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Comment by VincentEvans | Hacker News Reader

Let me tell you how to buy a kindle book for my kid’s Kindle that is connected via a child account in “Amazon Household” to my Amazon account. (This opening sentence already signals how the rest of this will go).

A child’s account can’t buy books - you have to do it for them.

1. I open Amazon app on my iphone and find the book - “This app does not support purchasing of this content”.

2. I open Kindle app on my iphone and find the book there - “This app does not support purchasing of this content”.

3. Turns out - you can only buy a book by opening a web version of Amazon in Safari on the iphone. I open up Safari, go to Amazon, dodge and dismiss repeated prompts to open the Amazon app, find the book - it says “Kindle”, it says “Available instantly”, it says “$2.99”, but there’s no “Buy” button. Instead - “The Kindle title is not currently available for purchase.”

4. I find another book, I buy it. Now I need to find how to share it with my kid.

5. I open app Kindle app on my iphone, click on the book expecting some kind of “share” - nope, nowhere I look am I able to find share functionality in the app.

6. I google “how to share your kindle book with child account”, here’s the answer I get: “ On the Amazon webpage, click “Account and Lists”, then click “Manage content and devices” in the “Digital content and devices section of the page”. On the “Digital Content” page, click “Books”.

Delightful experience.

View on HN

> Delightful experience.

compare this with the piracy option: search for torrent or download link, click, wait for download to finish. Upload to device. Read and enjoy.

cough mobilism.org/libgen.is/irc channels/z-library cough

I also appreciated recent HN threads on Anna's Archive.

Do the ends justify the means, matey?

Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons?

How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?

> deprived of sales

but the post above explain an arduous process for a purchase, and i would expect that there's not an insignificant number of people who would've given up in the middle.

So do you also feel that you need to make the same complaint of a lost sale to amazon? Why target pirates specifically? Whether they _consumed_ content or not, is irrelevant - in both scenarios, you would've "lost" a sale.

Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons?

Can you direct me to some of these? Perhaps some you recommend? That sounds interesting, but I don't know where to find such content.

There are tons of them available.

Here's the Creative Commons Search portal: https://search.creativecommons.org/

I tried Openverse and Europeana. Some of these appear to categorize eBooks as "images", or perhaps they are just promotional images for unfree books. Tens of thousands of results.

Here's a Google Books search. I was unable to find a "search for license" type thing, but you can search for "Fully viewable" or "Google eBooks only":

https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=-copyright&tbs...

My father loves HathiTrust, and so do many other people who love freedom: https://www.hathitrust.org/

Of course you know the Internet Archive and Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/

Wikisource hosts lots of freely-licensed text, in many, many languages; here's English: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page

Never forget the O.G. PD site, Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/

Also, while it is not the written word, it is based on awesome freely-available books, and perhaps you could consider adding to the library at LibriVox: https://librivox.org/search?primary_key=0&search_category=au...

My classmates at school ate this stuff up when I volunteered that there are sites where you can find awesome public domain reference material that's often better-quality than the paywalled stuff you pay for.

Don't forget the Open Textbooks and freely licensed academic materials. Community colleges and universities will direct you to those.

https://oercommons.org/hubs/open-textbooks https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks

Don't forget niche uses and special interests. Want to overcome your addiction to porn? Download some free eBooks: https://www.covenanteyes.com/e-books/

I’m not sure that most books are at all fungible. Also do many book authors actually publish under Creative Commons?

Have you considered not accepting intellectual property as a legitimate concept to begin with? It makes no sense to even speak of "freely licensed" anything once you do that.

Arduous is overstating it by a long way. Frustrating, bothersome, annoying, inconsiderate, stupid, yes. Arduous? I used to carry a walkman, several tapes, and spare batteries with me every day; I used to carry a book to read in one pocket and often another, smaller book in another, and even occasionally a newspaper under my arm. Buying a book or any media online is not arduous, even if it's as described.

What it does show is that innovative businesses will, over time, become like the dinosaurs they out-competed, and leave room for something new. Piracy will probably always be there, even when buying is not arduous.

It's arduous relative to today's standards and relative to piracy.

Carrying those books wasn't arduous, except when I travelled around Asia and decided my main bag should be books. Big books. Almost ruined my back.

Words have meaning. Arduous it ain't.

Tiresome doesn't necessarily mean physically tired. Words do have meaning, and you would know if you read those meaning to understand the idea being presented.

Arduous never means "something that is slightly inconvenient" unless one is prone to exaggeration and has the forbearance of a child.

> Tiresome doesn't necessarily mean physically tired.

Not necessarily, no, not at all. I suggest a dictionary. Back in the day, people who cared about reading and the meaning of words would keep one handy, often next to the bed.

> Arduous

> a : hard to accomplish or achieve : difficult

~ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arduous

Pretty sure this process qualifies as "hard" when compared to standard methods of purchasing digital goods.

Always fun when someone wants to argue about the definition of a word without actually using the definition of the word.

You’re “pretty sure”. Perhaps we should also call it an odyssey, or an epic? They would also fit the dictionary definitions, if we read the dictionary like we’d not bothered to learn proper English. I’m guessing, by your use of Mirriam Webster that you’re an American, so that’s a distinct possibility.

If you knew how to use a dictionary you wouldn’t have left out the helpful examples:

> 1a : hard to accomplish or achieve : DIFFICULT an arduous task years of arduous training

> b : marked by great labor or effort : STRENUOUS … a life of arduous toil. —A. C. Cole

> 2 : hard to climb : STEEP an arduous path arduously adverb arduousness noun

Life, years, climb. No, it does not count as arduous in the slightest. First world problems, is that in the dictionary, I wonder?

... You do realize that examples don't provide a constraint, right?

... right?

Anyway, you seem very confused with internet vernacular; everyone else was able to grasp the context. You appear to be the only individual experiencing difficulties. Just saying.

Yes, there’s no constraint, feel free to use language as you wish. That doesn’t make your argument any better as to what words actually mean, given examples, from a dictionary, when you claim to know how to use one and that I don’t.

Inane, specious, and mendacious are other entries in the dictionary that come to mind. I also have no trouble comprehending the argument before me, it’s simply misdescribed. Can you not comprehend that? Apparently not.

Hey man, I'm just gonna point out why the examples don't provide constraints. I'm surprised you didn't realize this, seeing as you're intimately familiar with the operation of a dictionary. Under the first definition:

> an arduous task

And let's take a look back to the post to which you originally replied!

> but the post above explain an arduous process

Wow, those look really similar, don't they? The quoted usage you find so objectionable is /nearly identical/ to the example you yourself copied. Galaxy brain.

Here's another definition you might want to study. It will really help reduce your confusion with internet interactions:

Hyperbole (noun) > extravagant exaggeration (such as "mile-high ice-cream cones")

I truly believe once you internalize this information you will grasp where you went wrong.

> you will grasp where you went wrong.

Beginning a back and forth over how to use a dictionary with someone who defines how to use a dictionary after the fact to help their point?

> Galaxy brain.

This is not Reddit or Twitter, please refrain from such petty, openly disrespectful and, shall we say arduous, slurs.

It is very telling to me that you first chose to ignore the definition I provided, and now you have chosen to ignore how your example was demonstrably self-destructive. You're grasping desperately for straws by focusing on everything not inconvenient for your initial point.

I'll take that as an admission you know you're wrong.

Here's some more advice for ya: Do your homework next time and come prepared. Or maybe, just maybe, don't try to play the pedantic card. It's clearly not your best game.

> but the post above explain an arduous process for a purchase, and i would expect that there's not an insignificant number of people who would've given up in the middle.

Honestly, I would have given up at the very first step. It clearly says that the content is available, but vendor is explicitly refusing to serve the content.

I am morally opposed to most IP laws and believe they are categorically illegitimate.

By your own authority, then. Are you a judge, or governor, or a bishop or something?

I'm arguing based on reasoning, not authority. Are you a satire account by any chance?

By what authority do you promote illegal activity?

I mean, I support civil disobedience, and jury nullification, and such things, but those are generally personal matters, that one does not promote or encourage in public.

Absolutely remarkable that folks in this thread appear to hate freedom so much that I can't even recommend freely-licensed Creative Commons content.

Why would you assume they are promoting "illegal activity".

Not every country has signed the Berne Convention, and of those that have signed a number are only bound by the minimum copyright and IP laws of their own country rather than the maximum protections that other countries might hold to.

Because people refrained from encouraging jury nullification, it is now completely irrelevant.

No one gets a trial with which a jury could even choose to nullify the charges.

When you act coy with this stuff, they sneak around subverting it to the point that it no longer works. Did you see what happened to OWS ten years back?

Not being any of those things gives extra authority, if anything, in my experience.

Yes, IP is a handicap for the top 1% of corporations that turns into a weakness when you go toe-to-toe with countries that won't play that game anyway. It's an emperor with no clothes situation if I ever saw one.

I think IP laws are one of the best things that ever happened to human civilization and are responsible for a significant proportion of progress over the last 200-300 years.

Even if at this point they are a bit too excessive in some cases.

> are responsible for a significant proportion of progress

it's arguable that they are responsible. They help incentivize sure (at least in theory), but would the counterfactual world, in which there's no IP laws, be just as progressive?

It was very hard to make a living as an author or a publisher before IP laws existed. Basically you already had to be independently wealthy, have a sponsor or a day-job if you wanted to write. Which one could argue impedes progress to a non insignificant degree.

And that’s only content creation patents and protection of trade secrets is another matter.

Copyright terms were a lot shorter in the past. 70 years after death is absolutely unreasonable. Also crap like DRM prevents works from going into public domain.

Yes, the system definitely needs some tweaking. I wouldn’t say this means that there is something inherently wrong about it just because of that.

> Do the ends justify the means, matey?

Commenter's point was that it's obviously easier to pirate. This is exactly the point; As an author, I'm upset that the system is like it is, I'm not upset at the many people who are undoubtedly going to pirate my work if it's difficult to get, whether it's right or wrong.

No Author finishes their work and declares, "Now, let me make this as difficult as possible to purchase." It's the PLATFORM.

>No Author finishes their work and declares, "Now, let me make this as difficult as possible to purchase." It's the PLATFORM.

IMO, the logical conclusion here is obvious: copyright should provide the author with the right to money, but not with the right to control actual distribution - we should be legally allowed to send the author $X in the mail and then torrent the thing.

This notion that the author should control the means of distribution? It's a historical artifact of old technology when publishing literally meant printing presses, and setting up a competing printing press without the author's authorization was an expensive choice that was inherently, obviously a means to rip off the author.

IMO, every ISBN should have the author's bank account number next to it and obtaining a copy of the ebook should be as simple as sending $X to that bank account, then finding a torrent by ISBN.

This is actually a great starting point IMO.

> every ISBN should have the author's bank account number next to it and obtaining a copy of the ebook should be as simple as sending $X to that bank account, then finding a torrent by ISBN.

which is fine, except what happens if the author sold the rights to another company that then demand a different set of condition?

Or are you saying that the owner of said copyright does not have the right to decide such (for example, they would want to decide that the works is only available as part of something else sold)?

The ISBN could be the bank account. Like a DOI. Or a BTC wallet address. Access/control over it could be transferable.

Or partial rights. Movie, TV series, audiobook, podcast, blog; all to different entities.

This is an interesting idea but one that will, if anything, increase piracy. Given a torrent link and a bank account number, how many people will think "let me try the book first for a bit, if I like it I'll pay" and then never come around to pay? Or even not care about paying at all, nobody will notice or be able to track, so you're basically safe from law enforcement.

The key here is the dishonesty in society. It annoys me every day.

I hear 30-year old overpaid software engineers brainstorming how to cheat the ticket checks at the ski resort. I watch people at all-you-can-eat buffets piling more food on than they can eat and bring something with them for consuming later at home or by their family. People discussing tax loopholes. Or how to get train rides for free if nobody checks the ticket. All well-off folks. Cheating their way through life. It's sickening.

It makes me wonder whether religion may actually be a (partial) solution to this. An atheist myself, I can see value in brainwashing people into believing that they are constantly being watched by an almighty being which will ensure they go to hell if they steal or similar, even if nobody else is watching.

It's really sad that people can't just be decent.

Because the system tries to screw them over at every step.

But then you are cutting out the publisher, who spent a significant amount of money and an overwhelming amount of hours doing things like, “pressing upload”, and, “collecting payment”.

I kid, they are payday loan services for authors.

Don't editors fit in there somewhere?

Copyright doesnt exist only to prevent people from getting your books for free. It's also there to prevent other authors from using your story for their own - for example, this is (part of) what prevents Universal Studios from putting out their own Spider Man movie.

Now, arguably this has even worse consequences on culture than the banning of copying ebooks. Still, it complicates the expected cost of a book significantly, so replacing current copyright with your proposal would require some alternative for this case as well.

this is (part of) what prevents Universal Studios from putting out their own Spider Man movie.

It's not though. It's the trademark that prevents that. Copyright only prevents them from making a Spiderman movie based on a story that's already been written. Nothing prevents them from writing a new story about a guy that shoots sticky goo from his wrists, and making a movie out of that.

I guess that story wouldn't be considered canon. But canon also has nothing to do with copyright.

> How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?

The vast majority of reputable studies on software/music/games piracy have found that piracy boosts sales, and significantly. This is why you seldom see these studies, because the powers that be don't want you to know that.

A few breakout songs in the early 00s wouldn't have even made the top 100 if it weren't for limewire (laffy taffy being a prime example) and there were a number of artists at the time who intentionally capitalized on this.

So yes in 20 years when I settle down and write a book about the rust community and my wild ride through the startup world, I'll probably upload the torrents myself because I know it will boost sales.

Just like Adobe was caught doing back in the early 2000s (though if you try to google it now the news articles are mysteriously scrubbed from the internet). That's right, there is a good chance at least one of the Photoshop CS4 torrents you downloaded as a wee lad was uploaded by a marketing team at Adobe. They were caught red-handed doing this and it wasn't just some rogue employee.

And if you think about it, it was absolutely brilliant. The script kiddies grow up using pirated photoshop, get into a work situation where they or their company can actually afford it, and presto now you have a customer with a lifetime of lock-in to your ecosystem and guilt for not paying for it all these years.

>The vast majority of reputable studies on software/music/games piracy have found that piracy boosts sales

Cool - what do the studies on books show? I mean it might boost sales, I can definitely see how it might, but just because things that are very different from books get their sales boosted does not mean that books do.

Which studies? The closest thing I can find is the inconclusive EC study that was misreported as "piracy boosts sales". I could see that being true in some cases, but for games and music?

My favourite way is to get a kindle book via Libby, keep it on airplane until I’m actually done, and then buy the physical book to keep. No harm no foul imo.

So I should be contempt with 1/1000th of all literature? Especially when authors often barely get anything out of their books’ sales, for example science textbooks/research articles.

Thanks, I’m more than fine with torrenting, especially when digital copying is not stealing, it has no material consequence. If someone downloads content illegally they wouldn’t have bought either way, the net sum of knowledge/pleasure increases in the world.

You are a lot of fun at parties I guess...

Perhaps authors could explore more consumer friendly ways of distributing their work? You paint a false dichotomy.

> How would you feel, if you were an author

I think I'd feel pretty great if I were a perpetual monopolist and rent seeker. As a child I never really developed the reality warping field necessary to believe I can own bits and numbers.

> How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?

I'd feel frustrated, to say the least! That's why I think people who pirate should make an effort to buy the book if it's fairly recently published. It's usually not expensive.

However, for older books I think pirating is fine. Usually the authors have passed away.

> How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?

I'd feel like I need to start publishing on a non-user-hostile platform and, having been a writer for most of my life AND having used Amazon for over a decade, wouldn't be upset at people pirating my work.

Perhaps if things continue this way, more and more authors will seek alternatives to Amazon Kindle and a new platform will emerge. Unlike video content, hosting for ebooks really wouldn't be that expensive. I think competition is viable in this area.

Or at least go to kobo or any other non-shitty company, buy and download book and then download to device

To be fair, my experience on kindle with a regular account has been:

1. search for book on kindle

2. press buy

3. wait for book to download directly onto kindle

4. read book

I'm not using kindle to find books mind you, generally I already know what I'm after. I get almost all of my recommendations from friends too, it pays to know people who read even more than you do and have similar taste.

Its great when the book is reasonably priced and not obscure. For more obscure books its never clear if the book will be formatted correctly, contain all the content, or even be a legitimate book. I often try the sample and find if lacking and so I find a torrent that is often much higher quality.

> Search for torrent or download link, click,

Hope that you didn't click a sketchy ad that looks just like the download link, because the site didn't police any of its ads.

I recommend looking into adblockers! uBlock Origin is the best one.

Most people don't run an adblocker on their phone, and these torrent sites would cease to exist or become malware sites themselves if enough users used adblock.

Let's not kid ourselves- these site runners are not Aaron Swartz.

So what? If you are looking for an epub file, but instead get an exe just don’t run it. Mobile OSs are quite good at security, but even desktop has largely grown up to the task now.

Nobody is getting their books from torrent sites. They get ePubs or PDFs from Anna's Archive or LibGen.

> Hope that you didn't click a sketchy ad that looks just like the download link, because the site didn't police any of its ads.

That only happens once. Maybe twice. Most people learn.

It's not reasonable to expect site operators police every ad if they use a major ad network, like Adsense. There are millions of creatives, and new ones get uploaded every minute.

As a wise man once said

> piracy is almost always a service issue and not a pricing issue

Service _is_ a pricing issue: pricing is about the valuation of a service.

If the price doesn't outweigh the benefits of the service, people will not use the service.

Just text the book title to Telegram bot of Z-Library. Under 5 seconds, you have the book.

Tap the share button to email the book to your Kindle email address.

If the Kindle has wifi on, the book automatically appears under another 10 seconds.

The whole process takes less than 30 seconds.

I buy Kindles specifically for this feature of being able to mail EPUBs to Kindle. When or if it is no longer possible, I stop buying Kindles.

I tried Telegram at first and found several channels all claiming to be official, but without obvious instructions for such a bot. Then I tried Googling, and there are countless shady links. It's unclear what the real thing is and what's a scam/spam.

https://www.reddit.com/r/zlibrary is full of warnings about scam websites.

My point is it's hardly easier, let alone safe, compared to Amazon.

Edit: Is it this? https://go-to-zlibrary.se/#telegram_bot_tab. Seems a bit risky, given the trail it creates vs anonymous downloads from some tor site.

Not that. You try the link that says Single Login.

I use ZLib since before it was popular. So there was near zero risks of scam sites.

There's no Single Login url on that page. But there's one I found here https://singlelogin.me/. Except it's seized by the FBI.

> Upload to device.

Compared to a WisperNet download, that's actually a bit of a faff. Don't get me wrong, I use a hacked Kobo, but getting the books on the thing requires a computer and either to use a micro-USB cable or faffing about with a fileshare and WebDAV.

Kindle: attach book to Kindle email address, send.

> Kindle: attach book to Kindle email address, send.

I like to image, that jeff bezos dies a little inside whenever I do this.

I imagine they add one more microdrone hunter-killer with my name in the EEPROM to the swarm.

Does the kindle have a web browser? If so you can just go directly to libgen and download books.

If you have a jailbroken Kindle, I highly recommend using https://github.com/gutenye/syncthing-kindle - no need to plug into your computer anymore.

Step 1: go to amazon on a real computer and find book Step 2: click buy Step 3: in the post purchase confirmation it says "Want to start reading right away?" and a dropdown of your devices with a deliver button.

It's a kids device they (and you) don't want your kid to be sent 50 shades of gray accidentally.

The other flow is buy book. Go to kindle, "sync and check for new items". But again, it's a kids book, don't want to pull your copy of "catcher in the rye" to their device accidentally.

edit: common question: what's a computer... it's a dying concept where you own the machine you bought instead of rent it, typically consisting of an open source os distribution, and the manufacturer doesn't take 30% of all transactions taking place on that hardware.

edit: I want to buy it on my phone: would you be ok paying 30% more than on a pc? Amazon doesn't think so. And giving 30% cut to apple / google would end up with amazon paying apple to sell the book. At that point why ?

> go to amazon on a real computer

What's a computer? /s

> /s

Thanks, I wouldn't have noticed

I am sorry for being so flippant and unreasonable expecting to buy a digital book using my smartphone in 2023.

Flippant? I thought you said iPhone not a Samsung folding phone. That's Android.

They didn't mention a Samsung phone. "Flippant" is a normal English word that means "dismissive or disrespectful".

You are very kind to explain this, and I now feel slightly guilty for making the joke (which is a bad pun).

You should be mad. But not at Amazon - at Apple - that wants to charge every 3rd party book store 30% to sell a book on an your smartphone, but not it's own book store.

Microsoft was fined billions of dollars and went through years of litigation over something much less egregious.

Apple's (And Google's) digital tax is what you should be mad at.

If your device of choice is one that you don't really control but that instead is just a pile of limitations on top of constraints, I'm quite amazed by your expectation.

> I am sorry for being so flippant and unreasonable expecting to buy a digital book using my smartphone in 2023.

I feel that you are being unreasonable: you willingly bought into a closed ecosystem, and now you're mad that other people are not part of that ecosystem.

What did you expect?

How many ecosystems are available, if you want your child to read books on a digital device?

The only activities I do on the phone are browsing internet, chatting, and taking/viewing pictures.

Anything that requires active involvement waits until I am in front of a PC.

Mobile UIs are just insufficient for most activities.

You drive Tesla to go grocery shopping? I strongly prefer a manual transmission diesel F350 because it can pull a loaded trailer full of construction materials over dirt road like nobody’s business.

Hard to haul my desktop onto the Tube just to read for 30 mins on my way to walk.

They did say "read the internet". Tho I'd bring a kindle and read a book on a 30 minute ride or listen to podcasts.

Instead, small authors who self-publish and give Amazon exclusivity, I'm entitled to 40% of the proceed of the book. For basically access to the marketplace.

If you go to some authors discord and make small donation (often half of Amazon's price), they'll send you drm-free ebooks. That's what you should do if you really want to support author and dislike markup from marketplace monopolies.

> It's a kids device they (and you) don't want your kid to be sent 50 shades of gray accidentally.

It's just a book. I'd hope most parents would rejoice if their kid read well enough to get through that, or Mein Kamp.

I certainly hope not.

Found the non-parent giving parenting advice.

Look I had to pick a title that would resonate with people on what they might not want their kids to read. I'm sorry I offended you that people might want to censor the materials a child might read but it's a very common use case, so much in fact that there have been class action lawsuits against companies like amazon/apple/google/sony/microsoft for not allowing parental controls (and not locking the kids out of buying smurfberries).

And yes, as a parent it's part of my job, and my right, to pick and choose what I think my kid is ready for.

> I'm sorry I offended you that people might want to censor the materials a child might read

No offense taken - I'm not sure why you think that.

I suppose people do want to limit what books children read - I still think that's generally misguided - but your points on people actually wanting parental controls are well made.

I still think parents would be better off celebrating reading comprehension than censoring books (Now discussing books with your child is a different matter).

At any rate I guess the prevalence of trash/spam on Amazon is higher than your average library - so there's that...

I agree that this is ridiculous, but blame Apple and Google for wanting their 30% cut of digital goods; I think Amazon is actually right to refuse to play ball on this. Regardless, though, once you know how to do it, you only have to do two of those steps, which seems... fine?

> I agree that this is ridiculous, but blame Apple and Google for wanting their 30% cut of digital goods;

That only explains steps 1-2.

> That only explains steps 1-2.

Okay, so Steps 1-2 can be explained by the closed ecosystem of the device. You don't get these hurdles if your device is not closed-off.

Step 3 can be explained by the retailer of that good complying with international IP laws.

Step 4 is just step 1 for everyone else.

Step 5 is a legitimate WTF moment.

Step 6 is once again the result of avoiding the open ecosystem (the web).

Of those 6 steps that the GP complained about:

1. 3 of them are self-inflicted because of his choice of device and usage,

2. 1 is due to legal issues,

3. 1 is not a valid complaint,

4. 1 is an actual and valid complaint about the lack of a feature in the app.

Amazon is not innocent here. They are incredibly predatory as a middleman

I buy a $10 book on Google Books, $3 goes to Google, $7 goes to the publisher. I buy the same on the Kindle Android app, $3 goes to Google, ?? goes to Amazon, < $7 goes to the publisher.

Since Amazon had been selling books on the Kindle app for a while, I assume they made more than 30% to be worth it, or pushed the cost to the publishers? Or probably worked out some deal with Google, which seems a bit unlikely.

For a long while everybody ignored the Google's cut from the purchases. Google only started enforcing it a couple of years ago.

Ah that makes sense. I think the workaround was that you could pay without entering payment information, but Google didn't go into every app to enforce this at the time.

Amazon's cut is 60%, 75% if you're not in an Amazon exclusivity deal (you also won't get boosted).

So basically Google 3$, Amazon 4$, publisher 3$.

If you go to Amazon marketplace directly, Amazon gets 6$, publisher gets 4$.

Amazon complaining about predatory marketplace is rich.

> but blame Apple and Google for wanting their 30% cut of digital goods

I imagine that Amazon did the math here and decided that the 30% is more than the lost sales due to the obnoxious process involved, but I struggle to see how that's true.

Apple prohibits Amazon from selling books on the iOS Kindle app, trying to force people to buy it via Apple Books instead.

Apple is not prohibiting anything. This is purely Amazon's decision. They make customer's life hell to save money.

Amazon don't want to pay Apple's ransom, Apple has no part in the transaction, has no costs, yet is acting as the Mafia, demanding their cut if you operate on their territory. Giving in to Apple's crimes would be immoral.

Crimes? It's market economy, man. Apple created great phones. Think Apple and its phones are bad? Don't offer your app on them. Oh but everyone uses these phones. So if you're amazon you now offer the app in a half-assed way to capture customers but avoid giving Apple money for further improvement of their phones... Cool beans! Way to take care of your customers.

That's the point, if a lot of people use the platform you can't ignore it, so you're forced to either offer a bad experience or pay the extortion fee, EU will have to fix it I guess

https://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/cases/AT.40437

This is completely wrong and sportsteamy. Apple set the scene by getting away with a light wrist slap for colluding with major publishers. That set the scene for the book ecosystem as you see it now. Twisting the situation to fit a brand loyalty is in poor taste.

This "delightful" experience is not just Amazon. Its what happens when large tech. companies play "who blinks first". Apple has a fair share of blame here, with their cut of 30%/15% from digital content they did not help to produce.

As someone who enjoys reading on my Kindle and as an early Audible customer, the crap in app browsing and purchasing experience was one of the reasons I put off having an iPhone.

After years of complaints, now at least in app Audible books browsing and purchasing works on iPhone, sigh ...

Now having an iPhone, I have simply traded one set of bad experiences for another, as currently the set of bad experiences on an iPhone, is less important than the on an Android.

I'm pretty sure you can't buy Kindle books with Amazon's iOS apps because Apple wants a cut.

And yet I can buy entire contents of the amazon using the Amazon shopping app. Or Walmart app. Or Target app. Or Best Buy app.

Opening amazon.com via Safari on an iphone is a throwback and a very odd experience - I haven’t needed to use a mobile version of amazon.com in ages - i use the app for all my Amazon shopping.

And one other thing - I can’t stand Musk, but given my experience with Amazon in a world where WeChat exists - perhaps Musk has a chance with his X super app plan after all.

The reason is that Apple specifically requires all digital only purchases to only use in-app payment and must give Apple 30%. You are not allowed to process digital purchases through an app with your own payment system. You also can’t tell people that or link them to the website.

This does not apply to physical goods. Which is why all the apps you mentioned are fine.

This is the same issue that has been talked about for years, the cause of Epic (Fortnite) vs Apple, etc.

Heh, ok. But re-read the above adventure in digital commerce that I have described. Can none of this be made easier if a company gave even a fractional amount of care? Like, for instance - allow searching and requesting a purchase from a child’s Kindle pending an approval action by a parent? That’s just one example I thought of instantaneously - because I used the damn thing. Can none of the, probably thousands, product- and user-experience experts adept in Amazon Principles and commanding six-digit compensations solve this so that I don’t need to post about it on HN?

I agree the Kindle part was silly, and could be much improved. I just wanted to specifically clarify why you started out on the wrong foot with iOS and why the iOS app couldn't even tell you about the option existing elsewhere.

However once you started on a browser, the rest of your story I would agree with.

> The reason is that Apple specifically requires all digital only purchases to only use in-app payment and must give Apple 30%. You are not allowed to process digital purchases through an app with your own payment system. You also can’t tell people that or link them to the website.

> This does not apply to physical goods.

I don't really get this division other than "it's what Apple could get away with". As far as the payment processing is concerned, it seems like a distinction without a difference.

According to Apple's logic, they are providing more service than just payment processing.

It would be a shame if your digital goods were accidentally destroyed by my associates, a fee, of perhaps 30%, would ensure this terrible tragedy would be avoided.

They provide no service, hopefully soon it will be illegal.

Illegal to do what? Charge people fees for what they do using your platform? On what possible basis can you make it illegal? It's Apple's app store for software that runs on Apple's phones. Nobody is forced to use an iPhone. They're expensive luxury products.

Use your dominance as a platform provider as leverage to extort extra fees for doing nothing.

https://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/cases/AT.40437

They don't extort anything and they aren't dominant. They're a minority player in the market. If anyone is dominant, it is Google. Despite Apple being more expensive, people still choose them. This isn't lock in, it is because they're the luxury, cool choice.

The Apple App Store led with an estimated revenue of $85.1 billion (roughly £70.5 billion) in 2021, responsible for 63% of total app revenue. In the same year, Google Play Store generated revenues of nearly $47.9 billion (roughly £39.7 billion) through Android apps

Right, because the Apple app store is used by people that own iPhones, which are expensive luxury goods for people with lots of disposable income. The Android app store is used by everyone else. The Apple app store is still a minority player in terms of market share.

I genuinely don't understand how you can simultaneously post these stats and claim that Apple's business model is bad for people that develop apps for Apple's devices. As a collective they make BILLIONS of dollars per year more.

Far more egregious is that Google charge a similar fee and do basically nothing to moderate the platform at all. If anything is rent-seeking, it is that. Apple does a huge amount to moderate and review apps when they go out. It was a hassle, as an app developer, to have to go through that process. But the result is an ecosystem where people trust apps enough that they'll spend significant amounts of money on them. Who would spend anything on an Android app when you have no idea if it's actually good or if it just has a completely astroturfed review score?

Apps, fine. Charge people, say, $99/year to be on their platform and get moderation. But digital goods? Not fine.

Google also reviews apps using humans, and allows 3rd party app stores.

Interestingly they say their 15-30% fee pays for Android development. You'd think Apple's $400 profit per phone would pay for iOS development.

Apparently Google Play Store Kindle app has the same restrictions

No, this isn't a negotiation or about what you think it ought to be, or what you think is fair. You don't get to dictate Apple's pricing to Apple any more than they get to dictate your pricing to you on your platform. It's their platform. You can take it, or you can leave it.

Right, and they do. But if I buy an eBook from Amazon, or I buy a physical book from Amazon, what is the difference in the services that Apple is providing, that explains why Apple wants their cut of the eBook but don't want their cut of the physical book?

I have always thought the division is to basically protect Apple's cut of the revenue for "App Sales". Not, strictly speaking, because they want to take 30% of every possible purchase or service -- though I am sure they would be happy with that and do desire that to some extent. However more and more every year sales of an "app" become smaller and smaller and everything is a subscription - so it seems this thought is rapidly if not already outdated.

The world we now live in is that all "apps and programs" can be either a one-off purchase like a physical good or a subscription. That subscription might be for the "app" or it may be packaged as a subscription to a "service" that the app is facilitating (the line between the two is very blurry). Additionally, all digital goods like books, music and movies may also be a one-off purchase or a "subscription" like audible, apple music, etc.

The line between all of those is blurry such that, any set of rules you write leaves it open to convert "app sales" to "services/subscriptions" or even to bundle access to your app or it's content as "digital goods" to avoid that 30% cut. People would (and do) switch their sales model to then avoid that cut.

I don't have a solution and I don't think Apple or the open webs way is specifically better in every aspect, but I do think it's interesting to think about the problem space.

Presumably that's because if you're buying groceries or whatever it doesn't compete with Apple. You can actual buy physical books in the app, it's just ebooks that it freaks out about.

I'm curious if giving books for free (eg Libby) is allowed, or if they've gotten a special exemption

The Hoopla app works well.

> And yet I can buy entire contents of the amazon using the Amazon shopping app. Or Walmart app. Or Target app. Or Best Buy app.

...

> i use the app for all my Amazon shopping.

Because Apple allows it. It's their prerogative, after all, not Amazon's.

I mean, really, if your employer told you that the only way they can pay you is if you used their in-house payment system that took 75% of your pre-tax earnings as a commission, you'd go elsewhere too.

I call this "technoshit", which is the general downhill trend of UX as technology and software becomes more complicated. I suppose there's Doctorow's "enshittification", however that lends more to intentional anti-patterns whereas I try to describe the feeling of "why couldn't they just try harder to make this not shit".

Stuff like your experience with Amazon, mine even just last night having to: find where I can buy something I want to stream (already a nightmare), buying it on the "new" Google TV app only to cast to the TV before playing it and getting "this content cannot be played on your TV", before starting it playing on my phone first and _then_ casting, after which it worked.

Indeed, in my original post I tried hard to stick to relaying the facts without too much editorializing, to let people make up their own minds as to the level of frustration what I describe evokes in them. But if I were to get to the point - I would express it in the words similar to yours - “what the actual fork?”

Here’s another mini-anecdote. On my iphone I have Amazon Prime app where it allows me to download episodes of Peppa Pig for my daughter to watch when we don’t have internet. Recently I wanted to cast these episodes on an AppleTV hooked up to a big TV in a hotel. It wouldn’t let me - because you are not allowed to use Screen Mirroring to show protected content, and AppleTV was connected to WiFi, but not internet - so it couldn’t verify licenses.

So bottom line - here I have content that I paid for, stored inside a protected from ground-up encrypted mainstream device, but I can’t play it on large TV in the same room, because there’s a bunch of likely complicated technology sitting there worrying about “what if i somehow got around it being licensed!”.

But even I did in fact circumvent their copy protection - has anyone stopped to think whether its worth getting in the way of millions of their customers lives streaming their legally purchased content just to stop this one guy who managed to jailbreak their iphone? Have they completely lost touch with reality?

All of this feels insane to me, especially being rather familiar with constant pompous rhethoric coming from Amazon and Apple about their customer-focused philosophies.

You download the epub off of Library Z or Libgen, and you airdrop it to their device.

What you were doing isn't "buying" anything, Amazon has on more than one occasion deleted books off of devices after they had been purchased.

On the subject of children's book, a few weeks ago I checked to see if there were retail versions of the old Choose Your Own Adventure books (there were, for Kindle!). Turns out, none of the "turn to page X" instructions are links, but also none of the pages have the original page numbers. $8/each, and you can't get a refund. The Amazon pages are full of 1-star reviews of people bitching about it.

Most of this is because the makers of the phone you chose to buy have decided that if you use the Kindle or Amazon app to buy books, they should get 30% of the price of the book.

We bought an iPad instead of a Kindle Fire because of crap like this.

The iPad is still an atrocious experience. I cannot tell if I'm simply aging out of being able to figure out new technology, or if none of the product managers at Apple have young children. But it's marginally better than the Kindle, and it runs Roblox.

I understand your frustration, but what does this have to do with the article?

Only to point out that Amazon’s dominant market position allows it to pay very little attention to the issues plaguing participants on both sides of its marketplace with, as it appears, little effect on its bottom line, and I wouldn’t expect them to be resolved in any haste.

That's unfortunate, but has nothing to do with the post.

> “This app does not support purchasing of this content”.

Apple really want that 30% cut.

If a product is crap, don't buy it.

Perhaps a real book on real paper is an alternative?

Or a open phone...

Just teach your kid libgen and be done with it.

But libgen doesn't have "Good night, Gorilla". :-)

Personally, I stick with paper books for kids, even books (and not picture books.)

EDIT: Added a missing closing parentheses. I'm a bad LISPer...

> But libgen doesn't have "Good night, Gorilla".

https://annas-archive.org/search?q=good+night+gorilla

Nice find! :-)

We use the Libby app. Just need a local library card and kids can freely reserve and borrow ebooks to read on phones and tablets. Helps with voracious readers who finish reading short novels in the car home from the shops if you buy them a physical book.

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