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jhowell · 06-03-2016, 10:20 AM

The main reason that KFX has not been already cracked is that it would not be useful to do so currently. KF8 retains much of the original EPUB/HTML source that was used to create the book. KFX is much more highly processed and a lot of details of the original HTML coding are lost in the process. Thus KFX is inferior to KF8 for the purposes of archival or conversion. As long as they continue to make KF8 easily available there is no incentive do anything with Amazon-delivered KFX files.

There is in fact a dis-incentive to releasing "tools" that support KFX before they are really needed because that would just push Amazon to make changes to block this access sooner than might otherwise be the case.

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The other arguments about Amazon taking away the means of production for book publishers make no sense to me. Publishers still provide e-books to sellers, such as Amazon, in the same formats that they did before. The existence of KFX doesn't change this at all.

Anyone selling books for use on Kindles that does not go through Amazon has a number of disadvantages including lack of DRM, having them segregated as "personal documents", and the need for the user to manually email or sideload files. Sure, not being able to make use of enhanced typesetting is an additional problem, but there are already enough barriers to this type of sale that it doesn't matter very much in the end.

06-03-2016, 10:20 AM	#407
jhowell Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,117 Karma: 92190133 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Charlottesville, VA Device: Kindles	The main reason that KFX has not been already cracked is that it would not be useful to do so currently. KF8 retains much of the original EPUB/HTML source that was used to create the book. KFX is much more highly processed and a lot of details of the original HTML coding are lost in the process. Thus KFX is inferior to KF8 for the purposes of archival or conversion. As long as they continue to make KF8 easily available there is no incentive do anything with Amazon-delivered KFX files. There is in fact a dis-incentive to releasing "tools" that support KFX before they are really needed because that would just push Amazon to make changes to block this access sooner than might otherwise be the case. --- The other arguments about Amazon taking away the means of production for book publishers make no sense to me. Publishers still provide e-books to sellers, such as Amazon, in the same formats that they did before. The existence of KFX doesn't change this at all. Anyone selling books for use on Kindles that does not go through Amazon has a number of disadvantages including lack of DRM, having them segregated as "personal documents", and the need for the user to manually email or sideload files. Sure, not being able to make use of enhanced typesetting is an additional problem, but there are already enough barriers to this type of sale that it doesn't matter very much in the end. Last edited by jhowell; 06-03-2016 at 10:44 AM.