The Kindle Storeis the largest eBook retailer on the face of the planet.
So, what can be done about all of the problems the Kindle Store currently has?
Can Amazon turn this thing around and deliver the service we all deserve?
What makes it so highly regarded is the emphasis it places on quality.
The books it releases are written by the world’s greatest developers and technologists experts in their fields.
It’s for this reason that some people would aim to copy it.
Just a quick walk through the Kindle Store reveals many books “paying tribute” to this iconic styling.
Check this book from Steve Tale and WizeDuck calledSQL: The Ultimate Beginners Guide.
By looking at it, you’d assume that it was an official O’Reilly Publication.But it isn’t.
This isn’t an isolated incident.
And that’s bad for all concerned.
They would have noticed that it may infringe on O’Reilly’s intellectual property.
No Quality Controls
Lots of people dream of being published authors.
I’m one of them.
I havetried to do NaNoWriMo multiple years running(and failed, I should add).
But that all changed around 10 years agowith the print-on-demand revolution.
It all started with sites like Lulu.com, and later Createspace.com and Kindle Direct Publishing.
Suddenly, books could now be printed as orders arrived.
There’s an even darker side to the print-on-demand phenomenon.
Some individuals have created software which automates the process of creating an eBook.
It finds content on the Internet and scrapes it.
This is then bundled into a single document, and submitted to Amazon.
Some people are releasing dozens of books every day.
All of them are of a low quality, and many are filled with stolen work.
It’s an awful, disgusting industry.
The Kindle Store is literally being crushed under the weight of this spam.
The technology section is especially vulnerable to it.
Amazon is fighting a losing battle.
To many consumers, this seems hard to justify.
In the defense of Amazon, the company isn’t entirely to blame for this.
For whatever reason, they’ve chosen to make them as close to the paperback equivalent as possible.
Furthermore, depending on where you live, eBooks are subject to sales tax.
Not Bought…
So, what does this mean in practice?
Well, let’s start with the obvious.
you’re able to’t resell them online, or to a second-hand bookstore.
There’s no thriving secondary market for eBooks.
Given the relatively high cost of eBooks, it could be argued that this thoroughly undermines their value proposition.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
I own a Kindle Paperwhite, and I love it.
It’s the perfect travel companion.
But until this becomes a bigger issue for more people, that’s unlikely to happen.
Image Credit:Diego Saldivavia Flickr
