OK, starting to get a little peeved at the Connect Store pricing... - Page 3

Mohit25 · 10-24-2006, 04:53 PM

Da Jane

Powell's has a good selection - but how do you read their MS reader books on the Sony reader - they're DRM protected so you can't convert .lit files to .rtf or .doc like you could for an unprotected file (using a utility). PDF's are too cumbersome to read on the PRS given sizing issues.

BuddyBoy · 10-24-2006, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mohit25

... how do you read their MS reader books on the Sony reader - they're DRM protected so you can't convert .lit files to .rtf or .doc like you could for an unprotected file (using a utility).

Depends on what country you live in.

BuddyBoy · 10-24-2006, 05:09 PM

I don't mean to annoy anyone by double posting this, but I'm annoyed that the Connect store would sell the old version of Freakonomics, and at full price yet! When I sent them a complaint, they treated as a suggestion to look into acquiring the new version, not the complaint of a customer who felt a little ripped.

I don't know, I love the convenience of the Connect store and not having to reformat my documents, but I'm not sure I want to keep buying from them until they get their act together.

tallguy · 10-24-2006, 06:54 PM

One other thing about Freakonomics - the ebook features suck! The "table of contents" does not have navigation to the actual chapters of the book. It seems to me if they are going to charge a premium for an ebook, they should at least put in the electronic features to make it worth it.

BTW, although I'm complaining about the content, I love the Sony Reader! I've read two books on it in the last week...

da_jane · 10-24-2006, 07:01 PM

Mohit25 - I use the convertlit device as I believe the drm to be unconstitutional.

BuddyBoy · 10-24-2006, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tallguy

BTW, although I'm complaining about the content, I love the Sony Reader! I've read two books on it in the last week...

I agree, the reader itself is very nice, though I'm eagerly anticipating the firmware revision for filing by category and/or genre.

So far the only two huge positives for me over the old Gemstar unit are screen quality (a biggie!) and battery life (a real treat).

Unfortunately, my experience with the Connect store and their (lack of) customer service have persuaded me to cancel my second reader on order. There's no point in buying two units to share connect title between myself and my roommate if I'm not going to be buying as much through the connect store anymore.

BuddyBoy · 10-24-2006, 07:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by da_jane

Mohit25 - I use the convertlit device as I believe the drm to be unconstitutional.

tallguy · 10-25-2006, 09:37 AM

Can we re-sell ebooks? Would it be possible to transfer my license to a book that I've purchased to someone else? It seems like the lack of that ability is a fairly significant downside to the whole e-book idea. When I buy a book from amazon, I can read it and then sell it to the local used book store and get a couple bucks back.

I've been reading Freakonomics - the book talks about economic incentives for doing things, and it makes perfect sense. If there is no economic incentive to the whole ebook idea, the general public is not going to buy into it. There is obviously a good economic incentive to buying songs over itunes - rather than buying a whole album for $12-$18, you can buy the one good song for $1.

BuddyBoy · 10-25-2006, 10:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tallguy

Can we re-sell ebooks? Would it be possible to transfer my license to a book that I've purchased to someone else? It seems like the lack of that ability is a fairly significant downside to the whole e-book idea. When I buy a book from amazon, I can read it and then sell it to the local used book store and get a couple bucks back.

I've been reading Freakonomics - the book talks about economic incentives for doing things, and it makes perfect sense. If there is no economic incentive to the whole ebook idea, the general public is not going to buy into it. There is obviously a good economic incentive to buying songs over itunes - rather than buying a whole album for $12-$18, you can buy the one good song for $1.

I think there's a complex web of incentives that drive e-book usage, and it's often not always financial.

For me, I'm willing to pay a price that reflects a slight discount from paper copies in exchange for a) having a library that travels with me, b) getting instant delivery of a desired book, and c) the reduction of storage space as opposed to that required for paper books. I'm willing to trade off resellability and lendability in exchange for these. In fact, trading off lendability can actually be an asset - my friends are excellent bookkeepers!

What I hate about ebook pricing, is ebook copies that are still priced at the hardcover level after paperbacks have been released. I understand why it is that way - the ebooks may have only a slight marginal cost (royalties, server fees, retailer margin), but they do have non-trivial fixed costs which, depending on how few copies are sold, can equate to a very large per title cost.

Just the same, I think if they could bring the prices down a tad, they would have a chance of making it up on volume. Maybe. It's hard to say because the active ebook purchasing community isn't that large a market comparitively speaking.

Nightwing · 10-25-2006, 11:45 PM

May be the publishers and the on-line stores should get to gether to offer a converison service.

For old formats that fall out of voge and for those new unit with low content... Like a book binder of old... A dollar or so... Automate the process etc... Would transfer DRM over also...

Well just an idea...

Leaping Gnome · 10-26-2006, 11:08 AM

I'm sure it would help if they stopped having a dozen different DRM schemes all incompatible with each other and each respective reader and different books only available in certain formats. No better way to stagnate market growth than consumer confusion.

Cthulhu · 10-27-2006, 10:39 AM

I hope that I'm posting this in the correct thread (apologies if I'm not):
A number of people have discussed prices at different ebookweb vendors, and their prices. These and other people have mentioned DRM; my question is whether or not I can purchase data at ebooks.comor fitionwise.com, and then view that data file on the Sony Reader? Am beginning to think that the answer is 'maybe, with lots of time converting and searching through different file extensions.' Sadly, if that is true, then for me--and I have to think many other people who have or have not seen this forum--anything like the current incarnation of the Reader is a waste of time and money

WilliamG · 10-27-2006, 11:40 AM

Hah. My first Sony Connect experience = bad. I was interested to pick up "Running With Scissors," especially since it's only $2.00 as a promo right now. Well, as soon as you add it to your cart, it's $11.20. Yay Sony! :|

NatCh · 10-27-2006, 12:38 PM

I guess I need one of these to reply to this post:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

...my question is whether or not I can purchase data at ebooks.com or fitionwise.com, and then view that data file on the Sony Reader? Am beginning to think that the answer is 'maybe, with lots of time converting and searching through different file extensions.' Sadly, if that is true, then for me--and I have to think many other people who have or have not seen this forum--anything like the current incarnation of the Reader is a waste of time and money

You are correct that the Sony Reader won't display the formats you're talking about without quite a lot of work on the files.

However, for perspective's sake, recognize that the problem here is not that Sony doesn't display other people's closed, proprietary formats, but that the texts were sold in closed proprietary formats in the first place.

That's the risk we assume when we by things in such formats, and I'm sure that rluazon will be glad to expound on why that's a Bad Thing, as he has done so eloquently before.

The point is that whether or not they told us at the time (which they don't), when we bought books from ebooks.com et.al., we accepted that unless that particular format became the standard for e-books, we'd most likely lose access to those files at some point, when the formats are no longer supported by anyone.

Clearly, that same risk presently attaches to Sony's BBeB books from the Connect Store. If a standard format is adopted, and the vendors of these books convert their holdings into that notional standard, then we could probably get at them forever on whatever platform we like. Will Sony do such a conversion, if a 'standard' is adopted, no way to know 'til it happens (even if I am privately hopeful on that point). Will the rest of them do such a conversion under such circumstances?

However, it should be noted that in addition to its BBeB format, the Sony Reader also handles PDF, TXT, and RTF files -- without conversion -- and they are already pretty standard formats.

So, consider this, the fact that the Sony Reader doesn't handle fictionwise, ebook.com, mobipocket, or a host of other formats doesn't change the fact that it's a dandy piece of hardware, that (by most all accounts) is easier to actually read from than pretty much everything that's come before it.

I'm not going to let a prior investment in a closed, proprietary format stop me from taking advantage of that. It may slow me down on future investment in closed, proprietary formats (such as BBeB), but that's really another matter, and as long as I can get stuff to read in one of the other formats, I'm good.

And that is what you'll have to decide for yourself, Cthulhu.

airlik · 10-27-2006, 12:44 PM

I read the excerpt of the book by Paolini and thought it might be a good way to use some of the credit and see how I liked their DRMd books... and it came back with 3 versions of the book, two for 12.95 and one for 10.36 - seems odd that one of their demo books would have issues in the store.

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10-24-2006, 04:53 PM	#31
Mohit25 Member Posts: 23 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2006 Device: Sony Reader	Da Jane Powell's has a good selection - but how do you read their MS reader books on the Sony reader - they're DRM protected so you can't convert .lit files to .rtf or .doc like you could for an unprotected file (using a utility). PDF's are too cumbersome to read on the PRS given sizing issues.

10-24-2006, 05:09 PM	#33
BuddyBoy eBookin' Fool Posts: 310 Karma: 1008360 Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Vancouver, BC Device: Kindle Paperwhite, KK, iPad (Ex Prs 505, 500, Reb1100-2150, Rocket)	I don't mean to annoy anyone by double posting this, but I'm annoyed that the Connect store would sell the old version of Freakonomics, and at full price yet! When I sent them a complaint, they treated as a suggestion to look into acquiring the new version, not the complaint of a customer who felt a little ripped. I don't know, I love the convenience of the Connect store and not having to reformat my documents, but I'm not sure I want to keep buying from them until they get their act together.

10-24-2006, 06:54 PM	#34
tallguy Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2006 Device: sony prs-500	One other thing about Freakonomics - the ebook features suck! The "table of contents" does not have navigation to the actual chapters of the book. It seems to me if they are going to charge a premium for an ebook, they should at least put in the electronic features to make it worth it. BTW, although I'm complaining about the content, I love the Sony Reader! I've read two books on it in the last week...

10-24-2006, 07:01 PM	#35
da_jane Evangelist Posts: 405 Karma: 692 Join Date: Sep 2006 Device: Samsung Galaxy Note 3 \| Kindle Paperwhite \| iPad Mini	Mohit25 - I use the convertlit device as I believe the drm to be unconstitutional.

10-25-2006, 09:37 AM	#38
tallguy Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Oct 2006 Device: sony prs-500	Can we re-sell ebooks? Would it be possible to transfer my license to a book that I've purchased to someone else? It seems like the lack of that ability is a fairly significant downside to the whole e-book idea. When I buy a book from amazon, I can read it and then sell it to the local used book store and get a couple bucks back. I've been reading Freakonomics - the book talks about economic incentives for doing things, and it makes perfect sense. If there is no economic incentive to the whole ebook idea, the general public is not going to buy into it. There is obviously a good economic incentive to buying songs over itunes - rather than buying a whole album for $12-$18, you can buy the one good song for $1.

10-25-2006, 11:45 PM	#40
Nightwing Addict Posts: 303 Karma: 541 Join Date: Oct 2006 Device: Cowon A2 Dell x3i, Sony Reader & Eee PC!	May be the publishers and the on-line stores should get to gether to offer a converison service. For old formats that fall out of voge and for those new unit with low content... Like a book binder of old... A dollar or so... Automate the process etc... Would transfer DRM over also... Well just an idea...

10-26-2006, 11:08 AM	#41
Leaping Gnome Evangelist Posts: 490 Karma: 1641 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Louisville Device: Sony Reader PRS-500	I'm sure it would help if they stopped having a dozen different DRM schemes all incompatible with each other and each respective reader and different books only available in certain formats. No better way to stagnate market growth than consumer confusion.

10-27-2006, 10:39 AM	#42
Cthulhu Technologist Posts: 488 Karma: 585237 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: I'm between Cities Device: SONY Reader PRS-500	I hope that I'm posting this in the correct thread (apologies if I'm not): A number of people have discussed prices at different ebookweb vendors, and their prices. These and other people have mentioned DRM; my question is whether or not I can purchase data at ebooks.comor fitionwise.com, and then view that data file on the Sony Reader? Am beginning to think that the answer is 'maybe, with lots of time converting and searching through different file extensions.' Sadly, if that is true, then for me--and I have to think many other people who have or have not seen this forum--anything like the current incarnation of the Reader is a waste of time and money

10-27-2006, 11:40 AM	#43
WilliamG Addict Posts: 303 Karma: 60998 Join Date: Sep 2006	Hah. My first Sony Connect experience = bad. I was interested to pick up "Running With Scissors," especially since it's only $2.00 as a promo right now. Well, as soon as you add it to your cart, it's $11.20. Yay Sony! :\|

10-27-2006, 12:44 PM	#45
airlik Connoisseur Posts: 76 Karma: 15 Join Date: Oct 2006 Device: Sony Reader	I read the excerpt of the book by Paolini and thought it might be a good way to use some of the credit and see how I liked their DRMd books... and it came back with 3 versions of the book, two for 12.95 and one for 10.36 - seems odd that one of their demo books would have issues in the store.

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