It is the Worst of Times for Reading EBooks

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Three letters: KFX

It's never come up for me, none of the books that I bought from Amazon were KFX.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'm guessing (with no actual evidence, of course) that the vast majority of eink device owners the world over are mainly pleasure reading text.

A pretty safe bet

[leebase]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I solved most of the issues you mention by switching to reading mostly on a tablet.

In project management, there is an old saying - Cheap, Fast, Easy.

As an IT person, I'm very familiar with the truth in that statement. But seriously, it's not been "fast" anymore, we are talking a decade. A decade in which tablets have seen great improvements and they have come down in price below eInk readers.

I think the culprit is that eInk has turned out to be a niche market even among those who read ebooks (this forum being an exception).

Smartphones sell in the billions. Tablets sell in the hundreds of millions. eInk readers?

I think the other factor is the market has gone with integrated device/stores (Amazon, Kobo). You can't just make the eInk device and let someone else make the ebook app.

Amazon was ultra competitive when they entered and then dominated the market. The whole "buy a Kindle and get every NYT's best seller for $9.99" spurred on the market back when the devices themselves cost $400. That's what kicked off the war with the publishers in the first place.

But that was then, and this is now. Amazon has little competition they need to worry about.

Consider the Amazon app. It still doesn't have the wonderful features from Stanza, a company they bought many years ago. Every ebook app that isn't tied to a store (Kobo, iBooks) is better than the Kindle app.

It's not a horrible app. It's a decent app. But there is simply no incentive for Amazon to spend much time and resources making it better

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by leebase

There are no more independant eInk devices to speak of. Surely not of the quality of the Sony line. Pretty much "eco system" plays like Amazon, Kobo and Nook are all that's left. And only Amazon has a healthy business.

You may not remember, but Sony originally was well and truly locked into it's own ecosystem with the LFX format (DRMed LRF). The Sony Reader software was very feature poor. And when Sony went with ePub, they remained feature poor. Some of the Sony Readers were some of the worse Readers ever. The 600, 900, 700 were all awful. The hardware design did get better when Sony have out with the x50 line. But still an old version of RMSDK without hyphenation. Sony remained behind the times in their firmware until the T3 came out and that wasn't sold in the US.

So in terms of quality, overall Sony wasn't great. Sony did get better with the T line. But at that point, the hardware wasn't anything special. My Kobo Aura H2O is of better quality the the T line from Sony.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by leebase

Why isn't there an eInk reader that is agnostic and works with multiple book stores like an iPad or an Android tablet?

A Kobo Reader can handle eBooks from just about any eBookstore except B&N, Apple, and Amazon. That is if the eBookstoe sells ePub without DRM or with Adept DRM. A nook can handle all that Kobo can plus B&N. So really, that's a pretty wide choice of stores o buy eBooks from.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by leebase

IeInk innovation has all but come to a stop.

Yes, innovation has stopped which is why we now have plastic backed screens in new Readers from Kobo and Amazon. I think that is innovation. It makes them much less prone to damage from dropping and other things that crack a glass backed screen.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by leebase

Heck...when are the features we loved about Stanza going to appear in the Kindle app?

Stanza was rubbish from day one. It didn't respect the CSS inside the style sheet. Any program that overrides the CSS incorrectly is rubbish. Also, adding Stanza's features to the Kindle app isn't going ot make one bit of difference. Those features would also have to be added to Kindle Readers. And given that Stazna is/was rubbish, then no, that's not a good idea.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

1) Webkit and EPUB3 have nothing to do with each other. One is a rendering system used by many epub reading devices (or reading applications) and the other is an open spec that tries to define how ebooks should be structured. And EPUB3 added much in the way of metadata and semantics. You can't however, force people to implement them in their books or reading systems.

2) A very large number of commercially sold epubs are sold as epub3s. I buy them all the time. EPUB3 is very much "in the wild." Has been for some time, now.

But these ePub3 you ae talking about are nothing more then ePub2 in an ePub3 wrapper. How about ePub3 that's not backwards compatible with ePub2? There aren't many out in the wild. I would say less then 1% of all ePub for sale is ePub3 specific.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

It's never come up for me, none of the books that I bought from Amazon were KFX.

Almost all amazon books have been KFX for years. The only ways to avoid KFX from amazon are to use a device/firmware combination that doesn't have KFX support or to download for USB transfer.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Yes, innovation has stopped which is why we now have plastic backed screens in new Readers from Kobo and Amazon. I think that is innovation. It makes them much less prone to damage from dropping and other things that crack a glass backed screen.

Which amazon models have plastic backed screens? I do not know of any.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But these ePub3 you ae talking about are nothing more then ePub2 in an ePub3 wrapper. How about ePub3 that's not backwards compatible with ePub2? There aren't many out in the wild. I would say less then 1% of all ePub for sale is ePub3 specific.

There is no such things as an EPUB3 "wrapper." An EPUB3, is an EPUB3, is an EPUB3. EPUB3 is not defined by "containing non-EPUB2 compatible content." It's not any-less EPUB3 because it doesn't contain any multimedia or because it chooses not to make use of all meta-data elements available to it.

Most EPUB2s don't contain every single type of content and metatdata that EPUB2s CAN contain. Does that make them any less EPUB2?? Of course not. That line of thinking would be silly. As silly as suggesting a text-only EPUB3 is somehow an EPUB2 in your imaginary "EPUB3 wrapper."

The EPUB3 spec is inherently backward compatible with EPUB2 reading systems (so long as an OPF is present -- and they always are in commercial EPUB3s).

Your 1% is meaningless, because your "EPUB3-specific" and your "EPUB3 wrapper" are equally meaningless terms. There is tons of content being sold commercially by epub vendors as EPUB3, and tons of Kindlebooks are created from EPUB3s. The notion that they are "fringe" is not even a little bit accurate. Not any more. Get over your irrational and imaginary aversion to all things EPUB3 already. It's tired.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Almost all amazon books have been KFX for years. The only ways to avoid KFX from amazon are to use a device/firmware combination that doesn't have KFX support or to download for USB transfer.

And yet I buy hundreds of books from Amazon every year and don't have a single KFX book. Yes, I do use the download to USB transfer. I also own a paperwhite (2016) and oasis (Feb 2019). Sometimes it's time to stop beating your head against the wall and press the easy button.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Stanza was rubbish from day one. It didn't respect the CSS inside the style sheet. Any program that overrides the CSS incorrectly is rubbish. Also, adding Stanza's features to the Kindle app isn't going ot make one bit of difference. Those features would also have to be added to Kindle Readers. And given that Stazna is/was rubbish, then no, that's not a good idea.

The features I and so many others liked had nothing to do with the file format. Just two should have made it long ago. The ability to adjust the screen brightness by swiping up or down the screen (verses having to bring up a menu).

The ability to have both the left and right side touch areas of the screen page forward.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by leebase

As an IT person, I'm very familiar with the truth in that statement. But seriously, it's not been "fast" anymore, we are talking a decade. A decade in which tablets have seen great improvements and they have come down in price below eInk readers.

I think the culprit is that eInk has turned out to be a niche market even among those who read ebooks (this forum being an exception).
...

Amazon was ultra competitive when they entered and then dominated the market. The whole "buy a Kindle and get every NYT's best seller for $9.99" spurred on the market back when the devices themselves cost $400. That's what kicked off the war with the publishers in the first place.

But that was then, and this is now. Amazon has little competition they need to worry about.

Consider the Amazon app. It still doesn't have the wonderful features from Stanza, a company they bought many years ago. Every ebook app that isn't tied to a store (Kobo, iBooks) is better than the Kindle app.

It's not a horrible app. It's a decent app. But there is simply no incentive for Amazon to spend much time and resources making it better

Preach on, brother, preach on!

It bugs the heck out me when I try to use the Kindle app and it goes off into lala land while it's busy doing all the internal download things that Amazon want it to do rather than let me read the frigging book. As you say, Amazon has zero incentive to change that. That is why competition is good. Really, there is also zero incentive for Amazon to improve their ebook store either. I don't think there has been any serious improvement there in the past decade.

I keep waiting for the publishers to drop DRM at the non Amazon ebook stores like the music industry did when they wanted Amazon to provide some competition to the iTunes store. I think that I would likely switch my big five purchases to a non DRM store if that happened. Of course, now, if the publishers did that, Amazon would run screaming to the DOJ about anti-trust violations.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

And yet I buy hundreds of books from Amazon every year and don't have a single KFX book. Yes, I do use the download to USB transfer. I also own a paperwhite (2016) and oasis (Feb 2019). Sometimes it's time to stop beating your head against the wall and press the easy button.

Sometimes it's time to stop misreading what other people write. I always use USB transfer.