Kobo ereaders nearly perfect or extremely buggy?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by cybmole

with the Kobo for Android app - books do seem to be all stored in a single database, so if that corrupts., or if you need to delete & re-install the app, you lose EVERYTHING

I take your point that on the e-readers, they probably do exist as individual files still, and so are better able to survive a database crash. To be honest, with my epubs, for Aura, I just usb to PC, go to calibre & say send to device, I don't pay any mind to how they are stored once they get there!

Though I read that with kobo store books, the Kobo DRM ties them to a device specific key, meaning that if you cannot copy them to a different Kobo device, even if you set that up with the same credentials - you have to re-download them from Kobo servers.

Amazon do the same, but unlike Amazon, Kobo have been known to de-list books and that then leads to problems like the case that I was reading about recently- you can't download a copy from their store onto your new device if it is no longer in the store!

I don't make much use of the Kobo Android app but looking at the files, it appears that both epub and kepub books are moved out their .zip container into a directory, perhaps for speed? The non-imported version of the epubs still exists in the directory that Calibre copied them to.

As for the Kobo DRM, .kepubs from Kobo would be downloaded to your device unless you exceed the number of devices.

Unlike Amazon, I've never had Kobo remove a book from my device once I had purchased and downloaded it. Somewhat appropriately, Amazon did that with 1984 where they deleted copies from people's ereaders.

As for the de-list, that is up to the author and/or publisher. I had one book I purchased and downloaded as a .epub in addition to the .kepub, which was removed from the Kobo store at the author's request. The book was not removed from my ereader though it no longer showed in my library on the Kobo site. A factory reset lost my .kepub as expected but the .epub still exists if I decide to go all gloomy -- dystopias are not the most cheerful reading.

And if you think Amazon does not de-list books, check their ongoing feud with Hachette.

To quote from two authors:

Amazon.com US links have been removed on my websites until further notice. No, I don't think Amazon is the devil. But at the same time, I don't think Amazon's business model will have the outcome of helping authors in the long run (any more than Spotify has helped musical artists), and I support my colleagues who publish with Hachette in this matter.


All links to Amazon US have been removed from my professional websites and I have requested that my books and ebooks not be sold by Amazon until their issues with Hachette have been settled. My short term financial pain must be balanced against a business model that will have writing full time again becoming synonymous with starvation. I have no wish to emulate H. Beam Piper by having to shoot pigeons for food while being considered one of the top authors in my field.

Regards,
David

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Books are not stored in the database so database corruption should not lose books. If the only place you are storing sideloaded books is on the internal storage, you would have to backup before doing a factory reset/log out to wipe the database back to factory. If your books are stored on an external uSD card, that backup/restore is not necessary. Metadata, reading positions, some annotations, etc. will be lost but you can reset/log out of the ereader and the database will be rebuilt without permanently losing any books. Some information and your Kobo purchased kepubs will be restored from the cloud.

I do not use collections/shelves due to a preference for using search to locate a specific book/author/series so the database works for me. Admittedly, I also use search to locate a specific book on my computer in the directory containing a saved copy of my Calibre library. For instance, say I am looking for volume 24 of the Grantville Gazette. Using the Kobo UI from the home page (search is set to start in Library), I hit the menu button, type gr in the search box and the second item is Grantville Gazette followed by Grantville Gazette Volume 1, 2, 3 etc. Using Koreader's file manager, it takes me a few more keystrokes/taps/swipes plus having to remember that volumes 1 to 10 were edited by Eric Flint and volumes 11 to 54+ are edited by Paula Goodlett.

Perhaps having both would be nice but, at this time, given a choice between search and a file manager, I prefer search. And yes, I am rather familiar with file managers, for more years that I care to remember, going back to DG's RDOS then continuing through CPM and it's variants -- anyone else here remember ZCPR?

Regards,
David

For a fact you can have both, with Koreader. WS64 (who posts at MR often) has added a search function to Koreader that uses the "metadata.calibre" file calibre puts on the device. That allows searching on a number of calibre generated metadata fields. Calibre on your PC maintains the "metadata.calibre" file, under your control. Kobo's sync to its servers has the control over the Kobo database.

Luck;
Ken

[Anak]

Originally Posted by DNSB

All links to Amazon US have been removed from my professional websites and I have requested that my books and ebooks not be sold by Amazon until their issues with Hachette have been settled. My short term financial pain must be balanced against a business model that will have writing full time again becoming synonymous with starvation. I have no wish to emulate H. Beam Piper by having to shoot pigeons for food while being considered one of the top authors in my field.

Regards,
David

@DNSB
Sure, Amazon is not an authors friend but neither is Hachette. Amazon is a retailer and Hachette publisher. This does not necessarily mean that a publisher acts in the best interest of its authors.
The way Hachette acts is definitely not in the best interests of their authors. They are setting ebook prices too high, and use windowing to protect their paper market dominance and it only pays a 17,5% royalty rate to authors.

Amazon does not boycot Hachette books, it only does not offer a pre order button to order a book in advance that will be released somewhere in de near future. All released books of Hachette autors are still available through Amazon.
Yes, delivery of books will be delayed as Amazon does not stock Hachette books in their own warehouses and they have to order them from different wholesaler or distributor (or maybe even directly by Hachette). It takes some extra days to get those Hachette books from a third-party warehose to the Amazon warehouses before the can be sent to the customer. But books are sold and therefore the publisher and author will receive their money.

A retailer can independently decide which products to sell and which not to sell. Amazon does not have a contract with authors (only Hachette has).

Barnes and Noble and other brick-and-mortar bookstores do not offer any book that are published by an independent author of self publisher (an author without an traditional publisher). These books (printed and digital editions) can not be pre ordered, ordered and are also not available in brick-and-morter bookstores. That is a real boycot and that is hurting authors.

The price at which Amazon chooses to sell its books does not have to hurt authors. As authors receive a royalty that is based on the MSRP.
Amazon puchases books from publishers at roughly 50% of the MSRP (standard agency pricing).
After Amazon has purchased those books at 50% of MSRP and Amazon chooses to sell books at a lower price point it will directy hurt Amazons profit margin. But the publisher still receives 50% of the MSRP. So the author will receive his or her cut.
At a lower price point more books (units) can be sold that offset the lower retail price and that is called price elasticity.
More books sold means here: the publisher receives 50% (which is Amazons purchase price of the books) of all sold books. That is more money (cash) for the publisher and author.
It does not hurt authors or publishers (the might feel that way as the might be under the false impression that a book has less value because the are sold at a lower retail price.)
It will/might hurt other retailers. A book sold by Amazon is a book not sold by Kobo or other book retailer. I don't think many readers will buy two copies of the same book.

The other problem are the Authors Guilds who do little to nothing to improve their contracts with publishers. They don't negotiate for a better (higher) royalty rate for paper and digital books. The don't negotiate to revert copyright to the author when a publisher does not reprint an authors back catalog. All intellectual property (book characters etc.) are signed over to the publisher. The author is no longer owner of his own book(series) for the duration of the copyright period. More than a lifetime. But he will receive a 17,5% royalty rate.

At the moment Amazon is an authors best friend and authors should use the momentum to renegotiate their publishing deals. But that is exactly what those Author Guilds not doing. Really strange.
How will that be in let's say five years?
Then Amazon might be just a retailer of books and solely serving its own interests and which might not be best for authors but hey, Amazon has no contract with authors but publishers do. Publishers will act to protect their own interests (in the book market and distribution chain) which might benefit authors or hurt authors but its actions are business decisions not to be taken personal.
If five years from now, authors have a more fair publishing deal then authors will also benefit from the "shift of power" from retailer back to publisher again as the receive a higher royalty rate then they received five years ago (17,5%) and may it be easier to get their intellectional property back (signed away for a short period instead of for the duration of the copyright period).

[eschwartz]

There are several threads available in which to rant about Hachette vs Amazon (FWIW I agree with you)... this isn't it.

All DNSB said is that Amazon can and will delist books just like Kobo. Nothing about whether that is a good or bad thing. The quote as used was a proof to that, (demonstrating that it is really the publisher who delists things in both cases) and does not necessarily mean DNSB agrees with the quotee's belief.

[cybmole]

fair cop on amazon de-listing guys. but In the hatchette dispute cases am not sure if they also delist all cloud copies of a previously bought book

imaginary case:
1.I buy a book -so a copy appears in my account on cloud..
2. author falls out with amazon - says de-list all my stuff.
3. meanwhile I buy a new kindle and want a new download
is the book in question still there , or gone ?. It's probably gone, but I am no way to test that

the "gone from Kobo store" tale of woe is here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=244278

[eschwartz]

Amazon takes down books whenever the publisher says to, but the book remains accessible from Manage Your Kindle and the Kindle Cloud. I know, because a friend has at least one book like that. And because I have checked out three or four OverDrive books that are otherwise nonexistent (deleted older editions, it seems).

There is that famous report about the *other* book -- the one Amazon remotely deleted and suchlike -- but since that was pulled for being illegal, it might have something to do with it. Or because that was the first ever case of an ebook vendor remotely deleting books, and they were very sorry about it (in both senses): http://www.pcworld.com/article/17295...4_lawsuit.html

And afterward, they made a policy not to ever do that again and I assume the other vendors took notes. (An odd idea that no one seems to believe in, hence the oddly widespread idea that only Amazon would ever do such a thing, simply because they are the only one to have done such a thing.)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

For a fact you can have both, with Koreader. WS64 (who posts at MR often) has added a search function to Koreader that uses the "metadata.calibre" file calibre puts on the device. That allows searching on a number of calibre generated metadata fields. Calibre on your PC maintains the "metadata.calibre" file, under your control. Kobo's sync to its servers has the control over the Kobo database.

Luck;

Luck is what I would need. So far I haven't had much joy trying KoReader's search function. First was configuring KoReader to use the calibre.metadata file on the external uSD card rather than on the internal storage -- setting the library path to /mnt/sd is not intuitive when I'm trying to set the search path. Secondly, finding that it does not return series unlike the Kobo search which returns the series and lets me tap on a series name to see only the books in the series. Thirdly, the books returned seem in a rather random order -- probably from the way that they are stored in the calibre metadata file in contrast to Kobo's alphabetical ordering.

This is using the 2014-08-13 / 2014-04.514 release of KoReader.

Regards,
David

[Anak]

To all, I agree, this is not the place to discuss the Amazon vs Hachette but I could not resist to comment.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Luck is what I would need. So far I haven't had much joy trying KoReader's search function. First was configuring KoReader to use the calibre.metadata file on the external uSD card rather than on the internal storage -- setting the library path to /mnt/sd is not intuitive when I'm trying to set the search path. Secondly, finding that it does not return series unlike the Kobo search which returns the series and lets me tap on a series name to see only the books in the series. Thirdly, the books returned seem in a rather random order -- probably from the way that they are stored in the calibre metadata file in contrast to Kobo's alphabetical ordering.

This is using the 2014-08-13 / 2014-04.514 release of KoReader.

Regards,
David

The latest versions have a tool to change defaults, the "LIBRARY_PATH = "/mnt/sd" option is at the top of the fourth page. You need to point it to the directory where calibre put its calibre.metadata file. If you the send to the "A drive" function of calibre it will be "/mnt/sd". Funny, "Series" is one of the default tags included in the search. In fact it was one of the first things I tried with it. It found all of "the Restoration Series [x]" (that is how the tag is listed in calibre) by just entering "restoration". Not sure about the order, I didn't test it that much, but they were all listed and there were no false positives. This is a brand new feature (it was even labeled "Experimental") such added features to Koreader have developed rather rapidly, with user input. The results you get will probably depend on how you constructed the calibre library that you use with the device, and how you construct your search.

I am sure WS64 would be interested in any improvements you can suggest. I would rather have Series sorted by the number of the book in the series.

Luck;
Ken

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

The latest versions have a tool to change defaults, the "LIBRARY_PATH = "/mnt/sd" option is at the top of the fourth page. You need to point it to the directory where calibre put its calibre.metadata file. If you the send to the "A drive" function of calibre it will be "/mnt/sd". Funny, "Series" is one of the default tags included in the search. In fact it was one of the first things I tried with it. It found all of "the Restoration Series [x]" (that is how the tag is listed in calibre) by just entering "restoration". Not sure about the order, I didn't test it that much, but they were all listed and there were no false positives. This is a brand new feature (it was even labeled "Experimental") such added features to Koreader have developed rather rapidly, with user input. The results you get will probably depend on how you constructed the calibre library that you use with the device, and how you construct your search.

I am sure WS64 would be interested in any improvements you can suggest. I would rather have Series sorted by the number of the book in the series.

Luck;
Ken

Ummm... Ken, did you read my message? Note the point where I stated "setting the library path to /mnt/sd is not intuitive when I'm trying to set the search path". Please note other search items are labelled search-whatever. And, yes, it searches by series. What it does not is to return series as a search result, instead you get all the books in the series mixed with any other books that matched the search criteria.

Using the Grantville Gazette as an example, using the Kobo UI, when I type "gr", the search returns shows Grantville Gazette (series) plus the books in the series plus anything else that matched gr. Tap on the "Grantville Gazette" series entry and I get the books in the series neatly sorted. When I use the KoReader UI, I get the books in the series scrambled in with every other book that matches gr and no entry for the series itself. All this randomly scattered over 11 pages of results.

Using "grant" as the search, I get all 54 of the Grantville Gazettes plus 5 other books that matched the search entry so 4 pages of results with only 15 results on the 4th page. Again all in what appears to be a random order so no chance of going to page 3 to find Volume 45 for example.

I also noticed the library-path entry does not show in the defaults UI until I have done one search using /mnt/onboard where it prompts me to save the defaults. The change did not seem to stick through a power cycle so I finally created that entry by editing defaults.lua. Hmmm... boot to the Kobo side, connect to the computer, use Notepad++ to follow the instructions in the defaults.lua file and add the entry, reboot back to Koreader.

Not quite ready for prime time in my not so humble opinion.

Regards,
David

[the.Mtn.Man]

A 1% problem rate, assuming your numbers are accurate, is extremely low.

Personally, I have not had a single significant problem with either my Touch that I used for several years or with my recently purchased Aura. They have their quirks, but they have never once stopped me from being able to read, and since that's the whole point of an e-reader then I see no reason to complain.

[Dr. Drib]

Moderator Notice

Back to the topic of the thread's title, please.

Take the 'Hachette vs Amazon' posts to the other relevant threads.

Thank you for your consideration.

[murg]

Originally Posted by 2bits

At a 1% problem rate

For mass produced consumer electronics hardware, this would be a very, very high failure rate.

I'd expect that the actual failure rate would be in the order of .01% or less (one failure in every 10,000 units).

And be failure rate, I mean failure due to manufacturing or parts defects, not use.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by murg

For mass produced consumer electronics hardware, this would be a very, very high failure rate.

I'd expect that the actual failure rate would be in the order of .01% or less (one failure in every 10,000 units).

And be failure rate, I mean failure due to manufacturing or parts defects, not use.

But the word was "problem", not "failure". Most of the problems posted here are less "my unit completely died", and more "how do I strip this embedded font" or "can I tweak my margins" or "I broke my screen" or "my device won't charge/I changed the cable and it's working now", or "kepubs sh*t me", that sort of thing.

[Amalthia]

We returned our Kobo Glo because we could not adjust the font size for the ebooks, which was a deal breaker for my husband.

Sometimes the font size would adjust, other times we had to adjust the size, close the book, and re-open it.

I had a few formatting issues and file organization issues but the font size bug was the final straw.