Amazon to allow downloads of DRM free books

[lkmiller]

Originally Posted by Kye

Good point. I was just mentioning them to be as thorough as possible.

I forgot to mention that Edgedancer is also not downloadable for me. However, I appear to have an older version, so that's likely why. Intererestingly, the metadata for my copy says it's from Tor Publishing Group. The current version is from Dragonsteel.

The hardcover of Edgedancer is from Tor. (And it's also in the collection Arcanum Unbounded from Tor.) But if Tor originally also did the ebook of Edgedancer and it only later went to Dragonsteel, then the earlier version is probably in limbo. Tor can't flip the switch for something they no longer publish, and Dragonsteel can only flip it on their version. But if Dragonsteel was always the ebook publisher, maybe they just haven't gotten to this yet. Regardless it should be DRM-free in non-kfx format.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Thank you very much to everyone that had information and suggestions regarding ebooks by Brandon Sanderson available as EPUB from amazon. Based on posts by Sanderson's editor, Peter Ahlstrom, in the thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=311429 I decided to try Tress first and got a few pleasant surprises for the KF8.

The EPUB is only a little larger than the azw3. 4.4MB vs 3.9MB. As expected, based on the above thread, the EPUB has quite a few GIFs. (Of course, amazon could have converted them, but at least in this case, they did not.) I thought amazon converted publisher supplied GIF to JPEG for azw3, but they not only kept the GIFs in the azw3 and they are byte for byte identical to those in the EPUB. Many of the JPEGs were also byte for byte identical to those in the EPUB. Interestingly, some azw3 JPEGS only differed in that they are 1 byte larger. (All the other bytes are identical value, I guess amazon requires JPEG images to be an even number of bytes in size.) I also see from the above thread that amazon converts PNG to GIF, so I guess the GIF format is expected to be retained after all. Kind of sucks regarding PNG if that is still true.

It looks like amazon cares a lot more about file size than image dimensions. There are a couple of images about 1200x1800 and 250KB in the EPUB that are about 780x1200 and 123 KB in the azw3. None of the images were quite the sort I'm looking for, so I'll probably select another one soon.

It's good to know that Amazon is not fiddling with the graphics in their ePub downloads.

[rantanplan]

Just be aware that the Gollancx versions still come with DRM. Which is consistent with all other platforms. So please check that you’re indeed buying the Tor version.

[Kye]

Originally Posted by lkmiller

The hardcover of Edgedancer is from Tor. (And it's also in the collection Arcanum Unbounded from Tor.) But if Tor originally also did the ebook of Edgedancer and it only later went to Dragonsteel, then the earlier version is probably in limbo. Tor can't flip the switch for something they no longer publish, and Dragonsteel can only flip it on their version. But if Dragonsteel was always the ebook publisher, maybe they just haven't gotten to this yet. Regardless it should be DRM-free in non-kfx format.

Agreed, that was my thinking too. When I go to my Content Library on Amazon's website and click the title link for Edgedancer, I get a page not found error. So it's definitely an older unavailable version of the product.