Amazon eBooks suck.

But so do mostly everybody else’s.

Being a digital reading person is not easy. Each day I read about some congress or panel or think tank discussing about digital reading and how that is redefining publishing, new models of business, and so on. Not only the unholy trinity of Amazon, Apple and Google, but Oyster, Scribd, Wattpad and a miriad others.

Lots of talk about the industry. Not a word about the readers.

You know, the guys paying the party of the famous big five (now four), and their techie sidekicks. You and me, pal. Not a word about how much we think they suck, and how we accept their twisted schemes simply because we have no option, if we want to stay on the right side of Law.

Drives me mad each time some guy starts pandering the nascent Netflix-like subscription services for reading; guys, you should really stop listening to the spin when it start saying something about how convenient it is for customers, and start asking where’s the customer they asked to know that she was happy with the convenience.

Because, you know, there’s none. We should be really happy, as we are loaded with tons of “convenience” these days. We have incompatible formats. We have DRM. We have even non-licenseeable DRM so nobody can make a compatible reader. We have proprietary formats that nobody else can use. We have agreements that say that we’re not actually buying a book but a kind of permission to read it, a permission which can be revoked if we’re not good children and follow the seller rules, with no right to reimbursement. And now we have streamed books so they don’t even live any more in our devices more than a page at a time; and if you don’t renew your subscription, you have nothing.

But you know what I want? I want my book. MY eBook; mine, not yours. To read on whichever device I want, no permission required to read MY own eBooks.

My eBook to read, lend, give away or destroy if I please. My eBook to quote, to draw and annotate on, my eBook to highlight, swap covers and underline words.

So stop giving me your convenient solutions; give me the stuff I paid for, thank you very much, and stop treating me like a delinquent, or a retarded, or the clueless consumer you seem to think we are.

Amazon sucks. Also Apple, Google, and so many others, so do your best to buy from people which show respect to you. O’Reilly. Tor. Lektu. Imagine, if you’re into comics (even if their T&Cs are quite insulting, at least the files with the comics can be managed freely; hey, Imagine, take a look at the T&Cs and fire the bozo lawyer suit who wrote them). There are plenty of others if you want to do some searching; the next Dan Brown lies there somewhere (well, not that Dan Brown is a good example of literary quality, but you know what I mean).

Amazon? Apple? Google? B&N? Streamed reads? Meh. They suck. Time to go searching for real innovation somewhere else…