DRM on e-books? Five possibly good reasons to crack it

[Julius Caesar]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You'd be surprised how many people look at you with a blank face when faced with the prospect of using command-line tools.

I agree with you that editing ebooks is not difficult, but then, neither is DRM removal.

You can run kindlegen without a command line. Just use Kindle Previewer to open the opf file. It would automatically generate the mobi file.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Julius Caesar

You can run kindlegen without a command line. Just use Kindle Previewer to open the opf file. It would automatically generate the mobi file.

But KindleUnpack requires a command-line, I believe? Under Windows, at least.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying there's anything hard about doing this, but it undoubtedly does require a certain level of technical knowledge to use these toolchains, and for anyone with that knowledge, I would suggest that DRM removal is not going to pose any obstacle.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But KindleUnpack requires a command-line, I believe? Under Windows, at least.

I think it has a TkInter interface as well. Otherwise there's the calibre plugin version.

I think the bigger barrier is simply knowing it exists.

[Man Eating Duck]

Originally Posted by HarryT

OCR problems have nothing whatsoever to do with DRM. Most modern eBooks are pretty good - it tends to be backlist books that have OCR issues.

OCR issues are seldom a problem with relatively recent books; most publishers have the manuscript in digital version. What is a problem is formatting, there is a lot of atrocious formatting in commercial epubs. Unless you remove DRM you can't do anything about it, without DRM it is usually a simple matter of removing CSS definitions. Unless I remove the 175% line height, 0.9in indents and 1.5in margins (all observed by me personally in books I've bought) the epub is practically useless for me.

Edit: Ninja'd by about ten posts, that is a personal "best"

[Man Eating Duck]

Originally Posted by HarryT

[...]it undoubtedly does require a certain level of technical knowledge to use these toolchains, and for anyone with that knowledge, I would suggest that DRM removal is not going to pose any obstacle.

No, of course it won't (yet). It will always be possible to make a character-perfect copy of any text you can view on your display. That is, however, just about the most ridiculous argument one can make in favour of DRM – it is ineffective, therefore it is OK.

No, it's not, because it will still be a nuisance for legitimate customers, and only those. You know, the people paying you money. If not before, at least when the DRM servers are taken down.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Man Eating Duck

No, of course it won't (yet). It will always be possible to make a character-perfect copy of any text you can view on your display. That is, however, just about the most ridiculous argument one can make in favour of DRM – it is ineffective, therefore it is OK.

No, not "OK"; merely "irrelevant". I strip the DRM from all the books I buy as soon as I buy them, therefore it is not a consideration one way or the other in my book buying.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Julius Caesar

If the conversion from printed book to ebook is 100% perfect, then I wouldn't even bother with the DRM. But it's far from perfect. OCR sucks. Typo here, typo there. Format oddities over here and there.

Just read Amazon customer's reviews complaining about typo and format oddities. They are everywhere.

As a side note, here's real life examples how DRM screwed consumers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital...t#Obsolescence.

This. Often there is stuff I want to fix in retail books. For some reason, some publishers do weird things like putting half a line of whitespace between paragraphs. In addition, they also sometimes omit justification. It makes the pages very unbalanced to read, especially so if these two are combined.

The two most used fixed here are removing margins and adding justification. Just adding an extra CSS p-tag in Calibre is not the solution, because often there are paragraphs you DON'T want changed. Mostly it's only the ones that make up body text, often called "noindent" for the first, and "indent" for the rest of them.

Then there is of course conversion from one device to another, and being able to shop at different stores. If DRM could not be removed so easily, I would never ever buy one single ebook. Then for me, e-reading would be for classics only.

Originally Posted by HarryT

OCR problems have nothing whatsoever to do with DRM.

Sure it does, and you know it. The poster obviously means that s/he can fix a non-DRM'd book, where it is impossible to fix one that does have DRM.

edit: oh, I'm slow. Note to self: read thread first.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Man Eating Duck

OCR issues are seldom a problem with relatively recent books; most publishers have the manuscript in digital version. What is a problem is formatting, there is a lot of atrocious formatting in commercial epubs. Unless you remove DRM you can't do anything about it, without DRM it is usually a simple matter of removing CSS definitions. Unless I remove the 175% line height, 0.9in indents and 1.5in margins (all observed by me personally in books I've bought) the epub is practically useless for me.

One thing I have observed is that many recent books from Wizards of the Coast (from Dungeons and Dragons and such) are very good. Clean formatting, very nice dropcaps, nice chapter headings, good maps.

If they only could do two things:

- DROP THE FRACKING BUILT-IN FONT. (Often "Charis".) Why do publishers do that? Some readers just prevent you from changing the font if one is built in. Also drop the font-family. Some readers use the mentioned font if they have it, and you can't change it.

- Drop the half-line spacing between paragraphs in many books.

For many people, these things would probably not be an issue, and the books would therefore be fine to them. Could it be that Wizards of the Coast attracts many (mainly) nerdy/technical people that are bound to know a lot about e-reading, have probably read a lot of their paper novels in the past, and therefore take care to make their books look good?

[Man Eating Duck]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Could it be that Wizards of the Coast attracts many (mainly) nerdy/technical people that are bound to know a lot about e-reading, have probably read a lot of their paper novels in the past, and therefore take care to make their books look good?

It's actually not very time-consuing to make a good-looking ebook if you know what you're doing, and care enough about the result to put in that time. There are people on the forum who could do it in their sleep. The problem is that many (most?) publishers treat epubs as music files: as long as it's an mp3 (epub), it'll have the same content, it's good enough, right? Cheap wins the day. Subcontractors (or the resident geek) who actually does the conversion might not be very good at it, and the results are as you observe in many commercial epubs. WotC either got lucky, or cares enough about digital versions to do a similar amount of QC to what they do with their paper releases. I suspect the latter (where would you expect to find a higher percentage of nerds than amongst people working for WotC, after all?), and more publishers should follow their example.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

- DROP THE FRACKING BUILT-IN FONT. (Often "Charis".) Why do publishers do that?

There are a few reasons to embed fonts:
* The designers want the look of a particular font for presentation reasons.
* Your text might include special glyphs that are not present in standard fonts (I work in academia, and many researcher's names have strange letters in them).
* The most common reason is probably that the sweatshop/resident geek doing it haven't really given it it any thought, and left that option enabled in Indesign or whatever tool they're using.

The first reason can have merit in a few special cases. A classic might have a better presentation with an old-looking font, see "Three Men and a Dog" in the download section here for an example.
The second is strictly necessary in a few cases, but the third... well, I'll let you guess what I think about that

Originally Posted by Katsunami

- Drop the half-line spacing between paragraphs in many books.

That, along with justification and line height, is a decision based on taste more than anything. There are really no "right" choices, mostly what designers prefer. As a reader I prefer indens, no spacing, and that is by far the most common in our area of publishing.

On a side note it also has a significant effect on readability, which might be a consideration for some categories of books. We published a book about reading disabilities (paper edition), and the authors (experts in the area) had some very stringent requirements: The text should have a larger line height, shorter line length (larger font size was what we chose), "ragged right", spacing between paragraphs, and a sans-serif font. This would make it easier to read for people with reading disabilities, who were among the target audience. I learnt a lot about readability working with those guys, but I must admit that the result looked horrible to me

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Man Eating Duck

It's actually not very time-consuing to make a good-looking ebook if you know what you're doing, and care enough about the result to put in that time. There are people on the forum who could do it in their sleep.

Yeah, me, myself and I for example. If I feel like it.

The problem is that many (most?) publishers treat epubs as music files: as long as it's an mp3 (epub), it'll have the same content, it's good enough, right? Cheap wins the day. Subcontractors (or the resident geek) who actually does the conversion might not be very good at it, and the results are as you observe in many commercial epubs. WotC either got lucky, or cares enough about digital versions to do a similar amount of QC to what they do with their paper releases. I suspect the latter (where would you expect to find a higher percentage of nerds than amongst people working for WotC, after all?), and more publishers should follow their example.

If you're thinking that EPUB's are created, then you are wrong. They are generated. I've opened more than enough of them (WotC and others), and the ones from the same publisher invariably are coded exactly the same, down to the last detail.

And even the WotC EPUB's have mistakes, such as a negative margin between "Chapter 5" and "This is the title", making the lower text clash with the upper.

There are a few reasons to embed fonts:
* The designers want the look of a particular font for presentation reasons.

A designer should learn *PRONTO* that electronic media is not print media, and that users will want to choose their own fonts and sizes. So if a designer is doing fixed layout/fixed fonts on websites or ebooks, then s/he's doing it wrong.

* Your text might include special glyphs that are not present in standard fonts (I work in academia, and many researcher's names have strange letters in them).

Then embed a font with those glyphs, and use it for the words that need those special characters; not for the entire text.

* The most common reason is probably that the sweatshop/resident geek doing it haven't really given it it any thought, and left that option enabled in Indesign or whatever tool they're using.

Like... 90% of the time? I see Charis A LOT. It basically seems to be the defacto default for commercial EPUBs. Is Charis the default for Indesigner?

The first reason can have merit in a few special cases. A classic might have a better presentation with an old-looking font, see "Three Men and a Dog" in the download section here for an example.
The second is strictly necessary in a few cases, but the third... well, I'll let you guess what I think about that That, along with justification and line height, is a decision based on taste more than anything. There are really no "right" choices, mostly what designers prefer. As a reader I prefer indens, no spacing, and that is by far the most common in our area of publishing.

As a designer of electronic long text media, you don't prefer *anything*, except maybe for chapter headings, title pages, illustrations, that sort of stuff. You let the user decide through the settings on his device. So you don't fix your fonts, sizes, line heights, or anything, because then you are possibly disabling features of the device the user is reading on; the features for which he bought the device in the first place.

On a side note it also has a significant effect on readability, which might be a consideration for some categories of books. We published a book about reading disabilities (paper edition), and the authors (experts in the area) had some very stringent requirements: The text should have a larger line height, shorter line length (larger font size was what we chose), "ragged right", spacing between paragraphs, and a sans-serif font. This would make it easier to read for people with reading disabilities, who were among the target audience. I learnt a lot about readability working with those guys, but I must admit that the result looked horrible to me

In paper, there is nothing else to do than to adhere to the requirements. A lot of stuff you are mentioning, maybe even everything (I have doubt about the justification), can be done by the device used, if you *DON'T* fix these options in the source of your file.

[Man Eating Duck]

@Katsunami post #70: I think we are in agreement about most of these issues; I only try to explain what I observe in commercial epubs, I certainly don't condone it

I meant generetated, not created, in most production lines there is not enough time to create epubs from scratch. It's not really necessary either if you are very careful about the styling of the text you export to the epub, and even more careful about inspecting the results. You need hand-crafted CSS though, I haven't seen any tool that can generate something sensible. That hand-crafted CSS can of course be reused.

As for layout design and digital media I believe you are right, people are way too concerned with conserving the paper layout, and consequently do silly things when creating epubs. This is part of the problem, along with a lack of research of best practices (or even knowing that there are best practices). My philosophy is also to leave as much as possible unspecified, and let the renderer sort it out.

I bought an epub a few weeks ago which left me pleasantly surprised, because it was sensibly formatted from the vendor. That is the first one of maybe 300 epubs I've bought over the years. Formatting in commercial epubs otherwise usually fall between bad and horrible.

I believe we're a bit off-topic here, however. To bring us back on-topic I think our conclusion is that many do have a need to touch-up commercial ebooks

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Man Eating Duck

@Katsunami post #70: I think we are in agreement about most of these issues; I only try to explain what I observe in commercial epubs, I certainly don't condone it

Ow, it was an explanation of why the markup is done that way. Hehe. In that case, you're preaching to the choir. (Don't worry, I do that too often as well.) I thought you were making a point to show why that markup was good or necessary. Sorry.

As for layout design and digital media I believe you are right, people are way too concerned with conserving the paper layout, and consequently do silly things when creating epubs. This is part of the problem, along with a lack of research of best practices (or even knowing that there are best practices). My philosophy is also to leave as much as possible unspecified, and let the renderer sort it out.

Indeed. Don't specify anything, or specify a default in such a way that the reader (device, that is) can overrule it.

I bought an epub a few weeks ago which left me pleasantly surprised...

I've bought another WotC book yesterday using the Kobo coupon, published within the last few weeks.

I've just opened it up in Sigil, and as far as I can see, it's absolutely perfect in its coding and markup: nothing is locked down, no weird whitespacing or margins, justification, nice chapter heading graphics, dropcaps, good layout, good cover, maps, perfect TOC, front matter and adverts in the back are all there (yeah, I actually LIKE the front matter and adverts; I get new reading material from that): it truly is an e-book that is 1-to-1 comparable to the paper WotC books I have. This is how an e-book should be.

The only small omission is that it has no metadata in it, apart from the publisher, but I can live with that. I would be very, very happy if every e-book I bought was like that.

But they aren't, and so that is one of my main reason to remove DRM.

[Mhtsos]

Five possibly good reasons to crack it

One reason is enough for me,I want to own the book I paid for.
Nothing more,nothing less.

[cromag]

Ditto.

And, having paid for it, I'd like to read it on the ereader of my choice.

[GeoffC]

A sledgehammer to crack a nut

DIY Kindle Scanner