Microsoft is taking back ebooks

[Apache]

I still have books I bought as a teenager. I reread a lot. If I wanted to reread them I would have to be careful since the bindings tend to fail over time and the pages get very fragile. Rereading eBooks on the other hand never give me any problems. I will stick to eBooks. The only time I can think of that would require me to read a paper book would be if I get called to jury duty again. The local courts do not allow eBooks, of any sort, in the courtrooms.
Apache

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

These days, with free and paid cloud storage services all over, there is no excuse for losing an ebook library. Multiple copies on different services costs little effort.

If you're really paranoid about cloud services, large flash drives are plenty cheap so again, backing up the files to multiple drives including one off-site is only due diligence. Investing US$20 in a 128GB drive (or $50 for a 1TB portable HDD) is only sensible if you want to protect hundreds or even thousands worth of ebooks.

No valid excuses left.

Yep. I have my calibre directory backed up in a number of ways
1) it lives on a Drobo raid drive, meaning if a disk goes bad, I don't lose anything
2) I back it up weekly to a local Drobo network drive.
3) I back it up weekly to my dropbox cloud storage
4) I sync it weekly with my laptop

Profession photographers like to say that their pictures are only safe if they are backed up in three different locations. I know some who back up on a local raid drive and then on two different cloud storage providers.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Apache

I still have books I bought as a teenager. I reread a lot. If I wanted to reread them I would have to be careful since the bindings tend to fail over time and the pages get very fragile. Rereading eBooks on the other hand never give me any problems. I will stick to eBooks. The only time I can think of that would require me to read a paper book would be if I get called to jury duty again. The local courts do not allow eBooks, of any sort, in the courtrooms.
Apache

Hum, last time I was called to jury duty I carried my iPhone, my iPad, a mophie battery, an eBook reader and assorted wires (plus water and snacks). No problems at all. Of course, once you actually get into the courtrooms then you are suppose to be focused on the trial.

Like you I have books from when I was a teenager. I still have some of my early paperbacks that cost 60 cents when I bought them brand new. The only paper books that I actually read these days are books that aren't available as ebooks and those rarely. Most of the ones that I read in paper are somewhat obscure specialized non fiction.

[Apache]

It is a local policy as far as I can determine. But it affects all of the city, county and state courts in my county.
Apache

[Apparition B5]

Yeah, it depends on your county. Mine forbids all electronic devices and provides lockers for you to store them in (for a fee of course), before you're allowed further into the court house.

[Apache]

Ours has no storage facilities available and you have to take them back to your car.
Apache

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Apache

It is a local policy as far as I can determine. But it affects all of the city, county and state courts in my county.
Apache

Dang. Sitting around for hours waiting to see if you are going to be call is boring enough without books. Most counties think they are lucky when they can actually get people to show up for jury duty without throwing road blocks in the way.

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Even now, my purchasing decision is based on ease of DRM removal. I stopped buying from Barnes & Noble when they made it hard to download Nook books. I've mostly switched from Amazon to Kobo as well because I'm afraid the writing is on the wall with KFX and the new DRM for K4PC 1.25 and Kindle FW 5.10.2+.

Same with me. If I can't remove DRM, I don't get it.

I did temporarily stop purchasing from B&N until a work around was brought up. It's easy to access your books from B&N, at least with Windows, even with the current Nook app. You just have to find your books in the AppsData folder after you've downloaded it and import into Calibre to find out the name of the book as they are numbered rather than titled. I never bought text-books, so know nothing about that access. Since I don't read novels on the app, I delete the copy on the computer after installing it into Calibre. That way, it's not an effort to figure out the next book that I've downloaded is the one I want.

C:\Users\"username"\App Data\Local\Packages\BarnesNoble.Nook_ahnzqzva31enc \LocalState

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Same with me. If I can't remove DRM, I don't get it.

I did temporarily stop purchasing from B&N until a work around was brought up. It's easy to access your books from B&N, at least with Windows, even with the current Nook app. You just have to find your books in the AppsData folder and import into Calibre to find out the name of the book as they are numbered rather than titled. I never bought text-books, so know nothing about that access.

C:\Users\"username"\App Data\Local\Packages\BarnesNoble.Nook_ahnzqzva31enc \LocalState

I already knew about this one.

The problem was at some point, B&N changed the delivery for their graphic novels to the Windows Store Nook app so the epub was missing key files. I remember posting before on Alf's blog but that issue wasn't resolved back then (~2-3 years ago?). I was able to get my files via a rooted Android tablet running an older version of the Nook for Android app but that's when I stopped purchasing from B&N.

I believe ZodWallop recently encountered the same issue and was able to find a fix. I skimmed the post with the fix and personally, I find it something that would be annoying to implement when dealing with batches of 20 or more books so I'm sticking to Kobo.

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

I already knew about this one.

The problem was at some point, B&N changed the delivery for their graphic novels to the Windows Store Nook app so the epub was missing key files. I remember posting before on Alf's blog but that issue wasn't resolved back then (~2-3 years ago?). I was able to get my files via a rooted Android tablet running an older version of the Nook for Android app but that's when I stopped purchasing from B&N.

I believe ZodWallop recently encountered the same issue and was able to find a fix. I skimmed the post with the fix and personally, I find it something that would be annoying to implement when dealing with batches of 20 or more books so I'm sticking to Kobo.

Good to know. When I pass on the info, I will mention that my info only applies to novels and not graphic novels (I don't buy them, so I never think of that! Sorry!). I've had some problems with 2 craft books from Kobo - They accepted the return, but just to alert you that Kobo has some issues as well.

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by ekbell

I or family members have lost or destroyed too many paper books through reading and carelessness for me to find this argument convincing. Unless you have the money to buy quality hardcovers, paper books actually start falling apart after a number of years of moderate use. I may lose my ebook library but so far it has survived computer failure and format shifting with minimal maintenance.

I do reread (or I'd never have noticed the paper books falling to pieces) and I also have a use for reference books (BTW search functions and having a library on a tablet has been very useful).

I've seen mass market paperbacks fall apart between the time the customer paid for them, and they got them out of the door of the bookstore.

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by Tony1988

Lmao...what book cost $5000. Anyone asking $5000 for a book can keep it.

I agree with Sarmat. If you want a copy of the book...buy a hardcopy. Eventually one will lose all his ebooks, even if they are in a device somewhere. May take years and years. I personally only read most books once. The ones i would consider reading twice or maybe a beloved series, I will buy paper. The hassle of maintaining an electronic library of books is a waste of time imo. Especially if one has thousands of books. They will never, ever reread them all. The time, worry and money to maintain an electronic library one most likely will never re- read is a bit silly imo.

With hard copy books, one can find the Big Yellow Book that is on the third shelf of the fourth bookcase, even if one doesn't know what the name of the book is. With eBooks, if you don't remember the name, or author, you have to wade through screens of books, to find it.

However, if the digital library is cataloged, with complete, accurate metadata, it can be much faster to locate books on a specific subject, than with a hard copy library.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by Fiat_Lux

With hard copy books, one can find the Big Yellow Book that is on the third shelf of the fourth bookcase, even if one doesn't know what the name of the book is. With eBooks, if you don't remember the name, or author, you have to wade through screens of books, to find it.

However, if the digital library is cataloged, with complete, accurate metadata, it can be much faster to locate books on a specific subject, than with a hard copy library.

Assuming one still has shelf space. A lot of my books are in boxes in the closet, underneath the bed, etc...

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by Tony1988

Lmao...what book cost $5000.

Very specialized technical books.

The one on my wishlist, is one of the more rarefied publications of Jane's.
(It is one of three books on my wishlist, that is so obscure and rarefied, that Amazon doesn't list them.)

It is much more common to run across professional reports in the $5,000+ price range, than very specialized technical books.

Amber

[ekbell]

Originally Posted by Fiat_Lux

With hard copy books, one can find the Big Yellow Book that is on the third shelf of the fourth bookcase, even if one doesn't know what the name of the book is. With eBooks, if you don't remember the name, or author, you have to wade through screens of books, to find it.

However, if the digital library is cataloged, with complete, accurate metadata, it can be much faster to locate books on a specific subject, than with a hard copy library.

Or if you're me, you resort to an internet search using your vague memories of content to find the relevant metadata and then Calibre to find where you've stored that book.

My paper books are also organized and cataloged on Calibre so that I can find them (my lack of visual recall means that I've never been able to depend on the 'Big Yellow Book' method) however unlike my digital books my paper books have been known to disappear off my shelves or be misfiled due to other household members.