My title might be a bit hyperbolic, but stuff like this worries me. I love to read and I love reading on a kindle. This has been going on for a while, but it has now reached absurd levels.
My title might be a bit hyperbolic, but stuff like this worries me. I love to read and I love reading on a kindle. This has been going on for a while, but it has now reached absurd levels.
I had to pull my kindle unlimited membership… it’s just a pile of crap.
So like the rest of Amazon then? Never used kindle, but Amazon for physical goods has been a dumpster fire for a while - completely overrun with dropshipped garbage, to the extent that it’s actually difficult now to find quality stuff in the sea of “brands” with random string of capital letter names, all using the same poorly photoshopped image…
Some large percentage of Amazon is just significantly marked up stuff you can get more direct via Temu or eBay. I never thought Amazon would reinvigorate Best Buy but if you want actual brand nane stuff, you have to go there. I also never thought it would be hard to discover actual brands online, but it is now.
The kindle eink reader is amazing and absolutely great. However I don’t use KU and rarely buy books on it. I mainly use my library and read the borrowed books on it. As a piece of hardware it’s one of the few Amazon builds well. I’m surprised too.
This. I own a basic Kindle because it only cost me $60, and while I could upgrade to a better e-reader from a less monopolistic company, it’d just be a bit of e-waste I don’t need to produce, and in the meantime Calibre + NoDRM / DeDRM means I can read books from anywhere on it.
In my experience, you have to find a good product first, then search for the exact brand and item, or follow a link from Project Farm or whichever tester you trust to get something good from Amazon.
I haven’t found that, but I’m not using the Kindle storefront to find new books, so maybe that’s why?
Or maybe it’s because KU and online web serials are the only popular spots for my favourite niche subgenre. Trad publishers don’t publish my favourite genres.
What are you looking for, out of curiosity?
Sorry, didn’t realize my new Lemmy app didn’t show reply notifications!
LitRPG and progression fantasy almost exclusively.
Yeah, this is more for people that actually use the recommendations. If you read Lit RPGs you’d also be completely exempt from this. If you read YA then you’re probably screwed but ehn.
I had kindle unlimited a decade ago and it was decent. Lots of good sci-fi and fantasy.
Then overnight the entire catalog became “shape shifting billionaire stepbrother bear” and other trash. It’s like browsing your spam folder.