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Kindle on the web is pretty rad but I was already happy with their desktop software. I just really, really want a polished eReader program for Windows and OSX that supports OPDS catalogues. Calibre can kind of do it but using the reader portion of the software is frustrating if you want to read a book and not just check the formatting after doing a conversion.
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Aug 10, 2011 20:56
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Mu Zeta posted:The DRM is such annoying bullshit and feels like it's 2004 again. If the music industry can offer DRM-free music on Amazon and iTunes then you'd think book industry would get their poo poo together. Except eBook sales are doing extremely well and picking up where music did not. So as long as people keep buying the format, its probably staying. Which does suck.
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Aug 10, 2011 21:10
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Nice, bring on the class-action lawsuit.quote:Hagens Berman has filed a nationwide class-action lawsuit claiming that Apple Inc. and five of the nation’s top publishers, including HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group Inc. and Simon & Schuster Inc. illegally fix prices of electronic books, also known as e-books. http://www.hbsslaw.com/cases-and-investigations/ebooks
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Aug 10, 2011 21:49
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Sporadic posted:Nice, bring on the class-action lawsuit. This is a good thing.
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Aug 10, 2011 22:08
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But how likely is an injunction saying that publishing houses can't set their own prices? That would be ludicrous, wouldn't it? Also, has iBooks even taken off with any significance? It's pretty silly that Apple was able to work out this agency pricing model when it seems to me that their ebook solution is not in use nearly as much as Amazon.
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Aug 10, 2011 23:36
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Centipeed posted:But how likely is an injunction saying that publishing houses can't set their own prices? That would be ludicrous, wouldn't it? Insider Haggling, or whatever its called where like-companies band together to create lovely prices for consumers, is against the law, isn't it?
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Aug 10, 2011 23:37
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Centipeed posted:But how likely is an injunction saying that publishing houses can't set their own prices? That would be ludicrous, wouldn't it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion posted:Collusion is an agreement between two or more persons, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair advantage. It is an agreement among firms to divide the market, set prices, or limit production. Depending on whether or not they can prove that it was an illegal collusion among an oligopoly I'd assume.
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Aug 10, 2011 23:48
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Centipeed posted:But how likely is an injunction saying that publishing houses can't set their own prices? That would be ludicrous, wouldn't it? Well, it isn't that publishing houses can't set their own prices...it's that Amazon can't pay the publishers' asking price and than sell it for whatever they want (which is what they use to do before the agency model and Apple got into the market) It was a power play from the publishers with Apple's help.
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Aug 10, 2011 23:55
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Does it matter if the collusion to keep prices high isn't on the same products? It's not like two or more publishers are competing over who gets to sell you a copy of your favorite author's new book. If you want to buy that book then you have to get it from the one publisher who is selling it; no one else can undercut them without breaking copyright laws. With older books you might have two publishers selling different editions of the same book though.
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Aug 11, 2011 00:08
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Centipeed posted:But how likely is an injunction saying that publishing houses can't set their own prices? That would be ludicrous, wouldn't it? Doesn't matter if iBooks took off or not, what matters is the Publishers used their 85% majority to force Amazon to change their pricing. The whole thing on Steve Jobs I think is just to get more media attention. I think the big question is: can Amazon set the price of the product they are selling at whatever they want? If so, then what the publishers did was price setting, and price setting is illegal. Its like Best Buy setting low CD prices to get people in to buy TVs. So I think its ok, and if so they have a case,but it definitely is not simple B&W.
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Aug 11, 2011 00:37
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Duckman2008 posted:Doesn't matter if iBooks took off or not, what matters is the Publishers used their 85% majority to force Amazon to change their pricing. Amazon does this for regular books all the time. Publisher's don't seem to mind when Amazon has loss leaders on that end. When it comes to ebooks, the publishers seem like they would rather it all go away.
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Aug 11, 2011 00:44
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Sperg Victorious posted:When it comes to ebooks, the publishers seem like they would rather it all go away. That is because if ebooks become popular then they stand to lose a lot of control over how books are distributed. With electronic distribution you don't need the resources of a huge publisher to get your book into the hands of a lot of customers. They saw what happened to the music industry when they tried to avoid digital distribution are are trying instead to get involved in digital distribution but to keep it under extremely tight control so that the general public doesn't have the chance to think of ebooks as something that can be acquired for free (or cheap) on the internet.
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Aug 11, 2011 01:04
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Sporadic posted:Nice, bring on the class-action lawsuit. If this means that Penguin USA will start selling e-books to Canada again, then I'm all for it. Penguin's for ebooks is ridiculous by the way. Seriously, 30 bucks for an e-book? They're out of their goddamn minds.
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Aug 11, 2011 03:37
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Does anyone know of a converter that will take an E-Book and convert to something my Kindle can read? Basically this is the E-Book: http://artint.info/html/ArtInt.html It's all on the web, and not a downloadable version. I have Calibre and Pocketmobi, but neither seem to let me just let it web crawl the site and convert to mobi. Any suggestions that doesn't involve saving a billion pages to my machine and doing it by hand?
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Aug 11, 2011 04:21
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You could save all the pages in instapaper and then download them all as a magazine. It consolidates them to one file at least.
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Aug 11, 2011 04:37
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Save all the pages locally, either manually or via spider, then create your own html file that loads all of the pages and pass that to Calibre?
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Aug 11, 2011 04:39
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that lawsuit is A Good Thing
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Aug 11, 2011 10:46
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The only thing I don't quite understand is why Amazon isn't involved in the litigation. Seems like it would be in their interest to have done this last year when the agency model was put in place. edit: Oh, the kindle on web thing looks like a way for Amazon to get around not being able to sell books through the kindle app for ipad/iphone. Sperg Victorious fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Aug 11, 2011 |
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Aug 11, 2011 14:44
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Sperg Victorious posted:The only thing I don't quite understand is why Amazon isn't involved in the litigation. Seems like it would be in their interest to have done this last year when the agency model was put in place. It doesn't work on the iPhones safari browser.
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Aug 11, 2011 16:20
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LamoTheKid posted:It doesn't work on the iPhones safari browser. It very likely will soon though. I'm actually more excited about it working on my PC than anything else, because the Kindle PC application was some Adobe Air powered piece of poo poo.
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Aug 11, 2011 17:17
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Sperg Victorious posted:The only thing I don't quite understand is why Amazon isn't involved in the litigation. Seems like it would be in their interest to have done this last year when the agency model was put in place. I think they can't get in on a class action lawsuit as a corporation.
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Aug 12, 2011 05:43
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trandorian posted:I think they can't get in on a class action lawsuit as a corporation. It'll be interesting if they file amicus curiae briefs though.
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Aug 12, 2011 14:49
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My Kindle was taken in a robbery so I now have to find a new e-book reader. Incredibly, the bastards missed my netbook so all I lost was the hardware and none of the books (I didn't use the e-bookstore that much). The problem is while I loved my Kindle, I was slightly annoyed over its non-upgradeable storage after I started to acquire books over the year and lack of ePub as result. While the new Nook looks interesting, it doesn't have 3G and it supposedly doesn't play well with Calibre which are two things I used quite a bit with the Kindle. The Sony devices aren't being made and the Kobo touch has no buttons so the screen could get messy besides no 3G. Unless the remaining Borders are having a fire sale on Kobo, What I look for to replace it?
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Aug 13, 2011 16:29
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Man if you got a ton of Kindle books already, why not just get a refurb or ad-supported Kindle? Stripping DRM and converting all of your books is going to be annoying.
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Aug 13, 2011 17:06
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Island Nation posted:My Kindle was taken in a robbery so I now have to find a new e-book reader. Incredibly, the bastards missed my netbook so all I lost was the hardware and none of the books (I didn't use the e-bookstore that much). Buy a kindle - unless you're reading nothing but manga and PDFs there's no way to reasonably use up all the storage space - and if you are, you shouldn't be using e-ink devices anyways
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Aug 13, 2011 18:27
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Thanks for the info, I suppose another Kindle wouldn't hurt but is Amazon likely to announce a new reader soon? Getting a new one isn't a emergency since I do have enough dead tree books to tide me over until the insurance check comes in.
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Aug 13, 2011 20:18
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Island Nation posted:Thanks for the info, I suppose another Kindle wouldn't hurt but is Amazon likely to announce a new reader soon? Getting a new one isn't a emergency since I do have enough dead tree books to tide me over until the insurance check comes in. Rumor is that they'll have 7 and 10 inch tablets in the coming months. Some are saying that they'll have dual screens.
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Aug 13, 2011 20:40
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Island Nation posted:Thanks for the info, I suppose another Kindle wouldn't hurt but is Amazon likely to announce a new reader soon? Getting a new one isn't a emergency since I do have enough dead tree books to tide me over until the insurance check comes in. They're doing a tablet in October, but it's not E-Ink Rumor has it they're doing a Kindle Touch then as well, which will just be a Kindle 3 without the keyboard. I'll take the keyboard version any day.
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Aug 13, 2011 20:44
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Island Nation posted:My Kindle was taken in a robbery so I now have to find a new e-book reader. Incredibly, the bastards missed my netbook so all I lost was the hardware and none of the books (I didn't use the e-bookstore that much). My Nook Touch works great with Calibre... mobi and epub. 3G seems pretty pointless on an eReader, how badly do you need instant access to new books? Wifi is everywhere!
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Aug 14, 2011 00:20
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Eyecannon posted:3G seems pretty pointless on an eReader, how badly do you need instant access to new books? Wifi is everywhere! Well he said he uses it all the time. 3G was nice when I would go to the beach. I imagine that it would also comes in handy if you ride any type of public transportation or don't have a home network or a phone or if you don't want to be Call Me Charlie fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Aug 14, 2011 |
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Aug 14, 2011 01:28
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Yeah, G3 is one of those things I've always wished I had when I needed it. Although, you have access to AT&T hotspots, so going into a McDonald's parking lot is a good way to get around that.
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Aug 14, 2011 01:33
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Sporadic posted:Well he said he uses it all the time. I like it for when someone mentions a book that sounds interesting. I can go and download the sample IMMEDIATELY. (I now have >100 samples I have yet to read.)
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Aug 14, 2011 01:51
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Eyecannon posted:My Nook Touch works great with Calibre... mobi and epub. Have you had a reader with 3G? Because you're just flat wrong. I've had two now, and would always chose to buy one with 3G. Hotspots are nice, but riding on a bus, or in a car, I can buy what I want. No need to do any setup, just pull the trigger. Useful, and I use it all the time.
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Aug 14, 2011 12:18
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Eyecannon posted:My Nook Touch works great with Calibre... mobi and epub. Have you had a reader with 3G? Because you're just flat wrong. I've had two now, and would always chose to buy one with 3G. Hotspots are nice, but riding on a bus, or in a car, I can buy what I want. No need to do any setup, just pull the trigger. Useful, and I use it all the time.
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Aug 14, 2011 12:26
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Eyecannon posted:3G seems pretty pointless on an eReader, how badly do you need instant access to new books? Wifi is everywhere! Free wifi is not everywhere and if you're looking at a Kindle it's a small price difference for a great feature. And thinking of it as just for books is, well, dumb. I use it to check blogs and Wikipedia on a regular basis instead of using the small screen of my smartphone or dropping considerably more money on a decent tablet.
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Aug 14, 2011 15:28
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The other important thing to realize about the Kindle's 3G connection is that it is a one-time cost, not a monthly fee like a phone. It's impossible to tell whether I've used the 3G "50 dollars worth", but I know I've been glad its there when I've needed it. Of course, "needed it" usually means checking my email/a map/Wikipedia or silly stuff like that, but you know what I mean. I don't have a fancy smart phone, so this is the only way I can accomplish any of that on the road. Even a lot of the 'free' wifi around here involves opening a browser, giving up your cell phone number, waiting for a password to be texted to you (not always immediately), and being time-limited. It's cool to be able to just fire up the 3G in seconds when I want to buy a book or read my email.
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Aug 14, 2011 15:39
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Kind of weird that there are about a dozen games on Kindle that people have made and a Calendar app. Where are the Facebook/GMail/Google+ apps? Using 3G via their experimental browser can get it done, but a dedicated app would be convenient.
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Aug 14, 2011 16:23
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Philthy posted:Kind of weird that there are about a dozen games on Kindle that people have made and a Calendar app. Where are the Facebook/GMail/Google+ apps? Using 3G via their experimental browser can get it done, but a dedicated app would be convenient. I don't think they can use the free 3G with active content. There are a ton of limitations on developers.
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Aug 14, 2011 17:18
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I guess I've never impulse bought a book before (if a friend recommends something, it can wait until the next time I have wifi). Also, I have a smartphone on which I do all my browsing/emailing/whatevering. That's another thing I like about the Nook over the Kindle, I rooted it and now I can do Gmail, Calendar, and Reader on it (still would rather use my smartphone for that stuff though, having colors and such).
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Aug 14, 2011 17:45
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I doubt I'd ever use 3G for impulse book buying, but I do have calibre set up to send newspaper, magazines, blogs, ect everyday. On trips, I've been lucky to be staying at places with free wifi, but otherwise I'd probably be searching out free hotspots. But even knowing that I would be doing that all the time, I don't know if I would have opted for a 3G kindle when I bought my wifi only kindle.
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Aug 14, 2011 21:45
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