Amazon against the rest, or where to get your books

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Whatif? That is your paranoia speaking. Whispernet is a free service, no subscription, nothing. You get something for free, and you think it should stay free forever. Look at cell phone companies here in the US. It used to be (just last year) that you could get flat-rate unlimited internet access from about everybody. Today you have download/upload limits and very expensive overrage charges if you do go over your limit.

Yes, it may be paranoia. I've seen it happen to other products. "Buy your Mp3's at ..... and stream them to any device you have!" *Bam*, company goes broke. Every hip streaming guy lost his entire library. I still have mine, created from bought and downloaded (drm-free) files, or ripped of CD's myself. Therefore, I will never trust anyone's cloud, archive, Whispernet or online-only solution.

Your coin rules. Buy from Amazon as long as the tools exist to remove the drm, and to convert to a different format. Once you cannot do that any more, go elsewhere. Same with ePub. The ePub format itself won't (likely) be a problem, but the DRM. So once you cannot strip the DRM any more, stop buying from that shop. You already won't buy from the iBooks store, correct?

Very true. As long as Apple does not allow me to sideload non-market apps on the iPhone or iPad, I'll never buy them. If drm can't be removed from iBooks, I won't buy them. If the Kindle had not supported sideloading of (converted) ebooks, I wouldn't have bought it, despite it being the best hardware out there, according to reviewers. If the next Kindle still supports sideloading, I may get it, otherwise I likely won't. Despite the Archive, and Whispernet, I use Calibre.

I actually make it a point to immediately locally capture, de-drm, and backup anything digital that I buy, be it books, movies, music, or games, in default formats as much as possible. If I can't, because of unbreakable drm, or for example needing an always on internet connection, then I'll not buy it.

This extends even to the formats I use to store personal information in. Mostly, it's flat textiles. If I need to write a report, I use LaTeX. Flat text, and the tools are open. (Notice that I didn't say *free*, which they also are, but there are paid implementations.) I could mention many other examples.

You might call it paranoia, which is your good right. I call it prudence.

edit: If I could, I would buy my books in plain text and create the ebook file myself. Thinking about it... The fun thing is... After stripping drm and unzipping the epub, it basically *is* flat text, marked up with some html. I could actually use a program to merge everything into one file (which is trivial), and remove the html, for which many programs already exist, leaving a perfectly clean text file.

That way, I could recreate the book in any format ever invented, when I want to reread it. I can do it with a book from Gutenberg in less than 30 minutes..... Faster, if it doesn't have many chapters. Thanks for bringing up that idea.

[Coops]

Originally Posted by emellaich

I don't care if you use Sony, Apple, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble; the odds are that some (most? all?)of us will wake up one day to discover we own a bunch of books in an obsolete format.

a very good argument for taking the time to understand and use Alf's bits and bobs to strip DRM and keep your book converted to epub.... a bunch of html files zipped up.

The odds of waking up to find epub to be unreadable AND web browsers to be unable to read html all of a sudden AND calibre to suddenly be unable to convert your epub to whatever you like (RTF, TXT etc) AND Sigil (a free epub editor) to suddenly be unable to open your epub is somewhat unlikely.

[Katsunami]

Good point... Maybe the fact that epub is so easily created, or dissected and converted back to flat text, may cause it to be passed up by the big companies in the long run. Wouldn't be the first time that the common sense of portability, convenience and being future proof lost to the raw power of money.

(And yes, being able to create or dissect an ebook using a notepad and a zip utility only is what I call portable, convenient, and future proof. Also, you're not tied to any operating system to do it. Sigil just makes everything easier, but is not actually required.)

[DuckieTigger]

Thank you, Katsunami. We can finally agree on something.

Buy your book, strip DRM, convert book into flat text file (html) remove all unnecessary garbage and keep safe. Now that I think about it, you should convert the html to LaTeXe as that is easier to read in a plain texteditor. You got your \chapter marks and all that. Heck. even footnotes are perfect as they are right in the spot they should be in - no scrolling or clicking to get to them.

Now all we need is a LaTeX to epub compiler - one that outputs a epub file that is compatible for conversion to mobi later on. Agreeing on the few things mobi wants should not be too hard should it?

[Katsunami]

I think we both already agreed that an open format is probably better/safer than a closed one, and that drm is no good, in any digital stuff, not only books. I only got the feeling that I'm quite a bit more concerned (and paranoid, even) about this stuff than you and most others are. I've learned about the format wars the hard way, in the past.

Btw: Tried the Latex thing already. Html to Latex does not convert well. Latex to Html can work very well. Latex to epub is bad, using the conversion utility Pandoc, for example. Latex to Html to epub yields a usable result that needs to be adjusted. If the book is not too big, creating the epub file from a plain text file yourself is faster. Converting from epub to mobi works well, as we all know.

In the end I thinkin I'll be going with de-drm'ed epub, as it's the easiest format to take apart, and therefore probably the best source to convert into other formats.

I'll have to try and see if an Amazon azw, or mobi, converted to epub is understandable when you take a look inside.... I'll convert an epub I made myself to mobi and back, and see what comes out.

[sonofpendragon]

Although I have a love-hate relationship with the place due to an annoying combination of brilliance and shoddiness, don't overlook Lulu.com. They now sell ebooks in the current sense, but still have many PDFs available. Now, there is the option to apply DRM, but not all author / publishers take it so there will be many many downloads of different formats without it. Take a look, there is (although I don't know how after ruining the site in some important ways) a great deal of diverse material on there, and I am sure anyone looking for non DRM content will find something that would interest them.

[calibrated]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I actually make it a point to immediately locally capture, de-drm, and backup anything digital that I buy, be it books, movies, music, or games, in default formats as much as possible. If I can't, because of unbreakable drm, or for example needing an always on internet connection, then I'll not buy it.

This is excellent advice, and is also my practice. Although like many others I began my e-book buying with Amazon and the Kindle, I've since de-DRM'd all of my Kindle books (thank you, Alf), converted them to epub, and stored them in multiple locations both locally and offsite. Now I buy from multiple stores, in epub where possible, and de-DRM them when necessary. And I never buy anything with unbreakable DRM (as with Apple's iBooks).

The wisdom of this practice was made clear to me recently when the "Archive" view on my Kindle Fire failed to turn up a few books that I had purchased back in 2008. They showed up when I logged into the Amazon website on my computer, but who wants to go through that hassle? It was a lot faster and easier to go to my Dropbox backup from the Fire, download the book and open it in Aldiko. So much for the Amazon advantage...

[Katsunami]

So, you learned it the hard way too by not being able to get to your data. Pity that you had to.

I've just actually tried it my own suggestion. I created an account at the Kobo Store, and looked for a free/cheap book. I found "The Book of Five Rings" by Miyamoto Musashi, which I also have in print, and wish to re-read. The price was € 0.81. Excellent test subject.

1. Bought the book, and got the Adobe ASCM file.
2. Downloaded the book using Digital Editions by dropping the ASCM file into it.
3. Captured the DRM-EPUB from the "\Documents\My Digital Editions" folder and put it into my folder with original files.
4. Imported it into Calibre with the IneptEPUB de-DRM plugin active.
5. Calibre imported it, and could open it.
6. Put the de-DRM'ed version into my "Originals" folder too.
7. Opened the de-DRM'ed EPUB with Sigil (it
s actually very understandable), and extracted the XHTML files, and illustrations.
8. Used a commandline utility to remove all the HTML from the files. (edit: Converting to TXT using Calibre also works very well. Forgot about that for a moment.)

So I am now left with a perfectly clean set of text-files and a set of illustrations, and it will be possible to re-create this eBook in any format that any corporation can dream up, as long as they provide the tools to actually do so.

Oh, and the EPUB -> MOBI conversion works fine on the Kindle.

Now I'm just hoping that I never have to recreate the "Lord of the Rings" eBook myself, somewhere in the future...

I do not know if the text can be dragged out of the AZW/MOBI format this easily after stripping the DRM (which is the hardest part; and thanks to the programmers/hackers for doing that part).

So as said, I think I'm going to stick with EPUB as my archival format, at least for the time being.

[Geramita]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Google "Apprentice Alf". That will explain all your questions. If that is too technical/geeky, you have to ask a friend to explain. Nobody here can and will.

Thanks for the link to Apprentice Alf. Just to have the record clear, I'm dealing with a book that I have bought.

Having said that: although the Blog allowed me to find my book on my computer, I haven't been able to figure out how to download the "combined tools package" for calibre. I looked in the manual to see if it was mentioned, but it is not. Is there somewhere on the Calibre home page where that downloading is talked about? Again, thanks for any help.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Geramita

Thanks for the link to Apprentice Alf. Just to have the record clear, I'm dealing with a book that I have bought.

Having said that: although the Blog allowed me to find my book on my computer, I haven't been able to figure out how to download the "combined tools package" for calibre. I looked in the manual to see if it was mentioned, but it is not. Is there somewhere on the Calibre home page where that downloading is talked about? Again, thanks for any help.

Again, I cannot help you there. This time lack of knowledge is the reason, not lack of willingness (against MR posting rules) to help. We do have a MR sub forum that deals specifically with Calibre. We are even fortunate enough to have the developer of Calibre here as a member of MR. I suggest you post in the Calibre Sub-Forum. Try using the search feature first though and see if you answer might have been answered before in a previous post.

EDIT: On second reading your question, it does appear that you ask how to install DRM-removal tools. You are on your own again. The friend that needs to help you applies. And that is somebody NOT on Mobileread.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Geramita

Thanks for the link to Apprentice Alf. Just to have the record clear, I'm dealing with a book that I have bought.

Having said that: although the Blog allowed me to find my book on my computer, I haven't been able to figure out how to download the "combined tools package" for calibre. I looked in the manual to see if it was mentioned, but it is not. Is there somewhere on the Calibre home page where that downloading is talked about? Again, thanks for any help.

Send me a private message with your e-mail address, and I will assist you in de-drm'ing your book. I will need to know the format of the book: (mobi, azw, epub), and the store you bought it from.

Make sure that you can read the book on your computer and / or on your reader. That ensures that the book is legal. It's a prerequisite to be able to remove the drm. Please note that I said *remove*, and not *crack* the drm.

If you can't read the file on your computer or device then the reader/device authorization is not set up properly, or your book is not legal. In that case I cannot assist you because with missing authorization there is no way for the removal software to decrypt the file. I *won't* help you to crack an unauthorized file. (I likely even can't, because I'm not an encryption expert.)

As posting detailed instructions on Mobileread is (logically) not allowed, I won't post them.

[Angst]

My criteria for buying ebooks:

1. Price - I will buy the cheapest copy I can find. Agency 6 books are all the same price price, so...

2. Availability - some books are only available from one seller. i.e. Joe Abercrombie - First Law series. I could only find it in ebook form at amazon

3. Format - I prefer buying ePub books. Less likelihood of conversion errors. I once converted a .lit file to ePub and 2/3rds of the book was converted into italics.

4. Anywhere-but-Amazon. Not that I hate Amazon. I just want as much choice of sellers as possible. Amazon already has a huge customer base, so I try to support smaller sellers: i.e. diesel, kobo, etc. I hate what the agency six have done to competition. I doubt I will ever forgive them for what they did to Fictionwise.

[BearMountainBooks]

Before I bought my Kindle, I tried out the various "for pc" apps from B&N, Sony, Mobipocket and Amazon. Guess which one won? And not just the app, but the whole shopping experience from price on down the line was better at Amazon.

Someone on another forum mentioned that they have an app on their Kindle Fire to read any epubs they buy. I don't know which app, but I am guessing that moving to a tablet world opens up support for epub at least in this manner. Amz may provide a "reader" app for the tablet specific to epub. If they can find a way to make money on it, Amz will likely do it.

[sonofpendragon]

One thing that's always overlooked. Many folks don't have standalone readers of any kind, yet use the free PC equivolents. I know some of these work on other devices, but I am on about those who sit at the PC / Laptop to read, there are millions of them. Yet - for many years they would not have considered for one moment buying any download of any type, yet they will now buy from Kindle, and buy epubs from other outlets. They could have easily bought a PDF from Lulu or tons of other places, but did not and still, even now, do not. There has to be a reason for the change. If that can be identified and acted upon, then this is one area where alternate outlets could sprout up. It wouldn't solve all of the issues raised here, but it will help.

[calibrated]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Before I bought my Kindle, I tried out the various "for pc" apps from B&N, Sony, Mobipocket and Amazon. Guess which one won? And not just the app, but the whole shopping experience from price on down the line was better at Amazon.

Someone on another forum mentioned that they have an app on their Kindle Fire to read any epubs they buy. I don't know which app, but I am guessing that moving to a tablet world opens up support for epub at least in this manner. Amz may provide a "reader" app for the tablet specific to epub. If they can find a way to make money on it, Amz will likely do it.

I read epubs on my Kindle Fire using the Aldiko app, which I had to sideload because Amazon doesn't make it available to Fire owners in its app store. Nevertheless, it works great, and I find myself primarily buying epubs now. I like having a choice of stores to buy from, and I actually prefer reading in Aldiko to reading in the native Kindle app.

I seriously doubt that Amazon will ever provide an epub app, because their chief interest is in selling their own ebooks. Providing epub support would tend to dilute their own sales.