Amazon's introduces "Digital Replica" format

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

That kind of layout can be done with css and html....

Perhaps, but if so then only for a very specific screen and font size. If the user selects a large enough font on a small enough screen, and you won't be able to fit both columns on the screen, side by side, as the author intended.

Many books do very well within the confines of what current ebook formats provide. However, many texts benefit from a more fixed format -- as evidenced by, among other things, magazines on the Kindle vs tablets.

Dumbing down a sophisticated layout to basic text boxes and pictures is like listening to Mahler's Das Lied Von de Erde on a $5 mono transistor radio.

[elemenoP]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The issue is probably that these textbooks already exist in PDF format, hence offering them for renting is just a case of adding the DRM wrapper around the existing PDF. Reformatting them in ePub would be a massive undertaking, and one which the publisher probably wouldn't consider to be economically viable.

And even for textbooks that have not been converted to ebook yet, the conversion to PDF is just one click, whereas the conversion to ePub with all that formatting would be a tremendous headache.

eP

[mldavis2]

Textbook publishers will go with what's most profitable, not necessarily what people want. There is not much consumer leverage out here yet.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

There are textbook rentals already that are plain jane mobi. If the makers of... you know... are worried about it being abused, that particular cat is out of the bag.

And how many people rip library book to convert and read on their Kindle and then delete? If rental is an issue, then it should have been an issue then, not now, imho.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

There are mobipocket format textbook rentals? Could you point me to one?

It's a fair point about the library books.

Here's one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...w_myk_ro_title

This is the second in the series -- the whole series is available for purchase/rental EXCEPT, oddly enough, the first book in the series which is only available for purchase. Ah, publishers and their ineffable ways.

I read these in college and loved them, but I wanted to try the rental first before buying because the Amazon Kindle formatting worried me. Turns out I need not have worried -- the books are formatted beautifully and I highly recommend them.

But I did learn in the process that the rental mobi is -- best I can tell -- indistinguishable from the purchased mobi. Now, mind you, I bought the book outright (the rental price goes towards the buy price) before the rental period expired, so maybe the hypothetical epub I could have made to test the formatting-after-conversion on my Sony would have exploded after the rental period ended, I don't know. 'Course this is all intensely hypothetical.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

That kind of layout can be done with css and html. Not sure what's included in ePub3, but it might suppport this alredy.

CSS does columns, where if you add content to one side of the page, it scrolls to the other? How does it know/decide where the "bottom" of the screen is? (Not that columns are optimum for ebook readers; I'm just not sure I've ever seen web pages that use columns--and it'd be a great way to keep all of an article on a single screen without scrolling.)

I know that CSS can do text-boxes and variable indentations for different blocks of text and images with text-wraparound, and potentially tables/charts, and those should be enough to deal with textbooks. Not, of course, that any company is spending substantial time making reflowable textbooks instead of "here's the PDF we sent to print; wrap some DRM around it and throw it in the portable device."

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Here's one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...w_myk_ro_title

This is the second in the series -- the whole series is available for purchase/rental EXCEPT, oddly enough, the first book in the series which is only available for purchase. Ah, publishers and their ineffable ways.

Oh, how fascinating. I had no idea Amazon did this. Many thanks for the link.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Oh, how fascinating. I had no idea Amazon did this. Many thanks for the link.

I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that this seems to be another "US only" thing.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that this seems to be another "US only" thing.

Sorry about that Harry.

[John Connor]

Let's face it, whatever Human Beings create, they can also destroy - so any new encoding of data will, ultimately, be unofficially decoded, or just discarded.

As has been said before, the only real interest in a new format is how exclusive it is, and therefore how much can be charged for the privilege of using it. All you have to do is look at the queues around the Apple stores to see how the fashion-victim 'must have' state of mind can be warped and twisted.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by John Connor

Let's face it, whatever Human Beings create, they can also destroy - so any new encoding of data will, ultimately, be unofficially decoded, or just discarded.

As has been said before, the only real interest in a new format is how exclusive it is, and therefore how much can be charged for the privilege of using it. All you have to do is look at the queues around the Apple stores to see how the fashion-victim 'must have' state of mind can be warped and twisted.

Or perhaps - just perhaps, I stress - Apple make good products that people want to buy .

[pdurrant]

One fun point I forgot to mention in my first post:

Amazon gave their version of Mobipocket the file extension .azw
Amazon gave their new Topaz format the file extension .azw1
Amazon gave their "Print Replica" format the file extension .azw4

What's happened to azw2 and azw3?
Could one of them be intended for some weird ePub based format?

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

CSS does columns, where if you add content to one side of the page, it scrolls to the other? How does it know/decide where the "bottom" of the screen is? (Not that columns are optimum for ebook readers; I'm just not sure I've ever seen web pages that use columns--and it'd be a great way to keep all of an article on a single screen without scrolling.)

I know that CSS can do text-boxes and variable indentations for different blocks of text and images with text-wraparound, and potentially tables/charts, and those should be enough to deal with textbooks. Not, of course, that any company is spending substantial time making reflowable textbooks instead of "here's the PDF we sent to print; wrap some DRM around it and throw it in the portable device."

Yes, that:
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-multicol/#...i-column-model

I'm just not sure I've ever seen web pages that use columns--and it'd be a great way to keep all of an article on a single screen without

The css to do that iss all new. And most of times, it's just a bad idea.

Perhaps, but if so then only for a very specific screen and font size. If the user selects a large enough font on a small enough screen, and you won't be able to fit both columns on the screen, side by side, as the author intended.

It's works fine on pc. And it do reflow. But with the orizon, you get only the first page.
Multi columns on a small screen is just unreadable anyway, that the problem. And why it should be avoided.
e-book and p-book ARE different, handling them the same way is not always the right thing to do.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Presumably because it's being done primarily for textbook rental. Pure PDF doesn't have time-limited DRM.

PDF does have time limited DRM. It's just that ADE doesn't let you do enough with the PDF.

[pdurrant]

I've just uploaded an experimental version of MobiUnpack which (despite the increasingly inappropriate name) should now be able to extract the PDF from unencrypted Print Replica files. This essentially means the sample files at the moment.

I'd love to hear (in that thread) from anyone who gives it a go.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

One fun point I forgot to mention in my first post:

Amazon gave their version of Mobipocket the file extension .azw
Amazon gave their new Topaz format the file extension .azw1
Amazon gave their "Print Replica" format the file extension .azw4

What's happened to azw2 and azw3?
Could one of them be intended for some weird ePub based format?

The extensions are actually platform-specific. If you download a Topaz file in Kindle for PC, it will have a ".azw" extension. Since all these are just renamed PRC files, the actual contents of the file are identified by the "tag" within the PRC.