Charles Stross on eBooks

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by kjk

Really? I think the exact opposite. I think Amazon is happy to have their eBooks on as many devices as possible...the Kindle was just the easiest and quickest way to get the platform established.

Which is why there are now Kindle Readers for the iPhone, iPad, Windows, and Mac platforms.

If they wanted them on as many devices as possible, they would have had all that from Day 1.

They would also let you buy directly from their website and download, no middleware or other crap needed.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

If they wanted them on as many devices as possible, they would have had all that from Day 1.

I think you underestimate the effort and complexity it takes to ship something as sophisticated as the Kindle on day 1, much less writing readers for multiple platforms.

As far as which is more important, I guess I'll take Jeff Bezos' word for it:

Bezos says charging a high initial rate without a monthly fee lets Amazon keep its Kindle hardware and eBook businesses separate, selling eBooks to Kindle owners as well as readers who use competing platforms such as the iPhone or competing standalone eBook readers, at the same prices it offers Kindle owners.

“We want to have the best electronic book store, and we want to have the best-built e-reader — not try to use one to thing to advantage the other,” said Bezos.

Bezos says charging a high initial rate without a monthly fee lets Amazon keep its Kindle hardware and eBook businesses separate, selling eBooks to Kindle owners as well as readers who use competing platforms such as the iPhone or competing standalone eBook readers, at the same prices it offers Kindle owners.

“We want to have the best electronic book store, and we want to have the best-built e-reader — not try to use one to thing to advantage the other,” said Bezos.

Is so? Does this mean they will soon be offering all e-books in epub as well?

[kjk]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Is so? Does this mean they will soon be offering all e-books in epub as well?

Ask him.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custom...deId=200127470

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by kjk

I think you underestimate the effort and complexity it takes to ship something as sophisticated as the Kindle on day 1, much less writing readers for multiple platforms.

As far as which is more important, I guess I'll take Jeff Bezos' word for it:

However, it is certainly very simple to have a website that delivers book files to anyone. Apparently some people have been doing it for many years. Amazon included at one time.

[leebase]

I liked hearing his perspective. I think he's right that people just think that ebooks are essentially free to make. And it's interesting to think that ebooks could have an affect on "breakout hits".

Lee

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

I'm actually noticing fewer and fewer proofreading errors in the latest batch of books I've procured. Occasionally there's a formatting error here and there.

Paper books are hardly magical creations that are typed up by fairies and thus immune from typos and errors, by the way. It's only a matter of time before publishers start dedicating the kind of resources to proofreading and formatting for the electronic editions as they do to the paper ones.

And hopefully soon... a book I just picked up from B&N started out cleanly (always make those preview pages clean), but has deteriorated halfway through to at least 1 OCR error per page, which is getting to be highly annoying at that rate. It deters me from even wanting to buy books at all, knowing what kind of quality (lack thereof) I'm likely to get.