If readers didn't care about anything besides comfort then they'd just download the DRM free epubs from z-library for free, which is even less hassle then dealing with amazon kindle.
I still own a Kindle and buy books through it, but it's just false that this is the least hassle option.
Z library has a button to email/send the ebook to your kindle, so it's done after the first step. You can do that on your phone or kindle itself depending on the model.
I think you have entirely missed an entirely different comparison. The median hourly wage is about $15 an hour and virtually everyone already has a smartphone.
Option 1: Work 14 hours for money to buy kindle paper paperwhite and 10 9.99 ebooks. Proceed to click and buy as you desire.
Option 2: Work zero hours and click and download epubs and other formats on your phone which can accommodate multiple formats including the incredibly common on pirated sites epub format.
Also honestly it doesn't help much to list the steps out when both options take less than 90 seconds and you have already decided to invest 2-10 hours in reading the book. I will happily spend more than an hour reading descriptions and reviews of different books to decide what I would prefer to read next.
I think you have entirely missed the topic of this thread: the comfort of obtaining the book. The list of steps addresses exactly that, whereas reading the book has nothing to do with it.
Time and money are fungible resources what costs one costs the other. The 4 steps so described are only as described if one insists both on using a separate device which you happen to already own vs your perfectly capable smartphone and in ignoring possible optimizations. They are also oddly thought out wherein the entire process of shopping for a book to read which may take tens of minutes and involve reading reviews or snippets of a book and which will certainly be completely unusable on your kindle is considered 1 step but so is the act of actuating a single button.
It's also probably wrong to list converting to a kindle compatible format and copying to your kindle as 2 separate operations when one in fact can perform them both by clicking one button or indeed avoid conversion altogether by downloading the appropriate format.
For your consideration.
1. Spend time on your computer/smartphone/in person discovering interesting things to read.
2. Open up your store app/website/device, navigate to the desired book, buy, and download it.
vs
1. Spend time on your computer/smartphone/in person discovering interesting things to read.
2. Open up zlibrary/libgen navigate to the desired book and download it.
vs
1. Spend time on your computer/smartphone/in person discovering interesting things to read.
2. Open up zlibrary/libgen navigate to the desired book and download it.
3. Import into calibre and either automatically convert on import or have it automatically converted when you click send to device
vs
1. Spend time on your computer/smartphone/in person discovering interesting things to read.
2. Open up zlibrary/libgen navigate to the desired book and download it to a folder which is watched by calibre whereupon it will automatically import, convert, and email it to your kindle in the correct format.
This isn't twice as hard and it buys you a copy of your ebook on your computer and device which can be backed up with the rest of your files and which will never stop working because someone else says so. It's also trivial to share with anyone you like just as easily as you can add to your own device. You also get a great search experience on your computer and on your phone if you use calibre companion which incidentally you can use to wirelessly send to your non kindle device.
I’m guessing if you took a poll of 1000 random people and asked them if they know what z-library is you’d be lucky to find more than 1 person. I’d never heard of it until a year ago and nobody in my friends group had either.
Does “comfort” not include ease of use and discovery?
I’m on Kobo and I’m a nerd and I have “workflows” for content I already paid for but isn’t Pocket compatible (lookin at you, NYRB!) and I’ve never even heard of z-library.
There's also library genesis that is very good for the more technical content.
Especially because a lot of technical books are really hard too find in Europe in digital format. Very often I get the "not available in your region" message.
Often it's not. I remember cleaning up MP3 headers from all the stupid 'downloaded from TUNEZ4U.blah - <real title>', weeding out tracks that were clipping or with their volume way too low. Or bad quality or weird codecs etc.. It was a lot of work!
Something like Spotify really makes it worth it then. Totally better than downloading and the convenience is easily worth the price.
I buy most of my ebooks as well as I like the sync between the Kindle app and the real Kindle. And most of them are well priced anyway.
For video the convenience argument worked well too with Netflix for a while but now that the landscape had fragmented so much the whole "paid content is more convenient" thing is under a lot of pressure. It's not even the price that's an issue as you can subscribe to most services by the month to see one thing. It's the hassle of signing up, cancelling and downloading all their separate apps. So there the downloaded content is becoming more convenient again.
Couldn't agree more. For me certainly not worth the hassle to save $3 on a reduced book that will magically appear on my kindle after I clicked 1-click-buy, compared to pirating it.
I remember how upon Radiohead's release of 'In Rainbows' people would argue that the fact that people would still download an album from Kazaa that you can legally download for free from the artists website proves how rotten everyone is. No - it's just that the UX of doing it legally sucked so much more.
This. I have a Boox Note 2 that I love. I sync DRM free books to it via my NextCloud and I can draw/type notes in them and sync back to my computer. I've also got the Kindle and Adobe reader apps installed so I get instant when I want it too. (I'm an academic so a lot of my reading comes via library downloads DRM'd with Adobe). It can take hand written notes in a separate app, but I don't bother because my handwriting is as bad as the authors so I just type my notes up and sync them with NextCloud too.
My wife isn't a tech nerd, she has a Kindle, she wants a book, she presses a couple of times on the screen and she has the book. Sure she might pay more than I would, but the time/convenience factor clearly outweighs that.
You can configure an email address in you Amazon account <youralias>@kindle.com. Sending any DRM free .mobi or .pdf to that address makes it magically appear on your Kindle.
I think that is a great feature as most people know how to create an email with an attachment.
And as a side effect you can send friends ebooks directly to their devices if they shared their @kindle aliases with you.
The downside is that you're very limited in what file works. Mobi is ancient and lacks a lot of the improvements that Amazon made with AZW3 and KFX in regards to what it supports and how it's rendered. So no improved typography, no features like full screen images in digital manga or comics, etc. Sometimes you can do a hacky workaround and send an ePub as .png and it will give you an AZW3 but sometimes it just doesn't work. With my Boox reader I can just shove the file in my OneDrive and have it appear there.
I know that's not "drm free" or anything but I doubt 99% of ebook users actually care as long as their device can load it.