Epub 3

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by J. Strnad

Already Amazon has made the lack of advertising a feature by selling Kindles without "special offers" for $30-40 more.

I believe it is the other way around. Those "special offer" kindles are new. And they are selling that feature by reducing the price. It is just another way for Amazon to make money w/o lifting a finger. Now they make money even when you buy a Kindle and never buy a book from them. You can most certainly bet that Amazon is making more money from the advertising than the simple $30-$40. Argument is: but you won't even be bothered when reading. No thank you, I rather pay the slightly higher price and have my own standby picture, not a stupid ad.

[Katsunami]

In the end, the capabilities if epub3 will cause companies to put advertisements in books. Then you'll have free bestsellers, ad-sponsored. Many producers are thinking about this for dvd and blu-Ray too. Not for me. I'll never buy them. I'm already irritated by ads and trailers before the movies on a dvd.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

In the end, the capabilities if epub3 will cause companies to put advertisements in books. Then you'll have free bestsellers, ad-sponsored. Many producers are thinking about this for dvd and blu-Ray too. Not for me. I'll never buy them. I'm already irritated by ads and trailers before the movies on a dvd.

Exactly, we already effectively have ad-sponsored DVDs, they just forgot the making them free part!

[Katsunami]

I would not be surprised if bestsellers get ads, while staying at the same price they are now at, and that the ad-free versions are more expensive. This would be a way to "compensate for the rising costs of ebook publishing, without forcing the customer to pay more if they don't want to." I've heard it all before. Nowadays, I can come up with marketing gibberish without even having followed an education to learn how to.

Why should I *pay* (even if it is less) for a DVD that has *** ads in it? If I want to see ad-sponsored stuff, I can essentially watch my movies on the TV.

(Paper) Books are one of the very few things that are not spoiled by ads. (Sometimes they contain a preview chapter for another book, or reference to another book on the inside of the cover, but I don't really find that to be a problem.) It seems that everybody always wants to put in more ads. "I want more money. Oh, let's put in some ads!"

The correct way to get more money is to make a better, easier to use product that gets out of the customer's way, and not put on any restrictions such as DRM or "one vendor only"-propietary format.

Then, it will sell better, and you will have more money.

When I buy and ebook I just want the book to read. I don't want or need interactivity and I really don't want ads.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I'm already irritated by ads and trailers before the movies on a dvd.

Isn't that the truth. And then you rewatch it, and AGAIN your player says "this option is not available" when trying to skip to main menu directly. No, you have to skip a gazillion chapters of previews to get to your movie. Not all are like that, some blu-ray I got go directly to the main menu when inserting the disc.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Isn't that the truth. And then you rewatch it, and AGAIN your player says "this option is not available" when trying to skip to main menu directly. No, you have to skip a gazillion chapters of previews to get to your movie. Not all are like that, some blu-ray I got go directly to the main menu when inserting the disc.

Oppo, for one.
All their players let you skip anything and everything.
A lot of others, too.
Check in the reviews; it's usually flagged as a positive.

The thing about video disc ads is they're almost exclusively in-house ads (like the Nook "non-ads") so they don't bring in outside revenue. In other words, they annoy you for little or no monetary gain.

They probably would earn a bit of good will and more viewers if they simply labeled them as "Extras" or "If you liked this movie...".

[spindlegirl]

The most Orwellian part of that article is this:

With EPUB 3, publishers should be able to build software into their books that tells them how much a reader reads, when they read and for how long, for starters.

I'll stick to plain old gutenberg style epub tyvm :P

[Fugubot]

Katsunami,

To be fair, mass market paperbacks have had a lot of advertisements for years. Novels may showcase ads for other titles. But once you go to non-fiction mass market paperbacks, there are ads in books for financial services, magazines, household goods, all manner of tie-ins, etc.

Even before the printed book is dead and buried, there's some romanticization and nostalgia framing the discussion.

[plib]

Originally Posted by Fugubot

Katsunami,

To be fair, mass market paperbacks have had a lot of advertisements for years. Novels may showcase ads for other titles. But once you go to non-fiction mass market paperbacks, there are ads in books for financial services, magazines, household goods, all manner of tie-ins, etc.

Even before the printed book is dead and buried, there's some romanticization and nostalgia framing the discussion.

No. Even before the epub3 interactive, tracking, advertising abomination is rolled out, there's some trolls trying to tell us that it's all a big misunderstanding and not to worry about it.

[EowynCarter]

No, nothing to worry about. In the end, we customers decide.
Don't want tracking or advertising in your books, just don't buy them. And let the publisher knows why. And they'll come to their senses fast enough.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Don't want tracking or advertising in your books, just don't buy them. And let the publisher knows why. And they'll come to their senses fast enough.

Yes, the safest path for the privacy-comcerned is to just say no to epub3 books.

No, I don't think the publishers publicly advocating those practices will "come to their senses" fast enough. Or even slowly.

[Katsunami]

If all publishers do stuff like that, then you'll never be reading a current book. Also, many people just won't know, or even care. Maybe it would be best to just convert to epub, or to plain text and recreate the ebook yourself.

Not very user friendly though...

[ab78727]

The thing is that they haven't learned anything from the digital music industry. Does anyone remember how bad the world used to be when DRM'ed music was around? Formats galore, locked to one PC, horrible sync software, losing music when changing PCs, etc. Nasty business.

Now Amazon, Google, and etc. just sell you music with no restrictions and suddenly, it is now an impulse purchase. Publishers could transform the book world similarly but they are just being insane.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

If all publishers do stuff like that, then you'll never be reading a current book. Also, many people just won't know, or even care. Maybe it would be best to just convert to epub, or to plain text and recreate the ebook yourself.

Not very user friendly though...

There's only a point in that if lot of people do the same, then there is some reactions.
But then, seeing the number of people that have no problem with apple and amazon...

If all publishers do stuff like that, then you'll never be reading a current book.

If that's what it takes.