Rant: Kobo, B&N, disappearing downloads, and backlit devices

[TimW]

Originally Posted by taustin

No, they said it's a security issue. That is not evidence of what they think.

Also, they never said what they were trying to secure. It could be the ebooks, it could be their revenue stream. Or it could be their place in the Top Ten Stupid Ways To Go Out Of Business List.

I phrased it that way to be mildly facetious. Ordinarily, a security update is in the customer's benefit. This one was not. There was some murmuring among the regular posters that the removal of the download buttons was in response to increasing chatter on the boards about "future proofing" Nook books. Removing the download buttons does hinder that process a bit. When Alex says "Additionally, customers can also continue to sideload other supported file formats," that's a significant difference in their earlier policy. They're fine with sideloading of other vendors' books, but not theirs. That's a big change. Overall, it was a security update...for B&N. Or so they think.

[Dr. Drib]

I thought you said your post was a rant?

Seriously, don't buy any more books from Kobo.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Genre fan

Then I have to deal with the guy telling me that I should have known (HOW was I supposed to know this???...so I can get credit (not a refund?) for the $4 plus tax that I was (over)charged yesterday....

I've had a similar and equally frustrating experience with Kobo customer service about 2 years ago.
I've received a book with corrupted cover.
Response from customer service: "It looks the same on the website, you should have known".
In my frustration, I've started a brief thread here in mobileread. Then 2 employees of Kobo did jump in and one of them actually did solve my problem by adding the correct cover to the webstore.

Lessons learned:
- "You should have known" seems to be a well used phrase in Kobo's CS.
I find this ridiculous. Why do I "have" to know anything about their webstore? There are tons of alternatives, I don't want to bother at all (about any webstore).
- You don't get a refund, but tons of excuses. Amazon on the other hand gives you a refund "no questions asked".
- In my thread, lots of people stated, my claim would be useless and unnecessary, I simply should change the cover myself via calibre. Hey, I didn't download an illegal copy, just to avoid time wasters like that. I don't want to touch it.
- On the other hand, Kobo seems to be quite active in some threads here and some employees proactively try to solve your problems.
Over all, I'm still fine with Kobo. But in comparison to Amazon, their internal guidelines (about refunds and such) seem a bit too harsh, rigid and inflexible.
If I'd have to choose, I'd choose Amazon over Kobo in an instant - mainly because of such experiences.
That's what I really love about the experience with Amazon, and same with Apple:
If there's a problem, first of all you get an excuse.
I don't want them on their knees.
But I don't want to hear "you should have known" either.
And as their second action, your problem gets solved. Often enough, you even might get some bonus for your troubles. Clever business ethics, in my book.

[Genre fan]

yippee!!

I just got a refund from Kobo for the two books that were not downloadable. Today's nice customer service lady was much easier to deal with than yesterday's grumpier man. "Of course you don't want to have a book in your library that you can't use" and "I wouldn't want to read any book on my computer either." I spent a long time on hold while she put the refund in, but before we hung up I had an email saying that I should see the money refunded to my credit card for the two books within 48-72 hours. She assured me that it would cover the actual prices I paid, not the lower prices currently posted on the website.

Great! I still worry about the changes that are happening, though. I may eventually end up going back to paper books, but I have been spoiled by my e-readers in being able to carry a thousand books around all the time.

[Genre fan]

I am not against any particular vendor. I've seen a lot of griping about Kobo, B&N, and about Sony's reader store when it existed. I've seen a lot of negative things about Amazon and Google, too. People don't usually post about their positive experiences. As long as the books get to me in a way that allows me to read them and back them up, I really don't care about many of the things people have complained about. I like buying directly from the publishers and authors if I can, but most of the time I can't.

The vendors are just merchants brokering the books that the publishers put out. There are a lot of problems with the publishing business that we as consumers and readers don't really see. I can't comment on the validity of the Kobo rep's statements about the problem having to do with the way the books are uploaded to their site by the publishers or about the sneakier ways that vendors try to lock in customers to their own devices. My main interest is getting the authors' works into my hands in a way that will allow me to still be able to read the books in years to come.

I did not buy a kindle because I did not want to be locked into Amazon, the kindle devices just weren't as good as my Sony at the time, and there were not a lot of other options readily available to me at the time. While I am not particularly interested in supporting Jeff Bezos's empire, mostly I avoid Amazon because I find it to be a painfully slow and difficult site to navigate, so I don't shop for books there. Those webpages take many times longer than any other bookstore's pages to load! So far, I have purchased 2 short stories from Amazon that were not available from any other source (and still aren't, per the author). I found out where they are located on my computer, imported them to calibre, and converted them to epub. As for stripping DRM, the only reason I ever looked into it had to do with an absolute lack of interest on the part of the sellers/publishers in fixing some faulty character encoding that caused some of my books to be almost unreadable. Otherwise, I never would have learned about stripping DRM. If I understand the law, since I am playing around with the books only for my personal use, without intent to violate the rights of the copyright holders, it is no more illegal for me to 'damage' the files I've purchased than it is for me to do something to change the physical books that I own, perhaps by putting on a new cover so they look prettier on the shelf.

The thing is, the people who should have the most interest in rights protection and control are the authors and artists who produce the products that I want to buy. I'm not sure the whole DRM system works to protect their rights at all. How does having no download options on B&N profit and protect the authors? Unless the authors want to be part of trying to force us to buy more copies of their books just because someone in the chain of custody decides to be a butthead by making it difficult to access the previously purchased material...

[GERGE]

I think techwise Kobo has best readers (with their TypeGenius, customizable fonts, water-proofing and light that can be easily adjustable and closable) but their shop is, understandably, focused at their own readers.

You shouldn't buy from Kobo if you don't have a Kobo. For independent devices buying from Amazon and converting is the best solution. It is very easy on the Mac with a simple folder action. Books are downloaded to this folder: ~/Library/Containers/com.amazon.Kindle/Data/Library/Application Support/Kindle/My Kindle Content

So, just use this folder action: http://cl.ly/0i0R2h2O3W1c (you might need to reset the folder)

It will copy .azw files to your Download folder everytime you download one from Kindle for Mac app. After that, search for Apprentice Alf.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Genre fan

The thing is, the people who should have the most interest in rights protection and control are the authors and artists who produce the products that I want to buy. I'm not sure the whole DRM system works to protect their rights at all.

You're kind of preaching to the choir on DRM for most of us here, I think. It's never my object to steal a book when stripping the DRM -- it's my object to use the book the way I want to use it. That's all.

As for Kobo ... I hope they get this mess straightened out at some point. I now own a Kobo Reader but also a Sony Reader. If I happen to have the Sony with me, I'd like to be able to download and read any Kobo book on it -- seeing as though I have a Kobo Market app right on my T2 now. At the very least (as I said before) they must let Sony Reader know specifically which books will (and won't) work on their devices. I don't think that's an unreasonable request.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Genre fan

yippee!!

I just got a refund from Kobo for the two books that were not downloadable. Today's nice customer service lady was much easier to deal with than yesterday's grumpier man. "Of course you don't want to have a book in your library that you can't use" and "I wouldn't want to read any book on my computer either." I spent a long time on hold while she put the refund in, but before we hung up I had an email saying that I should see the money refunded to my credit card for the two books within 48-72 hours. She assured me that it would cover the actual prices I paid, not the lower prices currently posted on the website.

Great! I still worry about the changes that are happening, though. I may eventually end up going back to paper books, but I have been spoiled by my e-readers in being able to carry a thousand books around all the time.

I don't think I could ever go back to just having paper books to read. One thing I like to do is use the FFdownloader in Calibre to create books from my favorite Harry Potter fan fics, and being able to read a chapter or more while on the go is something I don't want to go without. Not to mention it's easier by far to store ebooks than try to collect any more paper books. And of course with ebooks you don't have to wait a week or more for them to arrive via mail or find a way to get to a brick and mortar store to purchase them either.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by GERGE

I think techwise Kobo has best readers (with their TypeGenius, customizable fonts, water-proofing and light that can be easily adjustable and closable) but their shop is, understandably, focused at their own readers.

You shouldn't buy from Kobo if you don't have a Kobo. For independent devices buying from Amazon and converting is the best solution. It is very easy on the Mac with a simple folder action. Books are downloaded to this folder: ~/Library/Containers/com.amazon.Kindle/Data/Library/Application Support/Kindle/My Kindle Content

So, just use this folder action: http://cl.ly/0i0R2h2O3W1c (you might need to reset the folder)

It will copy .azw files to your Download folder everytime you download one from Kindle for Mac app. After that, search for Apprentice Alf.

I have a Sony reader and all my Sony books were moved to Kobo so Kobo needs to work with Sony devices.

[Cosimo]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I have a Sony reader and all my Sony books were moved to Kobo so Kobo needs to work with Sony devices.

I wonder if there is a time limit in the agreement as to how long they will support the Sony devices.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by Cosimo

I wonder if there is a time limit in the agreement as to how long they will support the Sony devices.

It doesn't matter to me if there is a time limit, all books are stripped of drm as soon as I get them and backed up on my pc & Iomega external drive.

Anyone who is foolish enough to believe or expect these companies to keep their books forever without doing a backup on their pc or other personal storage deserve whatever they get when their books disappear.

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by Genre fan

Another rant: if the books I want to read were all actually available from the public library, I wouldn't need to collect them in the first place! I like to read series of my favorite authors over and over, mostly genre books. I like to read all of the books in order, not numbers 2, 3, 7, 10, and 11 that are the only ones of a 13 book series that the local library has purchased. What good is it to have any of the books if you can't get the remainder of the series to get the whole story? It's even worse with ebooks because the library has fewer of them.

?

The NC digital library has some ebook series like this too. I don't understand this. If they have only enough money to buy five books in a 13-book series now, I would expect them to buy the first five - older books in the series are probably less expensive - then add the newer books later as funds became available.

You would think if Kobo went to the trouble of acquiring Sony's customers they would want to make it easy for Sony owners to buy from Kobo.

I've recently bought a few epubs from http://www.booksamillion.com/ and haven't had any problems so far.

In case the OP missed it, there was a recent thread about people's favorite epub stores where a few other stores were mentioned (interspersed with rants about Kobo and comments about removing drm......) The thread is probably only a page or two back in the General forum.

[Anthem]

Originally Posted by Genre fan

And I know the batteries in my beloved e-readers are going to die sooner than I'd like, which will force me to deal with getting a new device and the only options available to me in the USA are readers that are locked into a particular vendor.

This is unfortunately true... but I have to say that a few of the "vendors" do a lovely job of making the experience of being locked in quite pleasant. Amazon has an amazing UX in their Kindle universe of devices and software/services.

Also, iBooks on the Apple platform is fun as well, although not as good as the Kindle stuff.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Genre fan

What is all this Cr@p of moving to all backlit devices anyway? Arghh!!! Am I the only one left in the world who doesn't want to spend my time looking at a backlit screen?

I see no signs that backlit screens are becoming more widespread. Tablets and phones have them, but they always have had them. Can you give an example of what way you perceive them to be spreading?

Many modern eInk devices are frontlit (eInk screens can't be backlit, for the simple reason that they're opaque), but frontlit eInk devices are a completely different reading experience to a backlit screen. The light only illuminates the screen in poor lighting conditions; you can turn it right down, or off, in good light. In poor light, however, the frontlight transforms the reading experience: I'd certainly never buy an unlit reader again.