"eBook versions of owned paper books" Popular Front

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by braver

-- avoiding the key fact that Amazon, B&N and small web publishers for the first time in history...

This is an out and out lie. It cannot be described as anything else.

There is a web service which is used, very economically, by several small and one medium sized publisher. It has been running for a decade. It does not have DRM, it has reasonable prices. It is one of the few true success stories of ebooks.

So.. you lie. And you're a troll with no idea of the history of ebooks, or you're willfully fudging the argument simply so you can answer for a closed, DRM'ed ecosystem which is not in the long term interests of the book industry.

There are some perfectly happy Kindle owners on this forum, but to a lot of the regular posters, there are aspects of the Kindle which are, quite rightly afaik, criticised. If you're looking for a symphonic chorus of approval, this is the wrong place to be looking - there are plenty of kindle-only forums where you can get your feedback fix.

(Oh and incidentally, it's Webscriptions ofc).

[macminer]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

This is an out and out lie. It cannot be described as anything else.

Well, I do not want to get involved in any personal attacks, mutual trolling accusations etc., so don't take this personally, but I think you didn't get Braver's meaning right. What he said was:

avoiding the key fact that Amazon, B&N and small web publishers for the first time in history do have the way to prove physical purchases, upgrade to ebooks, and do it in an economical way

- so I don't think he meant that Amazon et consortes are absolute innovators in the realm of ebooks, but just that they have the infrastructure that allows them to consolidate the physical book purchases and subsequent ebook purchases. In other words, even if previously ebook providers could have given the option to upgrade pbooks to ebooks, they would have the following problems:

- It would be either impossible or extremely complicated (as they hadn't sold you the pbook beforehand)
- It would not be viable from the economical point of view
- They offered a rather limited selection of books, so even if they could offer an upgrade, the chance that they actually have the book that you wish to upgrade would be far smaller than with Amazon or B&N.

Incidentally, I've noticed that Mobipocket actually gives you some sort of automatical ebook upgrade (not from pbook to ebook, but from previous version of ebook to a new one). This happened to me with Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English; originally I bought the 3rd edition and now when I downloaded this dictionary again (because I upgraded my computer), I was quite pleasantly surprised to see that it's the 5th edition.

[braver]

MacMiner got it right again. Amazon is the first large-scale retailer -- in fact the largest store on Earth -- to provide both books and ebooks and keep records of both, already offering digital upgrades (though on the web only for now).

[Patricia]

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