greenskye

Currently I’m still able to buy the book and break the DRM, though that option is rapidly closing. I try to buy it elsewhere if possible, but it’s often not.

Piracy is an option, but because the authors are so small, pirated copies can take months to become available, if they ever are. Also, I consider myself very knowledgeable in breaking the encryption for these files. I would be the person putting the upload out there if I was interested in that kind of thing. So if I’m having difficulty breaking the DRM, chances are high that nobody else has either. Or at least we’d be stuck with crappy OCR’d PDF copies instead of proper epubs.

At the end of the day though, as the consumer, exclusive content like this means I participate in the platform or I simply don’t get access to that content. If it were simply a couple of titles, that’s one thing, but it hurts when it’s an entire genre. It’d be like being a fan of metal music, but 90% of all metal music was only on Spotify and nowhere else. It’s horrible that a single company can control an entire genre like this.

I’m happy to leave Amazon, but it sure feels like Kindle Unlimited has a stranglehold on indie publishing. At this point I’m faced with sticking with Amazon or basically finding an entirely new genre to read, as 90% of the titles I like (litrpg) aren’t available outside Amazon due to KUs exclusivity clause.

Strong protections and regulations on what counts as ‘news’ and then offering subsidies paid for via taxes on Internet/cable TV/etc subscriptions to non-profit news outlets.

Of course that’s near impossible and humanity would corrupt it eventually, so I don’t know.