[lulubel]

Chaeone, on 27 March 2011 - 03:49 PM, said:

having said that, the availability of e-books in ireland is scarce, and for some very strange reason i can't buy them off amazon.co.uk cos i'm in ireland

It's about point of sale. Apparently, the point of sale for ebooks is the customer's location (as opposed to the seller's location for physical products) and amazon.co.uk aren't allowed to sell books outside the UK. When you try to use your one-click payment method, they check your IP address for card security, and detect that you're outside the UK.

The obvious way around it is to use a proxy or VPN (virtual private network) that routes your connection through a UK server and displays that IP address rather than your own. Other people have done this, and report that it works.

As for me ... I'm in Spain, and I've been told numerous times on the Amazon forums that I can't possibly be ordering from the .co.uk site, except that I've been doing it for 6 months without any problems. I THINK it's because I only ever pay for ebooks with my gift voucher balance. I buy a gift voucher on my account and have it sent to an alternative email address, then apply the code to my account, and keep topping it up when I need to. I initially did it to keep track of my spending when I got my kindle, but I think it's also the reason I'm not prevented from buying from amazon.co.uk - they don't check my IP address because I'm not using a card. (I haven't mentioned this on Amazon's forums because I guess it's a loophole they're not aware of.)

As for the kindle itself, my partner bought it for me back in October last year for my birthday, and my first thought was, "What have you bought me THAT for?" I've always been a real book snob, and couldn't imagine reading anything but a "real" book. But I had to pretend I was pleased and start using it, and it turns out I haven't read a real book since! I've got the leather cover, and it's so light and easy to hold, unlike a hardback, and unlike a paperback, I don't spend my whole time trying not to crease the spine. The best thing for me is the convenience. I finished GotM on Friday night, and yesterday I decided it was time to start DG. I found it on Amazon, clicked the download button, and was reading it a minute later. There's a slight delay on the page turn if it's been in the sun for a long time, and it's got hot, but usually it moves on faster than I could turn the page in a book. Oh, and the ink screen is fantastic. Not relying on backlighting means you can actually see it in the sun to read!

[QuickTidal]

lulubel, on 27 March 2011 - 07:28 PM, said:

Chaeone, on 27 March 2011 - 03:49 PM, said:

having said that, the availability of e-books in ireland is scarce, and for some very strange reason i can't buy them off amazon.co.uk cos i'm in ireland

It's about point of sale. Apparently, the point of sale for ebooks is the customer's location (as opposed to the seller's location for physical products) and amazon.co.uk aren't allowed to sell books outside the UK. When you try to use your one-click payment method, they check your IP address for card security, and detect that you're outside the UK.

The obvious way around it is to use a proxy or VPN (virtual private network) that routes your connection through a UK server and displays that IP address rather than your own. Other people have done this, and report that it works.

As for me ... I'm in Spain, and I've been told numerous times on the Amazon forums that I can't possibly be ordering from the .co.uk site, except that I've been doing it for 6 months without any problems. I THINK it's because I only ever pay for ebooks with my gift voucher balance. I buy a gift voucher on my account and have it sent to an alternative email address, then apply the code to my account, and keep topping it up when I need to. I initially did it to keep track of my spending when I got my kindle, but I think it's also the reason I'm not prevented from buying from amazon.co.uk - they don't check my IP address because I'm not using a card. (I haven't mentioned this on Amazon's forums because I guess it's a loophole they're not aware of.)

As for the kindle itself, my partner bought it for me back in October last year for my birthday, and my first thought was, "What have you bought me THAT for?" I've always been a real book snob, and couldn't imagine reading anything but a "real" book. But I had to pretend I was pleased and start using it, and it turns out I haven't read a real book since! I've got the leather cover, and it's so light and easy to hold, unlike a hardback, and unlike a paperback, I don't spend my whole time trying not to crease the spine. The best thing for me is the convenience. I finished GotM on Friday night, and yesterday I decided it was time to start DG. I found it on Amazon, clicked the download button, and was reading it a minute later. There's a slight delay on the page turn if it's been in the sun for a long time, and it's got hot, but usually it moves on faster than I could turn the page in a book. Oh, and the ink screen is fantastic. Not relying on backlighting means you can actually see it in the sun to read!

Actually, it's not at all about point of sale....it's kind of a variation on it thought, so you're half-right.

What is really at issue here is that Book stores/online sellers that are in your country (like Chapters/Indigo does here in Canada) have gotten the rights to a number of author's works as eBook exclusivity. Thus, I cannot buy for example James Patterson's books for my Kindle in Canada, because Chapters/Indigo bought the rights in Canada for use with the Kobo exclusively. That's why you are able, in Spain, to buy and use amazon books on your Kindle from the co.uk site, there isn't anyone claiming the rights in Spain, so any of the amazon sites can sell them and there is no cross-border issues.

There are, of course, ways around this. Buy the ebooks in your country from where you can get them online (I could buy a Patterson eBook from Chapters/Indigo)...and convert them to Kindle readable versions with conversion software which is fairly readily available and apparently dependable.

Take heart though...this exclusivity won't last. Like with the iPod and locked MP4's initially for sale from Apple, they eventually had to open it up so people could buy stuff and use it on other devices....I figure it is only a matter of time before amazon has to open their format up too so other eReaders can use the books and vice-versa...otherwise they will eventually lose potential customers....but we are still in a transitional period where eReaders are only still catching on...so publishers and online sellers are doing a bunch of private stuff to try to get out on top when the tech finally settles into the "norm". I use Apple as an example because remember how frustrating it was when iTunes first started selling but you could barely listen to your music anywhere else, let alone burn it properly. They HAD to come around as the legal digital music arena exploded and the populus would not have stood for anything less. the eReader has to be given the chance for such a flip to happen. I see them more and more on the transit and while it will be a slower conversion than the iPod, I truly think that were are likely a year or so away from the point when eReader population is more than 50% of the masses, at which point the shift should occur.

So far I have only noticed Patterson and Seanan McGuire being unavailable for me from the kindle store. And to be quite honest, if I find a few authors are not available to me I'm not going to be super pissed, I'll just buy the actual books for those ones. No biggie.

...and I like you LOVE books....but once I had my Kindle, there was no turning back...I love it SO much. Having my book collection with me in a thin, lightweight bit of slick tech awesome...is the best.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 27 March 2011 - 11:04 PM

[lulubel]

QuickTidal, on 27 March 2011 - 10:58 PM, said:

What is really at issue here is that Book stores/online sellers that are in your country (like Chapters/Indigo does here in Canada) have gotten the rights to a number of author's works as eBook exclusivity. Thus, I cannot buy for example James Patterson's books for my Kindle in Canada, because Chapters/Indigo bought the rights in Canada for use with the Kobo exclusively. That's why you are able, in Spain, to buy and use amazon books on your Kindle from the co.uk site, there isn't anyone claiming the rights in Spain, so any of the amazon sites can sell them and there is no cross-border issues.

I understand what you're saying, and I'm sure that's part of it, but that isn't what's happening here. I'm the only person who posts in the discussions on the Amazon forums who spends long periods of time in Spain and is able to buy ebooks from amazon.co.uk. Everyone else has reported being redirected to amazon.com as soon as they try to buy an ebook in Spain. So, I think the problem Chaeone is having is more to do with amazon.co.uk only being able/allowed to sell books in the UK than it is with exclusivity. This may be due to the way Amazon is set up as a company, though, rather than any outside legal issue.

[QuickTidal]

lulubel, on 28 March 2011 - 09:48 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 27 March 2011 - 10:58 PM, said:

What is really at issue here is that Book stores/online sellers that are in your country (like Chapters/Indigo does here in Canada) have gotten the rights to a number of author's works as eBook exclusivity. Thus, I cannot buy for example James Patterson's books for my Kindle in Canada, because Chapters/Indigo bought the rights in Canada for use with the Kobo exclusively. That's why you are able, in Spain, to buy and use amazon books on your Kindle from the co.uk site, there isn't anyone claiming the rights in Spain, so any of the amazon sites can sell them and there is no cross-border issues.

I understand what you're saying, and I'm sure that's part of it, but that isn't what's happening here. I'm the only person who posts in the discussions on the Amazon forums who spends long periods of time in Spain and is able to buy ebooks from amazon.co.uk. Everyone else has reported being redirected to amazon.com as soon as they try to buy an ebook in Spain. So, I think the problem Chaeone is having is more to do with amazon.co.uk only being able/allowed to sell books in the UK than it is with exclusivity. This may be due to the way Amazon is set up as a company, though, rather than any outside legal issue.

Indeed perhaps!

[Tamilyrn]

The showstopper from my point of view is that you cannot get your printed library into e-book format without buying all the books again.

This is a con of epic proportions. When I bought an ipod I didn't have to purchase 600 CD's worth of songs, I just imported the CD's I'd already purchased onto the ipod.

Amazon know which books I purchased and when so there is no technical reason why they can't make e-book versions available. I suspect the publishers are insisting on money per media type. Logically however, I cannot see why I shouldn't be able to access the several hundred books I've already purchased on a Kindle device.

[QuickTidal]

Tamilyrn, on 27 April 2011 - 11:51 AM, said:

The showstopper from my point of view is that you cannot get your printed library into e-book format without buying all the books again.

This is a con of epic proportions. When I bought an ipod I didn't have to purchase 600 CD's worth of songs, I just imported the CD's I'd already purchased onto the ipod.

Amazon know which books I purchased and when so there is no technical reason why they can't make e-book versions available. I suspect the publishers are insisting on money per media type. Logically however, I cannot see why I shouldn't be able to access the several hundred books I've already purchased on a Kindle device.

This is an odd argument. You had to do with with Tapes to CDs, and VHS to DVDs to now even BluRays.

You can't access the books you've bought in your library without purchasing it because why should they give you access to an eBook of a book you own simply because you own it physically. That would be like going to HMV and saying I own Empire Strikes Back on VHS, so give it to me on DVD for free. That makes little business sense doesn't it?

The publisher has had to find someone to convert old books to eBook format, they've had to do various things to get that eBook to the retailer. You pay for that conversion the same way we pay to have DVD's over VHS. The conversion of which is arguably EASIER than the conversion of Book to eBook...but we still had to do it.

The way I look at it, I bought my Kindle a few months back. Any future books I buy will probably be in eBook format (or at least most of them), and the books I already own will still grace my shelf and if I want to look at them I can pull them down and read the old book like they did in the OLD DAYS. LOL. If I REALLY want to have the book on my Kindle to re-read I can always purchase a copy of it for like $6 or $7 for the convenience of having it on there.

Can you fathom the money they'd lose by letting you download all the books in your physical collection just because you think that the new format should conform to your standards of right?

Digital music is a bad argument simply because a ripped CD music file is nearly interchangeable with a digital music MP4 file. There is no work involved in making it so. You can rip your CD's onto your ipod yeah...but no one had to do any work to make that happen. No one had to pay to make that file convert. You did it in seconds yourself.

You CAN convert your whole library onto an eReader....just sit down with each book, and type them out into word, save them out as a PDF, and voila! Too much work? Hmmmm.....someone had to do that work you are looking to get for free though.

[T77]

I'm with QT, I made the e-book switch a year or so ago and all future books will be e-books. I'm even going as far as any book on my TBR pile I will re-purchase as an e-book. Most of those books are from my favorite authors and I don't mind giving them more money.

As for them giving you e-books for all books already purchased, it's not going to happen. Even CDs that you purchased it is illegal to rip mp3's from them. I disagree with this, I think if you bought it you should be able to have it in any format, but again, I don't think it will happen.

This post has been edited by T77: 27 April 2011 - 02:02 PM

[Tamilyrn]

Fully agree that it is not going to happen but I disagree with the case that this is necessarily correct.

Can accept commercial justification to a point but paying twice for the same content doesn't make sense to me and personally I would not like to have some books on a reader and others in e-format.

The difference between this and VHS -> DVD etc. is that there is no per unit manufacturing cost to an e-book. There is no physical product to be made and the translation from final proof to e-book is simply the press of a button in MS Word -> ePUB.

As I see it, I have purchased the right to own a copy and read the content of the book so paying again for the same content in a form that costs the publisher nothing is a swindle.

It is incidentally perfectly legal to import your CD's onto your ipod - there is even a command in iTunes that will do it for you.

All personal views only of course.

[QuickTidal]

Tamilyrn, on 27 April 2011 - 03:52 PM, said:

The difference between this and VHS -> DVD etc. is that there is no per unit manufacturing cost to an e-book. There is no physical product to be made and the translation from final proof to e-book is simply the press of a button in MS Word -> ePUB.

As I see it, I have purchased the right to own a copy and read the content of the book so paying again for the same content in a form that costs the publisher nothing is a swindle.

No you haven't purchased any such rights (as it were). You have been allowed to buy it and read its contents...It is still, however, owned by the author/publisher. When you purchased the book you were allowed the book in its physical form and NONE other. T77 is correct in saying that ripping CD's to your computer as MP3s or MP4s is TECHNICALLY illegal as you bought it as a CD not a digital set of files. Same thing goes for DVDs....you COULD rip it to your compy, but that's also breaking the rules and is why some DVD sets recently include a DIGITAL COPY for use on compy and iPod.

It DOES cost money to convert the books, especially old books...I'm not sure where you get the idea that it doesn't, perhaps you ought to do a little research into that before posting. There may be no per-unit cost, but there is the initial cost of conversion and while currently released books are done at publishing time older books can require different methods. That cost, no matter how small is still cost. You think the publisher should eat that cost? They won't I guarantee it. Besides which, a clean Kindle-like conversion is not just a 1-2-3 step out of Word you realize. You can make a PDF, and eReaders will read them, but they are not usually converted to such a format, so there is work involved. That you think there isn't kind of makes me shake my head. It's not a swindle at all.

If you don't like that argument, how about the fact that you purchasing it is a safety for publishers and authors that you won't readily go off and make copies and pirate the thing online? You can't do that with your physical book, and I personally think publishers take a larger risk by having a digital file (so easy converted and passed one to others) out there with the random masses. How much do you think that safety is worth?

I really can't understand you feeling entitled to have eBook versions of your entire bookshelf. What is wrong with owning the books you already do in said format and buying new ones in eBook format? How does that do you so wrong? I don't get it. You were comfortable reading that way before, why can't you still be comfortable reading that way now? Why, because all of the sudden we have a reader technology, does that automatically mean you should have access to digital files?

I guess beyond all this, if you don't like this fact about eReaders, don't buy one and stick to the physical books. Easy peasy.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 27 April 2011 - 04:26 PM

[T77]

Another thing is that Amazon (not sure about other retailers) store your books for you in the cloud and let you download them an unlimited (at least I think) number of times for free. That costs money in storage media and bandwidth. And to me this is another big advantage of e-books. I like the fact that my books are backed up in the cloud and I can access them whenever I want.

[Aimless]

er. they have those books in their cloud anyway. After a few thousand purchases those megabytes should have been paid for forever

[alt146]

Has anyone seen anything about the reduced price kindle - the one for $115 instead of $130. Apparently the price is subsidised by 'unobtrusive ads', but they're a bit vague on the details. An ad in the screensaver I can handle (and it looks like it gives you access to some decent specials), but if it's like in-app advertising on cellphone's I'll just pay the extra couple of dollars.

[Yellow]

Not seen one, but I heard it was in the screensaver and homescreen... I seriously hope people avoid it, or before long it will become the default rather than the reduced price model. Blerg. Keep ads away from e-books, it's a horrible precedent to set.

[T77]

Aimless, on 29 April 2011 - 09:40 PM, said:

er. they have those books in their cloud anyway. After a few thousand purchases those megabytes should have been paid for forever

There's storage, redundant backups, server and network administration, hardware, software, customer service, and bandwidth. When you have millions of users with millions of books that certainly eats up bandwidth and adds calls to support where users are not being able or know how to download their book, etc. All of this adds up and is certainly not free. They could save a lot of money by only letting you download it once.

[Tamilyrn]

Quote

T77 is correct in saying that ripping CD's to your computer as MP3s or MP4s is TECHNICALLY illegal as you bought it as a CD not a digital set of files.

Not true - at least in USA. First sale doctrine (subject to clayton act exclusions) allows the purchaser to transfer a lawfully made copy of a copyrighted work without permission once it has been obtained. You have the legal right to make an archive copy (backup) and/or a transformative copy (e.g. MP3 from CD) provided you retain the original media. You also have the legal right to play on any device you can fit the music or movies on. Do you really think Apple (a multi-billion dollar based in the land of the lawsuits) would provide an 'Import CD' command on the File Menu of iTunes if it was illegal for users of iTunes to use the command. In fact, on the RIAA website they explictly say that there is no problem provided that the copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own.

Quote

It DOES cost money to convert the books, especially old books...I'm not sure where you get the idea that it doesn't, perhaps you ought to do a little research into that before posting. There may be no per-unit cost, but there is the initial cost of conversion and while currently released books are done at publishing time older books can require different methods. That cost, no matter how small is still cost. You think the publisher should eat that cost? They won't I guarantee it. Besides which, a clean Kindle-like conversion is not just a 1-2-3 step out of Word you realize. You can make a PDF, and eReaders will read them, but they are not usually converted to such a format, so there is work involved.

I maintain that the cost to getting from a completed manuscript to an e-book is negligable. The author submits his work in an electronic form, be it MS Word, Adobe PDF, Lotus or other. It *is* a clean conversion from there to any e-format you care to name. One of the principle design goals - and the main commercial driving force - of the readers is to be publisher accessible. They would hardly go about that by using RTOS firmware that required contortions from the publisher to support. And even if they did, two dozen software converters would hit the market a month after launch. As an example, Aspose is FOC, plugs straight into MS Word and works by hitting 'File - Save As'. Calibre is another popular word processing -> reader conversion tool and Amazon provide their own toolkits for Kindle translations.

I exclude ancient tomes and medieval scrolls from the above.

It's a good point made about storage, maintenance and backup costs of cloud hosting - I hadn't considered that.

In danger of polluting the thread here so I respectfully agree to disagree on the purchase price of e-books ... except that I do agree that e-readers are not for me !

QED

This post has been edited by Tamilyrn: 09 May 2011 - 02:31 PM

[Use Of Weapons]

Converting from standard manuscript submission format to eBook format is most certainly not as pain- or labour-free as you seem to want to portray it. Standard submission format varies by publisher, but in the main it is designed to allow editors and proofreaders to read it easily and make marginalia and notes about corrections and errors without obscuring the original text. Thus, double-spaced, ragged right margin (non-justifiied), fixed-width font and large page-margins are the very least you'd expect for a submission. And any formatting (like italics, bold, varied fonts or font-sizes) are indicated not by applying them literally to the text, but by underlining and adding comments in the margin as to the desired effect. A submission copy is _not_ something I, as a reader, would ever want to be presented with, and the process of converting it to readable copy is neither straightforward nor automatable.

I would opine that the process of preparing a manuscript for eBook publication is identical to that for dead-tree publication, apart from the very last stage and the involvement of dead trees.

[alt146]

I'll chip in that creating a good digital copy of a book is a major pain, I've converted enough documents from one format to another and had all the formatting explode to know. And that's once you already have a good digital copy. I'm sure a lot of books that were last published 15+ years ago don't exist in any sort of immediately useable digital form. If you feel you are entitled to digital copies of all your books (which technically you are since you are allowed to digitally back up stuff you own, but no-one actually obliged to provide them) then go find a digital copy of a book you own on a torrent site, run it through calibre and load it onto your ebook reader. Trust me, it will look nothing like the well polished ebooks you buy and that is all you would get if they put no effort into the process. And that's nothing compared to the logistal nightmare that would be involved in obtaining proof that the book you bought of amazon five years ago is actually yours and not purchased as a gift for someone else.

In other news my Kindle arrived last night! Got an amazon flip-open case with it too, since it was the only one that had a light that didn't require independant charging. So far pretty happy. Going to take a little while to get used to the brief flash of black every time you change pages, as well as not accidently changing page when shifting my grip. Other than that it's great, read a couple of pages and on the whole it didn't break my concentration on the book itself which is really all you want at the end of the day.

[QuickTidal]

jitsukerr, on 10 May 2011 - 11:02 AM, said:

Converting from standard manuscript submission format to eBook format is most certainly not as pain- or labour-free as you seem to want to portray it. Standard submission format varies by publisher, but in the main it is designed to allow editors and proofreaders to read it easily and make marginalia and notes about corrections and errors without obscuring the original text. Thus, double-spaced, ragged right margin (non-justifiied), fixed-width font and large page-margins are the very least you'd expect for a submission. And any formatting (like italics, bold, varied fonts or font-sizes) are indicated not by applying them literally to the text, but by underlining and adding comments in the margin as to the desired effect. A submission copy is _not_ something I, as a reader, would ever want to be presented with, and the process of converting it to readable copy is neither straightforward nor automatable.

I would opine that the process of preparing a manuscript for eBook publication is identical to that for dead-tree publication, apart from the very last stage and the involvement of dead trees.

@Tamyrlin

THIS.

That is all.

[QuickTidal]

alt146, on 10 May 2011 - 03:10 PM, said:

In other news my Kindle arrived last night! Got an amazon flip-open case with it too, since it was the only one that had a light that didn't require independant charging. So far pretty happy. Going to take a little while to get used to the brief flash of black every time you change pages, as well as not accidently changing page when shifting my grip. Other than that it's great, read a couple of pages and on the whole it didn't break my concentration on the book itself which is really all you want at the end of the day.

Awesome news!

Yeah, the page turning take a tad to get used to, but once you do you won't even notice it. Glad you are enjoying it so far!

[alt146]

I also 'jailbroke' my kindle, although it's really just running a script to access to the screensaver files. I'm surprised it isn't something they allow you to do by default, it's not like there is much else you can do to customise your device. The screen looks way more awesome now that I have fractals and space-scapes instead of Jane Austen