*to Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Κυνόσαργες

Friday 11 March 2016

Kindle: 'read everywhere'?




Any question from a headline may be answered, 'No.' You cannot always, much less easily, read Kindle content once you've moved abroad.


Wherein Antisthenes buys a Kindle Paperwhite
Whereat Antisthenes comments on a year of its use
Wherein Antisthenes' Paperwhite breaks just after warranty
Wherein Antisthenes has his first frustrations with transferring Kindle content abroad


There are three basic problems:
- E-readers are cheaply built
- you do not own E-books from retailers, only gain rights to them
- every bloody country has different rules on the content, making it troublesome to transfer


The results are:
- it's better to read E-books on your phone, blackscreen, than buy a dubious device
- OTH, real books are much more satisfying and memorable
- better you choose one commercial E-book source in one country and stick to it than try much to transfer
- or, as there are precious few left standing, use Amazon in one country, and Google Books in another


This applies to paid-for e-books only, of course.


Details:
There's little point explaining how I transferred my e-books initially from Amazon Japan, as they have changed the rules since, in a way neither better nor worse but nonsensical.  Nor is there much point in complaining that the sensible thing for Amazon to do with its app is allow multiple sign-ins, so that no matter which country content is paid for, the user can access it indefinitely without having to strip DRM (a process both illegal and troublesome) attempt to transfer it, or sign-out/in each time they want to access books bought from the other Amazon location.  In the end, Kindle loses any further business.