Epub coming to Amazon and the Kindle!!!

[Salgueiros]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Contrary to what most enthusiasts and standards fetishists believe, the book-buying masses don't give a hill of beans over the format of the ebook.
All they care is whether they can buy it at a fair price, not which format has a longer specsheet.

I very much agree with that. The only thing about Epub that interests me is that i am able to use it in my device, while the Amazon one i can't. I have no idea about the technicalities of each of the formats and quite frankly i don't care.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

So a nickel per epub would be okay? I was actually going to use that term in my post but thought the penny was a more wide reaching reference value. They are both meaningless though as all prices will eventually approach zero.

1- At a nickel you'd still be off by an order of magnitude. Amazon has made it clear that they don't see $0.99 as a baseline price. Their 70-30 royalty plan only applies to books sold at $2.99-7.99. Other price regimes, the rates revert to 50-50. They're in business to make money not to cater to pundits or rack up profitless market share and their clear goal is to average a gross margin closer to $2 per book than it is a penny. Or a nickel. Or a quarter. They may not be looking to rip off readers or writers but they're not about to sacrifice their company just to destroy their competitors. Kamikazes they ain't.

2- I seriously hope you are wrong, wrong, wrong, because basic economic theory tells us that as real price approaches zero, supply of new product also tends to zero. It is just as delusional to expect authors to work for free as it is to think consumers will pay *any* price for a book. Price elasticity has its limits both ways. Product pricing is an art more than a science but its goal is to maximize profit, not volume; lower prices are a means, not an end.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

basic economic theory tells us that as real price approaches zero, supply of new product also tends to zero. It is just as delusional to expect authors to work for free as it is to think consumers will pay *any* price for a book. Price elasticity has its limits both ways. Product pricing is an art more than a science but its goal is to maximize profit, not volume; lower prices are a means, not an end.

Maybe we need a more advanced economic theory, one where people pay what they can for their ebooks?

[Canuck_in_Japan]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Monopoly's aren't bad per se, but abuse of them might be.

I don't think the apostrophe means what you think it means...

[teadonkey]

Would this require everyone to buy new Kindles (if they wanted the feature) or would it be a software update they can send out?

[carld]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Maybe we need a more advanced economic theory, one where people pay what they can for their ebooks?

Please don't turn this into another one those threads.

[carld]

Originally Posted by teadonkey

Would this require everyone to buy new Kindles (if they wanted the feature) or would it be a software update they can send out?

I'm sure it's going to be a software update.

[teadonkey]

That's a relief. I just got mine in the winter; I would be miffed if the update required a new device.

[carld]

Originally Posted by teadonkey

That's a relief. I just got mine in the winter; I would be miffed if the update required a new device.

I can only imagine the storm of protests if Amazon said you needed a new Kindle to read ePubs. It'd be a public relations fiasco of cosmic proportions.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by teadonkey

Would this require everyone to buy new Kindles (if they wanted the feature) or would it be a software update they can send out?

It would of course be a software update, but more like a software regression as the Kindle can already read epubs, Amazon just has not allowed you to read them previously.

As far as turning this thread into another one of those... As opposed to another one of those other ones?

[carld]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

It would of course be a software update, but more like a software regression as the Kindle can already read epubs, Amazon just has not allowed you to read them previously.

As far as turning this thread into another one of those... As opposed to another one of those other ones?

That is factually incorrect. The Kindle cannot currently read the ePub format.

And that was me asking you not to turn this into another thread arguing about copyright and your belief in the innate right to copy other people's work. We've got plenty of those threads already.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by carld

That is factually incorrect. The Kindle cannot currently read the ePub format.

And that was me asking you not to turn this into another thread arguing about copyright and your belief in the innate right to copy other people's work. We've got plenty of those threads already.

I installed duokan software on my Kindle and now I can read epubs on my Kindle. It could be argued that I no longer have a Kindle but who would want to argue about something as crazy as that?

[RockdaMan]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

a software regression

So are you saying that supporting ePub is taking the Kindle platform backwards?

[carld]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

I installed duokan software on my Kindle and now I can read epubs on my Kindle. It could be argued that I no longer have a Kindle but who would want to argue about something as crazy as that?

You're no longer running Kindle software, period. Must you always do this? You know full well the Kindle doesn't support ePub, but you've got to make this claim just to have something controversial to say, and throwing a thread off topic. And you always seem to throw in a sideways insult to boot. I'm seriously considering ignoring you, just so I don't have to respond to posts like this over and over again.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by RockdaMan

So are you saying that supporting ePub is taking the Kindle platform backwards?

What I'm saying is that it is highly likely that a beta version of the Kindle software did support reading epubs, and then Amazon simply turned off support for them.

Maybe we should turn the thread into a discussion about whether or not it was right of Amazon to not support epubs from day one? I would say that no, it wasn't.