You can publish a free book as an idependent author.
I have been annoyed by the occasional higher price of a kindle versus deadtree book. But often? That is a stretch.
A quick google search seems to confirm that $0.99 is the cheapest price people can set.
OCR errors are quite rare, if you buy a "real" book you get typos etc. as well sometimes I don't see why this would be very annoying.
I don't like DRM from an ideological standpoint however I daily life it is really only an issue if you want to lend something and Amazon allows it, the publishers don't but that is a different issue.
As for DRM, I just use Calibre to strip the DRM off my Kindle purchases. Annoying that I would have to do that, but its better than not having the option at all.
As for value-added from Amazon, I love the free international 3G access for the browser. It is amazing if you travel a lot and the money saved from data roaming fees has already paid for the Kindle itself.
Funny. I personally think one main advantages of the kindle is easy access (at comparably cheap prices) to the US book market from outside of the USA or Canada.
Remember those infographs that show watching a movie from a bought DVD (20 steps) vs pirating it (1 step)? The Kindle isn't as bad, but it ain't great either.
- Availability. Within the US (and only within the US/Canada) book availability is great, but it isn't perfect..outside the US/Canada it sucks. Amazon once had books 1,2 and 5 of a series I wanted, but not 3 and 4 (I know, i know, this isn't amazon's fault)
- Price. Kindle books are often more expensive than their physical counterparts
- Quality. Not only are you paying more, but you'll get OCR errors in every book.
- DRM.
The above 4 combined make it so I rather donate to Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) and find other ways to get ebooks onto my device.
Additionally:
- KDK. The KDK isn't public yet, and it seems imposible to get into the beta. On top of that, the KDK is lacking some basic APIs (like collection management)
- Indie support. It's my understanding that you can't publish a free book as an independent author to the kindle store.
My plan is that when it's time to upgrade (hoping for a new batch of options for xmas), I'll buy whatever has the best screen/battery/dimensions/weight/price. Because, really, once you don't care about the Kindle store, there's no reason to not simply get the best device. Amazon doesn't do any value-added with the Kindle....there's no reason to be loyal or stick with it.