat, WhatsApp, LINE, Reddit, and Telegram
| for every YouTube.
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| Now apply this to the plethora of medical information in the
| public domain, monopolized by a service that used to have to
| ship encyclopedic volumes of books to doctors' offices on a
| yearly basis, now easily downloaded over a weekend.
|
| Be careful though, too much thinking or acting on this
| subject might get you suicided by the FBI.
|
| R.I.P. Aaron Shwartz
| [deleted]
| beezle wrote:
| I have a very niche, non-technical book in both print and
| kindle formats. It is Kindle priced at $9.99 and I am paid
| $6.70 royalties per copy sold. This calendar year 37.4% of
| sales were Kindle. Lifetime, about 23% are Kindle.
|
| Print charges at Lightning Source have gone up considerably the
| past two years. In addition, they forced publishers to pay a
| minimum 30% wholesale discount this past year. Previously, I
| only paid 26% (most of which I am sure goes to Amazon or other
| online retailer). I try to keep the print cost to no more than
| 35% of the list, leaving me 35%. As bricks n mortar stores want
| a 50% discount at a minimum and also require acceptance of
| returns, I have never tried that route.
| mgaunard wrote:
| What kind of world do you live in where you can get lunch for two
| for 10 dollars.
|
| It's more like 40 dollars, and that's assuming it's a very cheap
| place.
| crazygringo wrote:
| In the US, lunch for two for $10 was totally doable from a food
| truck in the US until recent inflation. And a _lot_ of people
| get lunch from a food truck because it 's affordable, good,
| varied, and not fast food.
|
| If you're claiming it's $40 for two for a "very cheap" place
| then you're clearly talking about a sit-down spot with full
| service and beverages and a 20% tip. But most people are not
| having lunch on a regular basis somewhere with a server who
| takes their order and brings their food and drinks. Food trucks
| and cafeterias exist for good reason.
| Karsteski wrote:
| The US is the only place that exists, I guess
| ummonk wrote:
| It's the primary place in the world that conducts
| transactions in US dollars, yes.
| toby- wrote:
| The kind of life that, in 2012, most 'real people' genuinely
| lived. (A world quite divorced from the average HN user.)
| capableweb wrote:
| > What kind of world do you live in where you can get lunch for
| two for 10 dollars.
|
| Many places in the world would allow you to have lunch for two
| for ~10 USD.
|
| > It's more like 40 dollars, and that's assuming it's a very
| cheap place.
|
| You have to realize that's not representative of every place in
| the world or even every place within the US, right? Prices
| around the world are vastly different.
| tdeck wrote:
| I think food is really expensive in Seattle (where I live)
| but $40 USD for lunch seems very steep to me. Unless you're
| ordering room service or eating at a pretty upscale place
| lunch shouod be less than $25.
|
| Perhaps in Hong Kong dollars you'd spend $40 for lunch. I
| know some places use a dollar with much less purchasing
| power.
| tetraca wrote:
| $40 for two sounds like he's eating lunch at a sit down
| restaurant.
| ummonk wrote:
| Did you miss the part where he mentioned 2012 and said it costs
| $18 today?
| andix wrote:
| All over south-eastern Europe for example (maybe not Greece).
| Probably the Baltics too. Any many more places.
| anthk wrote:
| In Spain if your lunch is composed of sandwitches for a quick
| one, in some places of south Spain you can get a lunch for
| two for $12.
|
| Also, on some Chinese Woks I could get a box of rice with
| chicken and some vegetables+addons such as onion rings for
| 12-13 euros. The box is pretty big so it can be split nicely
| without feeling yourself half-empty afterwards.
| andix wrote:
| This probably doesn't qualify for "taking my wife out to
| lunch".
|
| A few years back in Lisbon I got a simple main dish for
| 3EUR in a restaurant. That was surprisingly cheap, I guess
| this is not possible in Spain, also not in the cheapest
| regions.
| decide1000 wrote:
| I try to buy books from physical book stores. Often it takes a
| few days before it gets delivered. Michael W Lucas has a great
| book about OpenBsd Jails, worth the read.
| andix wrote:
| Can you buy eBooks there? I don't like physical books, I never
| have them with me, the use up space, I can't find them, they
| are bad for the environment, ...
| lxgr wrote:
| This is actually something I'd really like to be able to do:
| Discover a book in a physical bookstore, then scan a QR code
| or similar, and the bookstore gets a fair share of the sales
| price.
| codetrotter wrote:
| I love the books that Michael W Lucas has written.
|
| I bought physical copies of several of them (the "FreeBSD
| Mastery: Jails" book, "FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems",
| "FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS" and "FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS") on
| FreeBSD Mall.
|
| I finished reading the "FreeBSD Mastery: Jails" book, and am
| currently reading the "FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems"
| book.
|
| I also recently bought the Total Mastery eBook bundle of his from
| his Tilted Windmill website. It includes eBook versions of the
| above books that I already have in physical copies, along with a
| bunch of other eBooks.
|
| In the future I might buy physical copies of more of his books.
| There is something special about physical books that makes them
| far more comfortable to read for me than to read eBooks even
| though I have a eBook reader with eInk. The ability to flip
| through a physical book, and to feel the physical dimensions of
| the book adds something for me that eBook readers cannot.
|
| I also want to investigate whether it is possible to donate books
| to some libraries. I think as a community we could buy IT books
| that we particularly like, and donate them to libraries, to make
| them available to more people. It would be especially nice to
| help books about FreeBSD and OpenBSD reach more people.
| ninjin wrote:
| Michael is indeed a gem and I am happy to hear that his writing
| is equally strong on the FreeBSD side of things. Absolute
| OpenBSD was my introduction to OpenBSD in the mid-00s and I
| just recently re-read the latest edition (a new one is rumoured
| to be in the works) now that I am looking to go back to
| OpenBSD. Yes, you can absolutely just go with the manuals and
| FAQ with the amount of Unix-like experience I have at this
| point, but Michael frequently notes clever tricks and confers
| the different mentality on things that exists in the OpenBSD
| community. This, in short, is priceless.
|
| I have worked through Httpd and Relayd Mastery as well and I am
| eyeing up SNMP Mastery, Ed Mastery (I expect Michael to make me
| laugh a good few times), and SSH Mastery after I am done with
| OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems and (not by Michael though) The
| book of PF. Keeping Michael fed seems like a great way to bring
| more BSD knowledge out there and hopefully keep an alternative
| to the now so very corporate (and _much_ larger) Linux sphere
| going.
| soneil wrote:
| I genuinely enjoyed SNMP Mastery, much to my surprise. The
| Networknomicon edition treats the subject with the perfect
| measure of contempt.
| Sakos wrote:
| Do you use FreeBSD regularly? Are these books useful reading
| for somebody who doesn't use FreeBSD?
| mrweasel wrote:
| The ZFS books are pretty useful for Linux users as well. The
| rest I haven't read.
| davidcuddeback wrote:
| > _Are these books useful reading for somebody who doesn 't
| use FreeBSD?_
|
| Yes. They'll prepare you to switch over to FreeBSD. ;P
|
| In all seriousness, the ZFS books would be helpful if you use
| ZFS on Linux. The FreeBSD-specific books probably not so
| much. Those are the only ones I've read.
| codetrotter wrote:
| I've been a longtime FreeBSD user. For a while I was even
| running FreeBSD on my main laptop and my main desktop. These
| days I run FreeBSD on servers and also on a Raspberry Pi.
|
| If you are familiar with other Unix-like operating systems
| such as Linux, and you would like to use FreeBSD, then I
| think the FreeBSD Mastery books that I mentioned which I have
| physical copies of are useful also.
|
| If you are not familiar with Unix-like systems at all then
| the FreeBSD Mastery books are probably not yet so useful for
| you.
|
| The FreeBSD Mastery books are the most useful to someone who
| is already using FreeBSD in my opinion.
| pseudostem wrote:
| I have the exact opposite opinion (about the OpenBSD book).
| I used basic ls, dd, tar, ps, cat, etc. Did not know (still
| do not) Unix systems beyond configuring a basic "how to"
| driven webservers, DNS servers, etc.
|
| Michael Lucas can delve into depths without making it sound
| too technical IMO. Sure, you can skip chapters too (ktrace
| in my case) and continue with the next one if it gets
| heavy.
|
| His books can be read by newbies and seasoned pros alike.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Wow I knew it was bad, but I had no idea it was this bad. On a
| side note one of worst things(but not the only bad thing) about
| the Kindle Scribe is the fact that you can't easily load ebooks
| from other vendors on it, making note taking a hassle.
|
| I wonder how much of the ebook sales happen through the kindle
| store in the west. China and other places clearly have their own
| stores that seem to sell larger volumes.
|
| It's somewhat interesting that you cannot really buy ebooks from
| amazon.co.jp outside the country either.
| causi wrote:
| You can't plug it into your computer and drag files onto it?
| innocenat wrote:
| You can drag-drop books in Kindle Format as Kindle doesn't
| support EPUB natively. But notetaking require conversion to
| KFX, which is not a trivial format to convert to without
| sending it via Amazon Server.
|
| (I actually don't know if side-loaded KFX actually support
| notetaking on the Scribe)
| mantas wrote:
| Kindle is switching to epub. For example send-to-kindle no
| longer takes mobi, only epub.
| lxgr wrote:
| As a source format for their delivery platform, yes.
|
| So far, I haven't seen any evidence that the readers or
| apps will be getting native ePub capabilities.
|
| Even then, ePubs sent to your own account still are
| treated as second-class books. Most importantly, they are
| not rendered in the "enhanced typesetting" engine, while
| Amazon-bought books (often likely from the same source
| ePub) do get that.
|
| It's really hard to interpret this as anything other than
| making it intentionally hard/annoying to import DRM-free
| purchases from third-party bookstores.
| innocenat wrote:
| Epub sent to your account does have enhanced typesetting
| on the Scribe.
| iamtedd wrote:
| Calibre can handle KFX conversion, though it requires a
| plugin and Kindle Previewer from Amazon
| (https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G202131170).
|
| At least then it doesn't require uploading to Amazon's
| servers.
| innocenat wrote:
| That is what I meant by non trivial.
| andix wrote:
| I have a first generation Kindle Paperwhite (it still works
| fine). I just connect it to the PC via USB and press on ,,send
| to device" in Calibre. It does some automatic conversions. It
| is even possible to download eBooks from the Kindle and convert
| them to epub. You need a plug-in for that, but that's not legal
| in every country, because it removes the DRM.
| easytiger wrote:
| Does the scribe not support the @kindle.com send document
| facility? Not that I trust Amazon to keep that around
| comboy wrote:
| Does anybody know why royalty is like this and not the other way
| around? Their handling and cost seems constant, why charge bigger
| percentage if the book is more expensive?
|
| Only thing that comes to mind is wanting to keep all ebook prices
| below $10, but that doesn't make much sense.
|
| Btw, if author is around here, "About Me" -> "Support An Author"
| link is dead.
| notatoad wrote:
| IIRC the royalty rates for books under $2.99 are also severely
| reduced. It seems like a pretty clear tactic to try to keep
| ebook prices in the $3-10 range.
|
| Not sure why you don't think that makes sense? If they've done
| the research and figured out that's how they sell the most
| books, it makes sense to push prices into that range
| soapdog wrote:
| They force books in the 3-10 price bracket to artificially keep
| the eBooks cheap. Authors in the KDP program will lose money if
| they charge between ~10 and ~20. It doesn't matter if as an
| author you have a book that should be priced above 10, you're
| pushed into charging a lower amount.
|
| This ends up benefiting low-effort books because the ROI on
| them ends up higher than more complex projects that would
| require charging more per unit.
|
| Selling books is a tricky business and Amazon is helping itself
| more than it is helping the ecosystem. If you can choose, go to
| a different vendor for books, preferably buy direct from the
| authors.
|
| My own personal choice is first attempting to buy direct and my
| second option is Kobo which has a better royalty breakdown and
| is curated by real humans, as in as an author you can reach
| real people to talk at Kobo and help you out.
| comboy wrote:
| I'll be honest, kindle + 1-click is just too handy to me. I
| like my kindle, I've seen some other readers and they don't
| seem to match it. The differences seem subtle, I don't know
| where the magic sauce is.
|
| I try to make up for it with occasional donations which also
| seem like a nice feedback loop. It's astounding how well
| researched and packed with information some books are
| compared to others which I would also rate as good books.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > Only thing that comes to mind is wanting to keep all ebook
| prices below $10, but that doesn't make much sense.
|
| For me (perhaps because I grew up with physical books) the
| perceived value of an e-book is much lower. The same way I
| would buy a daily newspaper on the way to work, but have never
| paid for a newspaper website. Or that I would routinely pay for
| a vinyl record album but have never paid for online music.
|
| Something about the nature of electronic media reduces its
| perceived value compared to physical. Physical media I can
| hold. I can feel its weight. It is something real. There is a
| sense that I "own" it and that it cannot be taken away
| arbitrarily, or suddenly become unusable due to a technical
| fault or technological obsolesence.
|
| I have an e-book reader but haven't bought any e-books over
| about $5.00. For anything asking $10 or more I still prefer
| physical copies.
| [deleted]
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > That's also why I've focused so hard on disintermediation
| through my Patronizers, sponsorships, and lately Kickstarter.
|
| This is the real answer. The artificial scarcity business model
| is done. Patronage and crowdfunding are the only real ways for a
| creator to make money without having to sell copies.
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| Artificial scarcity model is definitely not "done", given that
| the author is still selling copies. The benefits (exposure) on
| Amazon is not worth the cost for the author.
| amelius wrote:
| I guess Amazon is learning from the Apple App Store.
| thedailymail wrote:
| Amazon should introduce a progressive scale similar to the ones
| widely used in tax bracketing. The higher rates only kick in at
| price points that ensure the sale of a higher priced e-book will
| always result in more revenue for the author, even if the general
| trend is to take a bigger cut of higher priced items.
|
| (Not that I am a fan of Amazon's publishing model - it just seems
| they are tripping over an already solved problem.)
| messe wrote:
| They should just drop the bracketing entirely and give 70% to
| the authors in all cases, instead of the continued predatory
| gouging you're suggesting.
| sneak wrote:
| It is neither predatory nor gouging, with TFA serving as
| perfect evidence. No one is compelled to agree to these
| terms.
| messe wrote:
| When you own such a large portion of the ebook sales
| market, it very much could be considered predatory
| (bordering on monopolistic).
|
| Larger authors are not compelled to agree to these terms
| sure, but if you're a smaller publisher or author trying to
| get your work out there and noticed, it can be hard to gain
| ground without selling via Amazon.
| mavhc wrote:
| Isn't that a great reason to not publish on Amazon?,
| you'd only increase their market share.
|
| It's not as if Amazon is unaware, they'll fix their
| pricing system if enough people reject it.
| messe wrote:
| Well, yes, it's a great reason not to publish there, but
| only if you can afford not to do so. Amazon dominates the
| e-book market.
| mbork_pl wrote:
| As a "smaller author" who used Leanpub (not affiliated
| with them, just a satisfied customer - both reader and
| writer) to publish my Emacs Lisp book I can say that I
| don't care about putting it on Amazon, and I don't think
| I lost a lot (or anything) because of that.
|
| OTOH, I published this book after about 7 years of weekly
| blogging, mostly about Emacs, so I think that everyone
| who might be interested in my book could easily know
| about it. And an intermediate Elisp textbook is rather a
| niche thing.
| rojcyk wrote:
| your niche is exactly the reason why you can get away
| without using Amazon.
| nottorp wrote:
| HN loves monopolies except when it's fashionable to hate
| them :)
| Un1corn wrote:
| Maybe they intentionally want to keep books below 10 dollars?
|
| Maybe they figured that in the end they have a lot more cheap
| books than a few that might be more than double because of the
| non-progressive scale.
| Linosaurus wrote:
| For sure it's an intentional strategy to keep books cheap.
| And indirectly also to prevent any competitors from selling
| the same books at a higher price.
| molticrystal wrote:
| I don't know if it works for every book or even for this one, but
| perhaps where applicable trying to split the book into 2 or more
| parts, each priced moderately below the $9.99 limit.
|
| It would be interesting to find out if the lower price of part
| one increases sales enough to compensate for the lesser amount of
| sales of the latter parts, and if in the end the income is
| higher, lower, or about the same.
| mcherm wrote:
| What's clever about that, is that it also avoids Amazon's "best
| price here" policy since the two half-books would be Amazon
| exclusives.
| tete wrote:
| Until it catches on and Amazon changes their practices.
| medo-bear wrote:
| good for him. it never ceases to amaze me how much privacy and
| freedom people are willing to forgo for sake of convenience
| kmeisthax wrote:
| One thing to note is that if you're not on Amazon, your book will
| still be on Amazon. Cory Doctorow points out[0] that their
| copyright detection systems only detect reuploads of on-platform
| books, and people scamming Audible with duplicates of books are
| rampant. I suspect this is part of why there isn't a huge
| contingent of angry authors jumping ship, because they can't
| reliably deny Amazon their work anyway.
|
| You're _supposed_ to be able to just tell platforms "no, take
| this down". That comes from DMCA 512, that thing that indie
| creators absolutely hate because its far more useful as a
| censorship tool than for copyright enforcement[1]. If someone
| else reuploads your book to Amazon you have to actually find that
| reupload, buy it to validate that it is your work, take it down
| (and dox yourself in the process), and then repeat, forever.
|
| Outright infringement isn't the _only_ scam either - ghostwriting
| and reselling lightly-edited GPT-3 copy[2] is also rampant on the
| platform, and there 's even people selling courses on how to
| resell fake books[3]. This may eventually destroy Amazon's brand
| reputation, but it takes a long time to fall down the Trust
| Thermocline[4] when you're a giant like Amazon.
|
| The $10 royalty punishment makes absolutely no sense to me and I
| do not understand what the hell Amazon's motive is there. Except
| perhaps to bluff-charge indie writers into devaluing their work
| ahead of time. It reminds me of how Apple pushed for $0.99 songs
| for so long that the RIAA was willing to go DRM-free just to be
| able to charge more for popular singles. Except Amazon is also
| really, _really_ pro-DRM, and so is the rest of the traditional
| publishing industry, which is running the same grift Amazon is at
| a different stage of production.
|
| [0] https://doctorow.medium.com/why-none-of-my-books-are-
| availab...
|
| https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audibl...
|
| [1] If the particular indie creator in question is making fanart,
| then the latter feels like the former, even though the law sides
| against fan artists.
|
| [2] Which is just infringement with extra steps, assuming that
| GPT-3 was trained on your original work and is regurgitating it
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biYciU1uiUw
|
| [4] https://twitter.com/garius/status/1588115317862981632
| ummonk wrote:
| Can't the piracy issue be solved by listing your book on Amazon
| for an exorbitant price?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Most-favored nation clauses prohibit that. Amazon either
| sells your book for the best price or not at all.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| I should make a ebook. I'm currently getting 5% from my
| publisher.
| tete wrote:
| I think Amazon should be avoided, especially for books.
|
| I've heard about more than one author being told "Either
| exclusively (or by far the cheapest) on Amazon or no Amazon at
| all". That's a really shitty attitude and should be punished by
| customers.
|
| But then there is also a bazillion other reason to avoid Amazon
| like the plague.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon
| [deleted]
| thayne wrote:
| I know an author who had one of her books removed from Amazon
| (both print and digital) because a coauthor on the book was
| banned for violating terms of service. I don't know the whole
| story of the violation, but it had something to do with posting
| content froma different work on their own website and asking
| for feedback.
| yakubin wrote:
| That may be an option in the US, but in Europe Amazon is often
| the only option to get a technical paper book published in the
| US.
| nils-m-holm wrote:
| I am in Europe and publish my books with Lulu Press. Works
| smoothly and royalties are fair. Not affiliated, just a happy
| customer.
|
| Some of my books are also available as ebooks, but I
| specifically avoid Amazon, because I dislike their DRM and
| their "cheap book" policy. $10 for a textbook? Come on.
| openplatypus wrote:
| Go direct to Manning or PragProg. Go directly to Apress.
|
| Fallback on ebooks.com.
|
| I am in Europe. Not using Amazon.
| input_sh wrote:
| For years I thought I wasn't using Amazon, finding this
| website called The Book Depository that offers free
| shipping to where I'm from (while Amazon charges ~$60).
|
| One day I randomly looked up who owns it. Amazon subsidiary
| since 2011. Amazon is mentioned zero times on the homepage,
| zero times on the about page, zero times in Terms &
| Conditions, and once in a random help article.
|
| So I've discovered I didn't go years without Amazon as I
| thought I did.
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