I never bought an ebook from Amazon, but I bought at least a dozen Audible audiobooks. Putting aside DRM, not-really-your-audiobook stuff the experience was very good. And I am living in a second world country (Poland). The entire process is just finding an audiobook, clicking pay (with my debit card) and a few minutes later I have the book downloaded to the app and I can start listening.
The only issue that I had with Audible is when I wanted to buy an audiobook in German (for language learning purposes). I bought the book via amazon.de and whoa the book does not show up in my audible because I was logged there using amazon.pl account. After logging to amazon.de account in Audible the book showed up. Now I remember to buy foreign audiobooks always using the same amazon site.
The process is as frictionless as downloading warez from a side like library genesis.
Most local providers in my country have more or less sh_tty systems, where you pay and a few hours later you get an email (sic!) with an audiobook as an attachment (usually you get both epub and mobi). They use a few watermarks techniques to identify your copy - so I am actually scared to share my ebooks with anyone. This year I simply had enough, since I moved to a bigger place I had more place for paper books so I switched to them again. I underestimated how quickly the volume needed by books will grow but I found it refreshing to ditch kindle for a year and be back to paper. Now about 70% of my original book storage is taken, maybe it's time to share my books with my friends?
Now my biggest problem when buying books online: often not even table of contents is available. I can use sites like goodreads to predict if I would like the book, but c'mon table of contents should be considered a must have for online book shops. I also noticed that Amazon book preview is deteriorating, now there is a lot of books when you can't even see a single page, only the cover. This is sad, maybe it's a sign that there is space for Amazon competitor?
The only issue that I had with Audible is when I wanted to buy an audiobook in German (for language learning purposes). I bought the book via amazon.de and whoa the book does not show up in my audible because I was logged there using amazon.pl account. After logging to amazon.de account in Audible the book showed up. Now I remember to buy foreign audiobooks always using the same amazon site.
The process is as frictionless as downloading warez from a side like library genesis.
Most local providers in my country have more or less sh_tty systems, where you pay and a few hours later you get an email (sic!) with an audiobook as an attachment (usually you get both epub and mobi). They use a few watermarks techniques to identify your copy - so I am actually scared to share my ebooks with anyone. This year I simply had enough, since I moved to a bigger place I had more place for paper books so I switched to them again. I underestimated how quickly the volume needed by books will grow but I found it refreshing to ditch kindle for a year and be back to paper. Now about 70% of my original book storage is taken, maybe it's time to share my books with my friends?
Now my biggest problem when buying books online: often not even table of contents is available. I can use sites like goodreads to predict if I would like the book, but c'mon table of contents should be considered a must have for online book shops. I also noticed that Amazon book preview is deteriorating, now there is a lot of books when you can't even see a single page, only the cover. This is sad, maybe it's a sign that there is space for Amazon competitor?