e-devices, e-content & e-vendor-tactics

I bought a kindle e-book reader six months back… I have read more books in the last six months than I have read in three years before that. I am happy about that & really admire my gadget. However this post is about the disadvantages. These are not technical limitations per-se. They are imposed limitations rather.

Here are a few for instance.

I recently read a book and wanted my friend to read it. Unfortunately I cant lend my e-book like I could lend a paperback from my wooden bookshelf. However Amazon has come up with a lending service which is welcome, though none of the books I’ve bought so far can be lent yet. And I think even if Amazon e-books would eventually become lendable, I don’t know if I’ll be able to lend them to non-kindle users. What if my wife bought a Nook?.

I can easily donate all my paper books to my village school library, I can sell them to a used-book re-seller, in fact, I can sell them on Amazon. However I cant do the same with my kindle e-books, even though I own them.

Here is another shocker, I was checking out the e-book  “Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance [Kindle Edition]” which is priced at $14.92 (as of today), It is an expensive e-book but, what surprised me is that, this e-book is more expensive than the Hardcover edition, which is priced at $14.35 on Amazon. I couldn’t see any justification for this whatsoever and I thought of buying the same e-book from someone else for a reasonable price. And I found the same book at B&N which was slightly cheaper at $12.99. But you know what? I cant buy it from there because, that e-book can only be opened on a Nook.

This is making me think hard about the money I am spending on e-books which, continuing at my current rate, will far exceed my investment in the device eventually. Because of all the books I have bought or might buy from them, I don’t want to be locked-in with Amazon for my life and be forced to buy books at the prices they set.  If I wish to switch to some other device in the future, I must be able to.

What we must see is, these are not inherent technical limitations of e-book formats or e-book readers but more to do with evil-vendor-tactics for locking in consumers and controlling markets. Which we as consumers should be conscious of.