Grrr... Moving Apple iBooks to Kindle

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's a change from describing it as "major crime" a few posts back .

It is a major crime aginst ebooks to divert that attention. Apple has committed a major crime against ebooks.
That doesn't necessarily make the resulting product a crime as well.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I don't consider multimedia in EPUB3 to be a bad thing, I simply think it is misplaced priorities...

The idea of enhancing ePub 2 is ont a bad thing. The way it was done is a bad thing.

[JSWolf]

iBooks is a major crime against anyone who makes eBooks.

[darryl]

What will be interesting to see is the role of the author in some of these new ebooks, and the prices that they retail for. An ambitous major work would probably be more suitable for production by a team rather than an individual, with the actual author only one part. Think movie or game type production teams. To make a profit on such a production may well involve a very large retail price, particularly factoring in 30% for Apple or other retailers. This also means large businesses will probably dominate. It is a logical expansion to consider for some existing industries.

[thewitt]

I'm aware of a multimedia cookbook going through an editing cycle now that will include both still photos and video throughout the book. It's a three-person project. Very ambitious and likely to be a best seller.

[Tarana]

iBooks is a major crime against anyone who makes eBooks.

Oh nonsense. In the world of things, this is a minor blip. Sure, it's a painful blip if you kept buying ibooks and didn't know, but again, minor thing in the real world. I DO sympathize with the original poster. I wish I had a solution for you.

I bought one ibook (about $3) and found that I could not remove the DRM. Furthermore, I can't use the text-to-speech function on Ibooks with DRM, basically making them useless for me in the future. There is no way to even print a recipe from a cookbook or craft page from a knitting book. So, the DRM has made even these books worthless since cooking from them is difficult at best and a danger to your electronic device at worst.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Oh nonsense. In the world of things, this is a minor blip. Sure, it's a painful blip if you kept buying ibooks and didn't know, but again, minor thing in the real world. I DO sympathize with the original poster. I wish I had a solution for you.

Oh, do you make ebooks then?

Go ask Hitch -- she works in the biz, and she will tell you -- iBooks is a major crime against people who make ebooks. You can hear her rants about it from here, if you know what you're listening to.

To someone who makes the things, instead of buying them, it is far more than a "painful blip" -- it defines your working life, which we can assume to be decades. You think about it every day. You spend significant portions of your life trying to figure out how to put one over on Apple so you can get things to look the way you want (that is, are being paid a salary for) them to look, and all the while screaming silently in frustration with the inevitable knowledge that you cannot really win.

Because for every person who keeps obliviously buying iBooks, your clients will expect you to make something for them -- it is part of the job...

[tastannin]

FWIW, I just set up an old white MacBook I had with the correct version of OS X & iTunes needed to run the app mentioned earlier. Now my iBooks are on a Voyage, and I'm loving it.