Why the Kindle Sucks (and What Can Be Done About It)

Over the holiday season, Amazon’s Kindle became the most gifted item in Amazon’s history. On Christmas day, Amazon sold more Kindle copies of books than actual physical books.  Without a doubt, E-readers are the future of the book industry, and the Kindle is leading the way. Or is it?

Unfortunately, it isn’t.  The Kindle sucks.

The Kindle, which was one of the first mainstream E Ink readers and easily the most popular E-book reader out there, allows you to download digital copies of books, newspapers, and other publications for reading on an E-ink display. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, archaic DRM restrictions and totalitarian actions by Amazon have prevented the Kindle from becoming a worthy purchase.

What Exactly Is Wrong With the Kindle?

Since it’s impossible to have an article about the Kindle without talking about the 1984 debacle, we’ll get that out of the way. In July of 2009, Amazon remotely removed titles (including 1984, ironically) from consumer’s Kindles without their permission. Customers were refunded the purchase price, but no immediate explanation was given. It was later revealed that the publisher of the novels didn’t own the rights to publish, but does their mistake grant Amazon the right to digitally intrude into consumer’s devices to correct their mistake? If a bookstore sold paperbacks that were later found to be illegally sold, would they have the right to come into your home and take it back? Of course not, that’s ludicrous. However, Amazon had no problem doing the digital version of just that.

If you ever decide to move to a different company’s E-reader you’re out of luck, none of the books you bought through Amazon will work.Amazon sells E-books in their own proprietary DRM protected format, AZW. Much like the DRM protected music of days past it lets Amazon restrict how you use your purchased material. If you ever decide to move to a different company’s E-reader you’re out of luck. None of the books you bought through Amazon will work. If one day Amazon decides they don’t want you to own a book anymore, as in the 1984 incident, they can go ahead and take it from you. Similarly, the Kindle supports very few formats other than AZW. Of course you can convert from these formats to AZW using external tools, but then you run the risk of losing formatting.

In many ways, Amazon’s business model is similar to that of the digital distribution service Steam. Steam allows you to purchase video games and immediately download and play them. Purchases are tied to your Steam account, which means you can play them on any computer as long as you are logged in to Steam. Many people are fully rejecting Steam’s business model, arguing that Valve can pull the plug on Steam at any time, rendering all of your purchased games unplayable.  In my research I found claims that Valve has said they would release a patch allowing people to play their games offline, but I could find no official statement.

The same could happen for the Kindle, albeit slightly differently. If Amazon ever decides to change the format of their DRM protected books, or for some reason the Kindle stops being produced, your purchased titles are only good for as long as your Kindle lasts. I own books purchased 15+ years ago, but how many people who own Kindles today will still own one 15 years from now? Thanks to the DRM protected books Amazon sells, if anyone decides they want an E-reader other than the Kindle all of their purchased material will become unusable.

One of the advantages of E-books is that they can be sold at a cheaper price than their paperback or hardcover counterparts since there’s no overhead of printing costs. This works great when the E-book you’re buying is in an open format that you’ll be able to keep and use forever, but for something in Amazon’s AZW format it just doesn’t make sense. How long will Amazon support files in the AZW format? What happens to the E-books sold in this format if Amazon decides to move to a different format? As we’ve seen with DRM protected music, this can cause problems such as people not being able to access the content they’ve purchased. About a year ago iTunes finally stopped selling DRM protected music, how long will it take before E-book sellers see the light as well?

There’s Still Hope

Sony Reader

Thankfully, not every company shares Amazon’s archaic views. Sony’s Reader Store recently changed so all of the content sold by them is in the wonderfully open, DRM free EPUB format. Also, four leading magazine publishers are now trying to come up with a DRM free standard to distribute digital magazines.
(UPDATE 1-25-09 – It has come to my attention that the Sony Reader Store does not, in fact, sell their books DRM free. They use the EPUB format, but unfortunately are still protected by a DRM solution provided by Adobe. Looks like we’ll still have to wait for DRM free books.)

At least one author has even found success by selling his book DRM free. David Pogue offered one of his books for sale DRM free for a year and compared the sales of it to the previous year’s DRM protected book’s sales. While piracy of his book did increase, sales also rose over the previous year’s numbers. As was found in the music and PC gaming industries, you can make money even without DRM.

The Future

What does the future hold? What can we as consumers do? Amazon has dominated the E-book market up until now, but 2010 looks to be the year of the E-reader. Everyone is trying to get into the market, and we can only hope that pressure from competitors forces Amazon to rethink their current stance on distribution. Until then, the only thing we can do is purchase E-readers from companies who support open formats, and if you already own a Kindle, protect your investment by converting your legally purchased books into a DRM-free PDF file.

Author’s Note: If you find any factual errors in this article, please let me know in the comments. I did my best to research everything thoroughly, but the possibility for errors still exists.


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13 responses to “Why the Kindle Sucks (and What Can Be Done About It)”

  1. […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Techerator and Evan Wondrasek, Kevin Schulte. Kevin Schulte said: RT @techerator: Why the Kindle Sucks (and What Can Be Done About It) http://goo.gl/fb/sE9u […]

  2. […] thing.  If you’re a little more serious, you should check out what Kevin has to say about why the Kindle sucks (regarding the copy protection Amazon uses on their books) and his review of the Aldiko E-Book […]

  3. Angie Avatar
    Angie

    This is a great article on why I am not buying the Kindle. Thank you very much. I had heard about the pdf problems but i had no idea they would invade your privacy like that. The problem is on them not on us. No one should have to suffer that kind of digital theft.

  4. Bill Avatar
    Bill

    When I bought my new Droid, I purchased one book from Amazon for the Kindle app. That was a $9.99 lesson in why not to use a Kindle in any capacity. I now use the Nook app for purchasing and reading books from Barnes & Noble.

  5.  Avatar
    Anonymous

    i buy cheap books having understood that i might not have them in 5 years. enjoy overpaying for your books!

  6. Dd Avatar
    Dd

    all e-books suck

  7. anti-singularitarian Avatar
    anti-singularitarian

    I think maybe the idea of electronic books is to better control what we read. But nevermind that. How about this? In ten years, when there are no printed books, if you drop your Kindle (or whatever electronic reader you own), run it through the laundry, or have it stolen, you will simply quit reading. Entirely. Until you can buy another device. So basically people are going to stop reading.

  8. Urdumb Avatar
    Urdumb

    i own a kindle and i could not be happier with it. I have purchased exactle 3 books on it…. yet my book library contains 56 books…. fascinating right? its simple to torrent a book in whatever format and then convert it to a PRC format so kindle can read it. It takes about 8 seconds to convert the book…. the Barnes and Noble “nook” cant do that and its more complicated to do this with other e readers…

  9. […] last comment – about why Kindles suck – got me worked up as inane shit like this usually does. Let me state this right out: I hate […]

  10. […] Personally, I am not a fan of publishers locking down eBooks with intrusive and unnecessary DRM. It devalues their product and does little to prevent piracy anyway. It’s unfortunate that almost all major publishers and digital book distributors continue to sell their books with such a handicap. One giant name in the book industry, however, is looking to shake things up. […]

  11. Allyn Avatar
    Allyn

    Take a look at Calibre and the various tools for removing the DRM from AZW.
    AZW is essentially Mobi, so converting them to the DRM free format causes no formatting issues.

  12. jimmy johanes Avatar

    i would rather use ipad than use this stupid reader

  13. Never Applicable Avatar
    Never Applicable

    I got a Kindle for Christmas – and it crapped out about a week ago.  I called to get a replacement and was told that the purchase was actually on Dec 4, 2010 – therefore it was registered when it was purchased and just because I didn’t get it until Dec 25 – too bad.  No warranty coverage.   They offered to sell me another one for the 69 plus shipping which works out to be more than I would pay for another one – because I have Prime and free shipping.  Geez.  What a rip off.

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