Click on my kindle icon for "store", find book, click buy, have it seconds later. Alternatively, go to amazon.com and find book, click buy, shows up on my kindle seconds later.
Kindle has definitely made it as friction free as possible. The lock-in used to be moderately annoying, but I have a phone that can natively handle other formats (not to mention the kindle app), so I just don’t care anymore.
Yeah, Amazon's ebook buying experience is about as seamless as one could ask for. I do not think the ebook buying experience has anything to do with why paper books are still around.
I used to collect physical books, but there are so many new and novel stories out there that I don’t reread most of them. So it’s a waste of space to keep 98% of them around anymore. Purging them was cathartic.
If that wasn't true, dead-tree books would be as rare as Compact Discs.