And let me guess. You're mad.

Can somebody fill me in, please. Does the Kindle "read" only books bought from Amazon? Is there no universality at all in this industry?

Does it make sense for someone to buy such a reader and then be yoked to one and only one source for new content? Sort of like buying a Chevrolet and having GM require you to only buy Chevrolet brand gasoline (come to think of it, maybe if they could really do that, the company wouldn't be tanking right now...)

Sorry, monopolies I don't like. And since this is a voluntary one, I'll pass.

so somebody owns an ebook now? or does Amazon count as an owner?

@2: Read wikipedia more frequently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kind…

Supports mobi and prc, automatic .txt conversion and azw (the amazon one). Gutenberg.org gives out mobi, as well as a number of publishers, but I'm not really sure if there is a big store where you can buy them. Have a couple of friends that torrent them.

So yeah, you can read MOBI and PRC files on them (which are non-Amazon-specific), but I'm not sure where to legally acquire them (other than directly from certain publishers' websites).

@4, this is unencouraging information about formats. If you believe, as I do, that book design (not cover design, but page layouts, fonts, and so forth) is an art form, one of the biggest drawbacks of the Gutenberg Project library, and others, is that you're getting only text, and not pages that look appropriate. I read a lot of books printed in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, and crisp, modern Times New Roman on a computer screen ain't gonna cut it. I want to see the actual pages.

Does Stanza let you buy books? I only use it for free stuff, in other words, books over 50 or 70 years old. It's certainly not an ideal format, Fnarf, but it has its place. I almost always take 3+ books on vacation with me, and that gets heavy. What with bag fees and back aches, it starts to be appealing to read on a tiny electronic screen.

This seems like a strange move on Amazon's part. They took over this one book-list group thing I joined, too. Sometimes they send me emails. I don't care what other people on the internet think, though, so I don't pay attention to my "shelf" or whatever it is.

If the free market really promotes competition, then why is it that more and more things/businesses are consolidating? Maybe I should download Adam Smith's book.

Fnarf I wholeheartedly agree. Got a Kindle last week, and while I love it I've also been venting about the typography on it ever since (via Twitter). Poor hyphenation, poor justification, poor superscripts, etc. Don't begin to expect things like hanging indents. Very little attention (if any at all) paid to the layout/typography on this thing.

The formats I list DO allow for at least nominal layout, and Gutenberg offers many books in MOBI (instead of just txt) now, though they aren't exactly the pinnacle of layout either.

My strategy going forward will be to read the paperbacks on the device and purchase the nicely laid-out books—those which I think I might want to look at more than one read-through—physically.

You can apparently buy books through Stanza, but I've never used it. I wonder what will happen to that option now? I've only used it for free things, which means very old books and Cory Doctorow (whose stories, honestly, are not nearly as good as I was led to believe. No wonder they're free.).

Cory Doctorowned.

I'm so sick of that hack.

My guess is that if Stanza built this thing for free with no existing revenue stream, this is probably exactly that they hoped would happen... if you want to be pissed at someone be pissed at Stanza -- they are the ones who sold out....

You mean "bought into the market". There are a couple of other reader apps, notably eReader.