Why this Apple Fan doesn't read iBooks

[Barty]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Hilarious. Frying pan and Fire.
Amazon has 92% of English language ebook market.
Apple for iPhone and iPad is a greedy 90% profit margin megacorp, one of the largest.

.

90% profit margin? Big if true

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

I had bought the first two via Amazon and stripped them of their DRM. The KindleUnpack tool was producing a subpar MOBI extract file from the source AZW with a broken Table of Contents, so that's when I reached out to the owner to see if I could purchase a native EPUB directly from him.

What I want to know is how do they upload the eBook such that it's only Mobi? Renegade Swords III was uploaded in February 2022.

You cannot use KindleUnpack to go from Mobi > ePub. A conversion from Mobi > ePub is wha you really should be doing. Then load the ePub into the editor and make any changes from there.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What I want to know is how do they upload the eBook such that it's only Mobi? Renegade Swords III was uploaded in February 2022.

That book was generated using Amazon's Kindle Create software. That produces only KFX and MOBI formats, not KF8.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jhowell

That book was generated using Amazon's Kindle Create software. That produces only KFX and MOBI formats, not KF8.

What a piece of garbage. Kindle Create needs to go away forever.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What I want to know is how do they upload the eBook such that it's only Mobi? Renegade Swords III was uploaded in February 2022.

I still have books that are only available as Mobi instead of AZW3. Weirdly, I have one book (I think it's Honeymoon to Nowhere) that is only available (using K4PC 1.17) as HTMLZ? That was new to me.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I still have books that are only available as Mobi instead of AZW3. Weirdly, I have one book (I think it's Honeymoon to Nowhere) that is only available (using K4PC 1.17) as HTMLZ? That was new to me.

I've bought many books from Amazon only available as MOBI, even recently. They're usually self-published.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I've bought many books from Amazon only available as MOBI, even recently. They're usually self-published.

Yeah, it was the HTMLZ that was weird.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sorry, but that's just not true that Amazon killed them. Apple and the price fix 5 killed them when they changed the pricing for eBooks. Fictionwise and BooksOnBoard were popular sites back in the day. Amazon did not make it so eBooks could not be discounted by the stores. Apple and Co. did that.

Amazon put everything in motion by targeting the most profitable section of book selling and making a loss leader out of it. All the NYT Best Sellers, available day 1, for $9.99

Everything that followed, flowed from that.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by Quoth

No-one was serious competition on paper books online or eBooks (in English) by the time Apple launched iBooks.

So much good stuff in your post. Too little time to give every point justice.

You are correct that no one was competition to Amazon. Ergo, it was a good thing for Apple to come into the space. And no, Apple was never going to seriously unseat Amazon. But - Apple would have been a viable contender and a bulwark to give publishers some power in their negotiations with Amazon.

The publishers did not have the power individually to combat Amazon's "$9.99 for the entire NYT best seller's list". Amazon was setting in people's minds that a new book was only worth $10. The most profitable books that pay for pretty much the rest of the books that get published.

That is the shot heard 'round the world.

Apple wasn't interested in competing in a loss leader contest. That's not their business model. It was a good conjoining of interests...but they lost in court.

If anybody thinks the little guys would have continued to compete against Amazon on price. You are kidding yourselves. They were only able to discount against books that Amazon didn't care to dominate. It was just a matter of time before Amazon would have started pricing those book sellers out of the market. They didn't have to at first. At first, they needed a way to get people to pay $400 for a kindle to establish the ebook device market. They way they accomplished that was to sell books at $9.99 that people had been paying $25/$30 new as hard backs.

No, none of you that were never paying that kind of money mattered.

Of course you like $9.99 for a brand new book verses having to wait until the mass market paper back came out. Liked it so much that you paid $400 for a Kindle eInk device.

By the time the publishers did something about it - the NEED for a $400 device was gone. Now Amazon was able to sell a $100ish device and couldn't care less that it allowed the publishers to set their own prices. The capturing of the market had already occurred.

And Amazon went on to the next part of their plan and became a publisher themselves.

The little boutique booksellers were never going to last. Scale is everything. Sure, niche players like Baen could still ply their trade. But mass book selling? That was always going to go to one or a couple of the biggest players.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by leebase

Amazon put everything in motion by targeting the most profitable section of book selling and making a loss leader out of it. All the NYT Best Sellers, available day 1, for $9.99

Everything that followed, flowed from that.

It was not Amazon that caused agency pricing. It was Apple & the price fix 6. Sorry, but Amazon is not to blame for any of this.

[leebase]

[QUOTE=HLS;4271028]

Originally Posted by leebase

It's not available for a LOT of the ebooks I buy on Amazon and wish to sync with the available Audible books. Can't speak to the "nearly all", as I don't have a comprehensive dataset to look at. I just know that OFTEN when I want to do so, I can't.

I've started specifically looking for KU books that have both as it's a nice feature and I'm already paying for the subscription.[/QUOTE

I have over 2000 ebooks and all of them have available audio companions. Even in my browsing nearly every book I find has one. I almost never come across an ebook without an audiobook unless its some obscure book from a no name author

It's not been even close to being true for me

[leebase]

Originally Posted by Barty

90% profit margin? Big if true

It's not true. Very profitable? Yes. They report on their margin quarterly. It's public information

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by leebase

You are correct that no one was competition to Amazon. Ergo, it was a good thing for Apple to come into the space. And no, Apple was never going to seriously unseat Amazon. But - Apple would have been a viable contender and a bulwark to give publishers some power in their negotiations with Amazon.

The thing is, before agency, we could shop around for the lowest price. Now we don't have all the options we had before. And yes, a lot of what I purchased was purchased at shops that no longer exist because they did have the lowest prices.

The publishers did not have the power individually to combat Amazon's "$9.99 for the entire NYT best seller's list". Amazon was setting in people's minds that a new book was only worth $10. The most profitable books that pay for pretty much the rest of the books that get published.

If anybody thinks the little guys would have continued to compete against Amazon on price. You are kidding yourselves. They were only able to discount against books that Amazon didn't care to dominate. It was just a matter of time before Amazon would have started pricing those book sellers out of the market. They didn't have to at first. At first, they needed a way to get people to pay $400 for a kindle to establish the ebook device market. They way they accomplished that was to sell books at $9.99 that people had been paying $25/$30 new as hard backs.

The "little guys" were doing just fine at the time until agency pricing came into being and their way of doing business was no longer viable since they could no longer discount. They had things like a book club where you joined and got discounts and points. Plus sales and such. But because of agency, none of this worked.

Of course you like $9.99 for a brand new book verses having to wait until the mass market paper back came out. Liked it so much that you paid $400 for a Kindle eInk device.

I never paid $400 for a Kindle. I went with Sony which while expensive, was still less then the Kindle.

By the time the publishers did something about it - the NEED for a $400 device was gone. Now Amazon was able to sell a $100ish device and couldn't care less that it allowed the publishers to set their own prices. The capturing of the market had already occurred.

And Amazon went on to the next part of their plan and became a publisher themselves.

You still don't get it. You make it sound liked agency was Amazon's plan. It has NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH AMAZON. While Apple wanted Amazon to stop being able to put eBooks on sale. Apple & the price fix 6 did not care at all who got hurt in the process. And a number of eBook stores did get hurt and had to close.

The little boutique booksellers were never going to last. Scale is everything. Sure, niche players like Baen could still ply their trade. But mass book selling? That was always going to go to one or a couple of the biggest players.

You cannot say that. You don't know. Nobody knows. But they were still there and still doing business even with Amazon. So stop saying things that just are not true. BAEN is a publisher and not just a place to buy eBooks.