So, to summarize: what have I got against Amazon's Kindle?
1) DRM. (It's unethical, immoral, fattening, and a royal pain in the ass. To be fair: this also goes for other ebook platforms.)
2) Amazon reserves the right to delete work from your Kindle. (Under circumstances which are now a little clearer and a little tighter, but nevertheless still present.)
3) Censorship.
4) They're using their monopsony position to **** over their suppliers (i.e. the publishers) in a manner that threatens a catastrophic crash in author royalties in the medium term (up to 5 years). NB: as a reader, you may enjoy the short term price benefit, but you'll pay for it in the long term in reduction of choice.
5) Their actions may start a trans-Atlantic price war between publishers, to the detriment of authors (again, in the medium term).
We desperately need a sane price structure for commercial ebooks, a better answer to English language rights licensing, and solutions that make books easier and cheaper for readers to get hold of while enabling authors and editors to continue to earn a living.
But Kindle — as currently sold — ain't it.
