I visit Amazon Store very often, sometimes daily, mostly to buy e-books. Although I have purchased items that are not books from Amazon, this review is about the book store, from which I have been buying for years.
I rarely buy books on paper any more unless I need them and they are not available on digital format. This being the case, and Kindle being a free app, I have buying and reading
Kindle ebooks for many years at very affordable or cheap prices (and some of the classics for free). Most digital serious books in Amazon would cost you around 9-10 American bucks, some academic ones included (although these tend to be way more expensive especially if very specialised). To be fair, I have also found many Kindle books (especially old ones) to be more expensive that the hard copy, but this is the rule not the exception. And really, you do not have to pack ebooks when you move.
I usually buy my ebooks and hard copy book by using "
Buy with a click" button. You just press the button, and voila. You need to have your personal details and credit card registered and the button activated. Dangerous! because pushing a digital button is the easiest thing when you fancy something. Digital books are delivered instantly to your device/s, and a sale confirmation emailed to you. The
return polices for digital books are great. Sometimes you press the "buy this ebook" by mistake or just start reading it and you think it is bad quality or does not work in your device, and you can return it, no questions asked.
If you buy a hard copy book, the procedure is the same, but your order takes a while to be processed and dispatched. The process of fulfilling your order is not immediate, even if the book is in stock, so you have a natural cooling period to cancel your order if you want. Delivery times vary from state to state and country to country. Usually, Amazon tells you the estimated natural period when you can expect your book at home, and they are right on the spot most times. A tracking link is provided with your dispatch notification email, so you just have to wait and see. Your hard-copy book contains also return forms just in case you want to return it or exchange it once you have it at home. In the past, I bought books that were very expensive in Australia at half the price for the same edition and book on Amazon. Despite the high International rates for some of those books, I got them way cheaper.
Prime and Kindle unlimited are great, especially if you live in the USA, but not so if you do not. Waw waw wawww. On the other hand, Amazon has full sites in several countries; if that is the case, you will benefit from having access to the many features that they have, which are limited in partial Amazon sites. One of the advantages of having an Amazon account is that if you don't
find the book you are looking in the American store, you could find it
in other international stores, and sometimes a way better prices,
and you can access those sites by using the same email and password you
use to log in on your home Amazon. I have experienced this to be the case
with the purchase of bilingual dictionaries that costed a fortune on
Amazon, but were one third or half the price for the same item and
edition in their country of origin.
If you are new to Amazon and are making your first purchase, you might find that the site can demand your
VISA to be verified. You do that through your bank's website. Most online retailers do not require this any more, and I am not sure if Amazon does so nowadays as I have been buying from them for years and my card is already verified. I think it is great that they required visa verified cards as this is an extra layer of security to your purchases.
Before ordering anything outside the USA, not to inflate your purchase and not get surprises, check two things:
>
That the book is sold and dispatched from Amazon warehouses. That means
that the costs will be way cheaper than any other retailer selling on
Amazon.
> If you are
buying from other retailers through Amazon, check in advance their
pricing for International deliveries, before proceeding to purchase, and
decide if this inflates the price of your product or is still good.
In the past, I found
Amazon Customer Service polite, very well organised, but extremely robotic and idiotic, annoying and frustrating despite them wanting to help. The good thing is that I only required their help once in the last 15 years. As I have already mentioned, books returns are effectuated automatically without any question being asked, no fuss, and immediate in the case of ebooks.
Amazon's reviewing system is great, but I have found a bit bunch of trolls, preachers, author's pals, author's mad fans, and free-book-for-review reviewers (Vine Voice being an example, clearly marked as so though) who can be an annoyance. Generally speaking, though, I trust the site's reviews and some reviews and reviewers are amazing. I have discovered amazing books through great reviewers. As a rule of thumb, always look for those reviews and reviewers who tend to have a "verified purchase" sign in their reviews. Amazon does not do enough, not much really, to stop trolls, something that annoys me a lot,
and they allow clear sexist comments, clear to anybody with two eyes, to stay there even if you complain. I think this is the case because those dealing with
that sort of complain are... sexist themselves, which is disgusting and shameful.
The Kindle App is fantastic and you can download it and use it for free anywhere, your phone, tablet, PC and laptop. I would not recommend updating it too often, unless it is giving you problems. Many of the updates come fully charged with bugs and they can be very frustrating when they do not allow you to read the books you own or keep crashing the app. The reading experience with Kindle is fantastic as you can adjust the
size and style of your font, brightness, spacing and margins and the
lateral toolbar allows you to navigate the book in the easiest possible way. Unlike Google books, the passing of one page to another is not realistic, something I really love and miss. Besides, Kindle is not good for reading PDF book,
EPUB books or any other format that is not Kindle. Yet, it is
understandable. Google Reader does no allow you to read Kindle books
either.
Kindle for PC or Kindle on the Cloud, are also free and alternative ways to have your books at hand, especially if you need some of them for work, which is my case.
Regarding the rendering of books on Kindle format, although most books (and graphic books) are launched both in hard copy and on digital form at the same time (therefore, identical), many others ebooks are edited digitally way after the hard copy was published. Some editorial houses do not bother to update books that were not originally prepared for the digital market. So, you can find yourself exasperated because, despite being charged full price for a book, the rendering of the book for Kindle is defective, unpolished, lacking a bit of work, footnotes rendered badly, indexes rendered badly, and so on. Things that rest enjoyment to the joy of reading, and which I consider both a disrespect to the author and the reader.
Overall I am a devotee of ebooks and of Amazon Book Store.
