[elboru]

I love paper books, I love seeing them in my shelf, but since I bought a Kindle I just stopped buying paper books. It is just too easy to buy a kindle book with one click.

The process goes like this, someone recommends a book in HN, they provide an Amazon link, I read a couple of reviews, at this point I'm convinced about buying the book or not, or even if I'm not totally convinced, the price, and the easiness of just one click makes me do it. That process has increased the amount of books I read per year. Sure the button is only a small part of that, but I think is an esencial part, I think Walmart can get a lot of benefit from this.

[marcosdumay]

Would you buy less books if you had to click a confirmation window?

It's much easier to buy books when you don't need to wait for delivery, unpack, carry around, get up to get them, etc. But your process already consist of several clicks and waiting for many pages.

[jerf]

People may self-report "no", but the evidence is abundant that at the margin, the answer is "yes". You are some probably-some-single-digit percentage less likely to buy. That matters very little to you as an individual, it can be life-or-death for a retailer.

[enraged_camel]

>>Would you buy less books if you had to click a confirmation window?

Isn't it well-documented that the more steps you have during th purchase process, the lower your conversion rates? I'm sure this is especially true at Amazon's scale.

To be specific though, if I'm on my phone and I see a confirmation window, I might postpone the purchase until I'm in front of my computer - and by then I might forget about it. One click purchase completely bypasses these types of scenarios.

[skybrian]

Better yet, you can download a sample and defer buying until you get to the end of the sample. That way you don't have to worry about books piling up that you don't get around to reading. It's a handy "books I want to read" list.

[bduerst]

I'm kind of the same. I would definitely kill to be able to buy DRM-free epub books from someone else other than Amazon and have it 1-click integrate with my kindle.

Maybe some epub sellers could email it to your kindle with 1-click purchasing now?

[jsjohnst]

PragProg has (or had at least) email delivery to Kindle after order, so maybe they'll do it?

[dexterdog]

Buy from Amazon. Remove DRM w/ Calibre.

[pnathan]

I buy paper for books that I think are likely to be worth reading years down the road, long after Amazon has collapsed.

[twothamendment]

I see e-books as a fee for a one time read. I'm not likely to read them again and I can't hand it to my neighbor to borrow. A paper book - I can read it, donate it, lend it out - whatever. I do like how many e-books can fit in my pocket, but I'm finding fewer reasons to buy them and more reasons to own the book instead of owning the right to view the book on some specific platform.