Amazon has removed Download & Transfer option

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

It should not happen since the computer K4PC is running on is likely to have a high resolution colour display.

Just checked and a children's book that is nothing but images was downloaded by K4PC with 1472x1920 24 bit colour images while on a PW4, the images were 1109x1448 and in 8 bit B&W. This did drop the book file size from 32MB to 15MB.

This is why if the eBook has hi-res images, buy the ePub if there is one. I've never seen any store (other then Amazon) play games with the eBook you've purchased.

[latepaul]

Things like this are why I highly recommend getting into the habit of making a DRM-less backup copy as soon as you buy the book. Apart from anything else it saves you the future headache of having to do a great big bulk operation on all your books.

It's also an early warning system in that as soon as you start to have difficulties with a new book you can decide what to do. A few years back Amazon started making it increasingly difficult to use K4PC - forced updates and KFX-only downloads - and at that point I took the decision to stop purchasing from them. It seemed clear that the changes were deliberate and it was only going to get harder.

I have bought a handful of books since then that aren't available elsewhere, and I have some comics from my old Comixology account that were never available in DRM-free form (most were and I downloaded them at the time). The later I'm happy to read using the Kindle app or web reader.

Interestingly I've just discovered, because of this thread, that the book I bought in December which wasn't available anywhere else, is now not available on Amazon either but is still in my library and downloadable. Although I have a copy anyway per my original statement.

[lkmiller]

Originally Posted by lilywhite

I must be doing something wrong; they just import as tpz, and if I try to open or convert them, Calibre just tells me it can't do anything with that format. I'll take a spin through the tools again and see what I might be able to do. So far only one has been a book I care about, so I just bought it again, downloaded the new version, and returned it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You might actually have better luck with topaz with an older version of calibre and DeDRM. There may be some things that got lost in the switch from python 2 to python 3. But that might be more trouble than it's worth because it still may not work.

[Quoth]

The Amazon announcement suggests only WiFi devices after Download and Transfer ends.

My pointless Kindle DXG had the wrong time and date after battery was flat last time. However just now I turned on Mobile as usual got "EDGE", the high speed version of 2G nearly as fast as original 3G (The 3G later went about x10 faster if the cell wasn't busy and there was HSPA or similar upgrades).

Anyway, after a while online the time & date fixed and I tried Sync. Nothing changed.
So I went to My Content & Devices and "sent" an ebook explicitly to the DXG. Amazingly then the Sync on the DXG downloaded it.

The 2G / EDGE survives in some European places that don't now have 3G (though some may still have 3G) because of smart meters, traffic lights, or alarms that use GSM 2G/3G and because of Cell Breathing and other issues, the 2G (basic 14.4 kbps, EDGE 245 kbps) was always the reliable fall-back. That would have been rare in USA.

Obviously it's only old Mobi/KF7, but Calibre can Add it. While mobi is rubbish compared to azw3 / epub, it's OK for a novel that has all one body text (more than 90% of novels) and simple headings.

I'll check again once the D&T ends, maybe early March. The DXG battery was replaced a couple of years ago and mysteriously (unlike the K3) is still like new.

Edit:
It suggests either Amazon bought a bulk forever account for the SIMs and mobile/cell service, or they are currently still paying the local Irish mobile service provide for traffic at least. Perhaps the SIM accounts will end on the 26th of February 2025, though setting Time & Date probably still works as an emergency call works on Mobile Phone with no valid account.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

You might actually have better luck with topaz with an older version of calibre and DeDRM. There may be some things that got lost in the switch from python 2 to python 3. But that might be more trouble than it's worth because it still may not work.

Co-incidently I was reading about Topaz a few days ago. One version was actually a cunning idea:
1) Scan paper copy
2) The software does the usual OCR
AND
3) The software pattern matches all the images of the letters and generates a kind of average custom glyph rescaleable "font".
4) The Topaz file is then reflowable copy of scanned paper as images are replaced by indexes to the glyph table and single newlines are replaced by space. The OCR text is used for search etc.

I've never seen one. But the glyphs would be usually unique per book. However a 167 dpi or 150 dpi rendering of the glyphs might have been rather rough compared to a proper font on the Viziplex screen.

It sounds like a nice idea in theory, but obviously actual proof reading and editing produces a better result. Unlike mobi originally (though azw is Amazon encryption) which could use mobipocket encryption, I think it was Amazon encryption. I'm not clear on differences between .tpz, azw1 and azw2 versions.

When did they abandon it? Apparently there was once a PC program to create topaz files from scans?

It would certainly be much smaller than a scan in a PDF container.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It sounds like a nice idea in theory, but obviously actual proof reading and editing produces a better result. Unlike mobi originally (though azw is Amazon encryption) which could use mobipocket encryption, I think it was Amazon encryption. I'm not clear on differences between .tpz, azw1 and azw2 versions.

In practice, Topaz was never intended to be good. It was a way to quickly publish older books which lack digital sources and non-English language books.

tpz and azw1 are the same format. azw2 is something entirely separate: it is (was?) used to package game content.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ratinox

In practice, Topaz was never intended to be good. It was a way to quickly publish older books which lack digital sources and non-English language books.

It certainly sounds like a cunning scheme for quick paper source. Also the mobi format was only Latin-Roman, which was crazy in 2007 on first Kindle as that was solved even before PDB on Palm OS (Palm OS was probably ASCII only for PDB) and Kindles ran Linux. I was giving Linux courses in 1998.

So Topaz was the only way apart from PDF (not on 1st Kindle) to have non-Latin-Roman on Kindles before azw3/KF8. In theory you could have a pretty good version of a Topaz-like scheme today.

Originally Posted by ratinox

tpz and azw1 are the same format. azw2 is something entirely separate: it is (was?) used to package game content.

Thanks. They dropped Interactive from Kindles ages ago.

[meghane_e]

@Jedi, There's a branch for a manual version of the Bulk Downloader that was added to yours, it basically helps if Captcha keeps coming up:
https://github.com/WeLackDiscipline/...nual-login.zip

You have to log in to the website (Amazon) yourself. Make sure the

user_agent = {'User-Agent': 'krumpli'}

That one worked for me.

The other thing, it took nearly 20 seconds to come back with a Device menu (which feels like forever!) but it was indeed working.

Update: As long as your Calibre has the deDRM stuff, DRM for the older (pre-2022) books will be removed.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by meghane_e

Update: As long as your Calibre has the deDRM stuff, DRM for the older (pre-2022) books will be removed.

It should be removed from newer books as well. Are you using the latest deDRM plugin?

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Curiously Google's Books & comics on Playbooks/Playstore must be the worst selling platform. Our own experience is similar sales on Apple and Nook and only some free downloads on Google.

An iPad/iPhone user, like Android (and I suppose Fire) can of course use almost any ebook retailer.

I couldn't get Calibre to talk to a reMarkable. I could transfer in/out only by Web Browser. Since it's very like the idea of the Sony DPT (which is not sold as an ereader), the reMarkable is certainly really aimed at a niche market and not readers of novels.

Google Play Books is very much forgotten about, and even they hardly push anything for it. I use it, and I still rarely hear about it and it has been a couple years since I've seen any promotions for it. I honestly think they only do it because they don't want to be left out on something Apple is doing.

The remarkable plugin I've seen isn't included by default by Calibre, and has to be installed separately. Hopefully it gets bundled in at some point.

[lilywhite]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

You might actually have better luck with topaz with an older version of calibre and DeDRM. There may be some things that got lost in the switch from python 2 to python 3. But that might be more trouble than it's worth because it still may not work.

I'm gonna give that a try once I'm done downloading everything!

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by ratinox

In practice, Topaz was never intended to be good. It was a way to quickly publish older books which lack digital sources and non-English language books.

tpz and azw1 are the same format. azw2 is something entirely separate: it is (was?) used to package game content.

Kindle Store had 88,000 titles when the first Kindle launched, and many of those were Topaz. I've always been curious about the Topaz toolchain and how much effort it took to produce a title in that format, who did it.

Kindle launched in 2007.

One of my Topaz books was published in 2005 in hardcover (surely printed from PDF), still in stock for $40, but not available in digital anywhere (except for me and whoever bought the Kindle edition when it was available). Some no name publisher in Nashville, maybe a 'vanity publisher' (and out of business it seems: web site does not load). How did it come to be in Kindle Store?

Three others are math books from Springer, a huge publisher.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Kindle Store had 88,000 titles when the first Kindle launched, and many of those were Topaz. I've always been curious about the Topaz toolchain and how much effort it took to produce a title in that format.

Reading about it, it seemed the only major effort was to scan, if there wasn't a scan. The Topaz format from scan seems to have been simple. No more complicated than regular OCR, as it was essentially OCR and deduplication of the scan elements used by the OCR to create glyph table. The aim being to avoid having to proof at all.

[Ma'am-I-Am]

What happens if you try to download .tpz to K4PC?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Quoth

No more complicated than regular OCR, as it was essentially OCR and deduplication of the scan elements used by the OCR to create glyph table. The aim being to avoid having to proof at all.

There was a proof stage somewhere between the ocr garbage and the final glyphs that were positioned on the screen. Having taken quite a few of the topaz books apart myself, it's clear that avoiding proofing was not a universal dodge by any means. I had several topaz books that actually rendered (and read) beautifully. Searching for text in the books was miserable, however, since it searched the included, but invisible ocr layer. The final product (glyphs positioned on the screen with some sort of coordinate system) was utterly unusable for searching or conversion to other formats.

The only conversion routines ever produced had to rely upon the underlying, mistake-ridden, ocr as well. So the results were never pretty. There was simply no way to match the glyphs from the matrices to letters in order to reconstruct the text of the book.