How can we convince Amazon to sell ePub format?

[KenJackson]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

It says that the security guys at airports were seeing a lot of Kindles.

When I proudly pulled out my Sony Reader to show my mother, she said, "Oh! Is that the new Kindle?"
That does not mean that she sees lots of Kindles. I'm not sure she's even seen one Kindle. What it means is that she has seen and heard a lot of advertising for the Kindle.

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

So why should Amazon sell books in EPub when their competitors, ones who joined the game after them, chose a different format and are not selling in Mobi?

Why? So they can sell more ebooks and therefore increase revenues and profit, of course.

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by KenJackson

When I proudly pulled out my Sony Reader to show my mother, she said, "Oh! Is that the new Kindle?"
That does not mean that she sees lots of Kindles. I'm not sure she's even seen one Kindle. What it means is that she has seen and heard a lot of advertising for the Kindle.


Why? So they can sell more ebooks and therefore increase revenues and profit, of course.

And why shouldn't BN, Kobo, and Sony do the same?

[screwballl]

So how do we convince B&N, Sony and the others to use the AZW format while we are at it? Make all readers read all book formats be damned of their individual rights to use whatever formats they want.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by KenJackson

As for EPUB vs MOBI, I wouldn't be opposed to Amazon selling corrupted Mobi books in a such a way that I could read them on my Sony Reader. I just focus on EPUB because it seems to be an excellent, open and widely-used format. I still haven't read even one Mobi ebook, so I can't compare.

Okay, you seem to keep saying the point of this thread is not that you want the actual Kindle to support ePub, like these discussions usually go, but for Amazon to sell a format compatible with other readers so you can use your preferred reader and also buy from your favourite retailer, have I got that right?

In which case, would you be okay with buying and converting the (admittedly few) DRM-free Mobi books that Amazon does sell?

Subterranean Press, a specialty SF/fantasy small press with a very good reputation (several of their books were up for Hugo Awards last year), sells their titles in the Kindle store DRM-free (you can also get a large number of them on better terms at the same price via Baen's Webscription, but that's beside the point)

.As an example, here's Clementine, a novella by Cherie Priest set in her post-apocalyptic steampunk zombie invasion AU, the first of which, Boneshaker, was nominated for Hugo.

If you scroll down to the Product Details, you'll notice it says "Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited", which is Amazon's not-so-secret code phrase for "this book is DRM-free". Books which don't list SDU or have a set number will be DRMed instead.

So voilà! Now you know how to pick out the non-DRM books which you can safely get from Amazon with a clear conscience.

Unless you're holding out for them to sell ePub versions outright, which I doubt will happen in the forseeable future, given that they won't even support the older Mobipocket style of DRM on the Kindle so that people can use Mobi library books or even their old Mobi purchases, even though they bought and own the company and technology outright.

And I say this as a Kindle owner who considers ePub both technically and practically superior and would dearly love it if Amazon did sell their books as ePub, just because it seems the more I pay for an e-book, the more likely there is to be some annoying formatting/typo to fix and that's much more inconvenient with Mobi, which is both very limited in functionality and closed to boot.

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

And yes, the people on this board are a small percentage of the people buying e-readers. So if a small percentage are finding their way here to ask about the Kindle and talk about their Kindles, how many more are out there using Kindles that are not posting here.

In Continental Europe Kindles are almost exclusively bought by customers who are mainly reading English language books and who are converting all other books into mobi with Calibre. These conversions often don't work very well, particularly so with regard to Umlaute and other letters that aren't being used in English. Amazon hasn't even bothered to offer the Kindle with a user interface in the local languages. There is no large, silent group of happy users. BTW, not even the warez sites are using mobi.

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

No where have I said that the Kindle is the most popular e-reader in Europe only that it is developing and growing its presence in Europe and across the globe. A year ago I was in New Zealand and Australia. The only e-readers I saw were Kindles. The security guard who checked my bag looked at my Kindle and went "You have the first generation? Are you going to buy the second?" And New Zealand wasn't even able to buy the Kindle at that point. What does that tell you?

That's very nice for Amazon but both countries are English language countries.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

In Continental Europe Kindles are almost exclusively bought by customers who are mainly reading English language books.

I don't agree, at least in Spain, sorry. Most of the people I know in Spain that have bought a Kindle read only in Spanish, so no great customers for Amazon.

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

I don't agree, at least in Spain, sorry. Most of the people I know in Spain that have bought a Kindle read only in Spanish, so no great customers for Amazon.

I stand corrected. However, I don't get that impression from the German language forums.

[KenJackson]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Okay, you seem to keep saying the point of this thread is not that you want the actual Kindle to support ePub, like these discussions usually go, but for Amazon to sell a format compatible with other readers so you can use your preferred reader and also buy from your favourite retailer, have I got that right?

Right. I do strongly support and desire open formats, but that's a secondary concern in this discussion.

Originally Posted by ATDrake

If you scroll down to the Product Details, you'll notice it says "Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited", which is Amazon's not-so-secret code phrase for "this book is DRM-free". Books which don't list SDU or have a set number will be DRMed instead.

Are you sure?
As an experiment, I installed Kindles4PC under Wine. It works just fine, as others have said. Then I 'bought' Common Sense by Thomas Paine. Since the price $0.00, I figured surely it won't be DRM corrupted. But it is. Good grief! It's public domain, available uncorrupted at the Gutenberg Project, and Amazon isn't even charging anything for it, so why oh why do they "protect" it with DRM? Bizarre thinking, that.

But looking back on the Common Sense page, I see that it also says Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited



It's not like I'm sitting here holding my breath waiting for Amazon to blink.

After I bought my Sony Reader, I started looking around and (oh my, my!) there's a HUGE inventory of EPUBs available that interest me on numerous websites for no cost, plus of course gobs of new releases for sale at Diesel, SmashWords, Borders, Sony Store and others. Some new books are even sold with no DRM.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

Taken a look at the world outside of the US recently?

Yes, have you? In Germany, the largest market in Europe (and the largest book market in Europe), 10,000 e-readers and about 100,000 e-books were sold in all of 2009 (the latest year I could find data for). That's about what Amazon sells in a *week*.

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Yes, have you? In Germany, the largest market in Europe (and the largest book market in Europe), 10,000 e-readers and about 100,000 e-books were sold in all of 2009 (the latest year I could find data for). That's about what Amazon sells in a *week*.

Yes? So what? Given that the first ebook readers were only introduced in 2009 this figure is completely irrelevant (we ignore the very substantial and widespread availability of high quality illegal ebooks at this point). We are just talking about a delay to the development in the US market, even though the large number of bookshops obviously favours the survival of the paper book. The main aspect is that Germany is one of the world's largest book markets and everyone - publishing houses, libraries and reader hardware providers are using epub. Amazon has no content, no hardware adapted to the market and is currently nowhere to be seen. Have you taken a look at Japan? Another huge market and Amazon isn't selling any ebooks. This wouldn't be the first time that the technical development in the US deviates from the rest of the world.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by KenJackson

As an experiment, I installed Kindles4PC under Wine. It works just fine, as others have said.

Oh, good news, thanks. I'd been trying to get it to work under Wine on my Intel Mac for ages so I could use a particular Windows-only tool to yield DRM-free Topaz files as a paranoid backup that I could use with future Kindle apps. I'll have to try updating Wine again.

Originally Posted by KenJackson

Then I 'bought' Common Sense by Thomas Paine. Since the price $0.00, I figured surely it won't be DRM corrupted. But it is. Good grief! It's public domain, available uncorrupted at the Gutenberg Project, and Amazon isn't even charging anything for it, so why oh why do they "protect" it with DRM? Bizarre thinking, that.

But looking back on the Common Sense page, I see that it also says Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited

That particular edition isn't available in Canada, so I chose another one from the "Customers Also Bought", The Prince, from the same "publisher", Public Domain Books, same SDU: Unlimited.

Loaded it up via Kindle for Mac, and then dragged the downloaded file over to Kindle Previewer (which gives normally gives an error message for DRM-ed Mobi, but opened just fine with this) and it also opens fine with Calibre, once I change the extension to .mobi.

Perhaps you grabbed the wrong file from the K4PC folder? It can be annoying the way K4PC names all the books by their ASIN.

Or maybe you ran into the same Calibre problem as I did (kept opening it with the K4Mac app instead of the built-in viewer until I renamed the extension from AZW).

In any case, pretty much every SDU: Unlimited book I've ever bothered to try, and most other MR posters' anecdotal evidence seem to indicate that books labeled with it generally are DRM-free.

Originally Posted by KenJackson

It's not like I'm sitting here holding my breath waiting for Amazon to blink.

Nor should you, I agree. One day, Amazon may sell ePub, but it'll likely sell Amazon-DRMed ePub which some enterprising clever people will have to figure out how to liberate.

In the meantime, people should just buy from the places which have the books they want in the format they prefer at the prices they like with service that's decent.

Works for me, which why I've probably dropped the cost of a brand new Kindle on Fictionwise's remaining MultiFormat selections during their coupon sales, since I started buying e-books these past few months, and will very likely be doing he same with Baen's Webscription this new year.

[K-Thom]

After nearly two years the German market is still rather small.

You're quite right that the German book market is concentrated on ePub solely. But keeping its size in mind, this also is a rather irrelevant fact in terms of numbers. Amazon indeed is having troubles convincing German publishers (contract terms, price, format? I don't know), so they are having a hard time.
If/as soon as Amazon comes to terms with the publishers, the game will start all over again. Amazon just has to offer better conditions.

Most German publishers aren't in favor of eBooks in general anyway, so they will decide by the money they earn. The don't use ePub because they are convinced by it. They use it because it's the only available working solution at the moment.
Offer them an alternative - a better alternative in terms of infrastructure, and there the Kindle is by far superior to any European solution - and most publishers won't spend a second thought about ePub.

And I know but one German publisher who's advocating ePub because it's an open format. So don't bet on their loyalty to the format. But since we're a pragmatic kind of folks (if we want to), we may simply choose to offer both formats.

[Terangan]

I registered just to say a few words in this thread although I'll posibly stay on the forum

To all of the ePub crusaders,

1) If Kindle doesn't meet your needs you have plenty of other devices to chose from. Don't want a reader that doesn't support ePub? Don't buy it. It's not obligatory to purchase a Kindle.
2) I don't see the need to introduce ePub in Amazon store. There are no problems in converting .mobi to .epub or the other way round. Those people who are not so into technology or simply don't give a damn about the file format are happy with what they get.
3) It's not true that popular formats are the best. Compare mp3 with flac. Book readers are for reading text for crying out loud! I do not need everything that epub is capable of. I just want to read text and I'm not interested in using a format because it's popular, trendy or advertised as "free and open".
4) Don't you dare call me a fanboy. I prefer a Samsung TV set to Sony TV set. I prefer Zen Vision:M to iPod. I prefer Pentax DSLR to Canon DSLR and I prefer Kindle to whatever else All of the above devices were purchased after doing a lot of thinking and comparing. Don't make idiots out of those who don't think as you do.

Now take into consideration that people are happy with their Kindles and please - don't wage a war in the name of the "holly" ePub. If you want to worship it then do it in private.

Have a nice day.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by Terangan

1) If Kindle doesn't meet your needs you have plenty of other devices to chose from. Don't want a reader that doesn't support ePub? Don't buy it.

We don't, no worries. It's still permissible to speak out against market and format fragmentation.

There are no problems in converting .mobi to .epub or the other way round.

There are, actually, for DRM'ed content. If I'd want to live a pirate's life, as it were, I wouldn't worry about it at all, obviously.

Compare mp3 with flac.

Wow, if that isn't a lousy analogy I don't know what is.

Book readers are for reading text for crying out loud!

No kidding.

... "holly" ePub.

holly (sic) epub indeed; 'nuff said.

[chas0039]

I currently download epub books from 4 different libraries. This alone, stopped me from buying a Kindle, but then, they want to sell ebooks, not ereaders.