What Do You Do When A Book Isn't Available For eReaders?

[mysweety]

I read a critical review of the latest by Gary Steygarth and decided I wanted to read it. Most ebook versions were around 26 dollars but the cheapest was 7 dollars. I found a new pback version on Amazon UK for 1.50 and with postage it came to 6.50. So I bought it - no hassle with DRM - no worry about Adobe xware etc and whether there wasn't some hidden geographical restriction in the end which would force me to try to get a refund.

Commercial offerings for ebooks are just worth the money - until publishers convince themselves that DRM and g restrictions a turn-off they won't get my trade.

I love my ebook(PB360) for classical and stuff from Smashwords which gives me no hassle and has good value for money.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Export as RTF (yeah, without correction, which means it's gonna have a lot of OCR errors)
Open in Word, strip out section breaks/page breaks; look for obvious chapter heading formatting & add page break before those.
Fix font & paragraph formatting: make all 100% size, not condensed or expanded; make all single-spaced paragraphs; indent by .25"; increase font size until main body text is at least 14 pt.

You were OK until you said to export as RTF and use Word. NEVER EVER use Word for any document that is eventually going to be made into an eBook. That is the worst thing you can do. Word puts in sop much crap and garbage that sometimes it's not worth the effort to strip the mess and clean it up. That adds hours to your 10 minutes. That makes converting a pBook to an eBook almost worthless. Word is horrible for anything other then something to be spit out as PDF or printed.

[Shopaholic]

Originally Posted by wodin

I have bought several copies of the Harry Potter series, both in paperback and hard cover, and would dearly love to re-read them; but refuse to carry a huge pbook around. I also refuse to venture into the darknet to retrieve an e-copy of them so I just read something else.

That's precisely my position on it too.

[The Terminator]

I'm getting to the point where I don't like to read DTB as well. I like the readability or E-readers. But lots of books are just out of print and aren't even available for purchase DTB as new so I would think that if it's out of print so you can only read used ones, whats the difference or pirating it or getting it at a used book store?

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by Keryl Raist

So, what do you do when the book you want to read only comes in the Dead Tree Version?

How about the rest of you? Will you still read DTBs?

I buy the paper book. I still read paper books. I still like paper books in addition to ebooks.

My only problem now is, is that some of the font sizes in paper books are too small for comfortable reading, due to visual problems, so if the fonts are too small in the paper book, it's less likely that I'll be reading that book.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Keryl Raist

So, what do you do when the book you want to read only comes in the Dead Tree Version?

My hubby recently ran into one that didn't have an e version, and was reminded why he doesn't like DTBs anymore. He hasn't gotten to the point of not being willing to read a book anymore, but he's awfully close.

How about the rest of you? Will you still read DTBs?

As a general rule, I will not buy a new pbook. Instead I buy used. Or I don't buy at all...

What I've found is that if a book is not in eform, I often don't want it at all in pform. There are several reasons for that - size, weight, increasingly small print. But I have an increasing intolerance for pbooks unless they are in some way physically pleasing.

I'll tell you how far gone this is - I used to have a stack of books in the smallest room in the house. Now all thats there is my Sony 300. Fully Gutenberged.

I do tend to buy a lot of pbooks at my local used book stores, sometimes even if I think they might be available to me as ebooks. It's just that a lot of them aren't. Plus I want the used bookstores to stay in business - I still find lots of books I didn't know I wanted there.

I don't want bookstores & pbooks to go away - I just prefer ebooks.

[minspargal]

I usually can find it at my library and yes i will read a book as someone mentioned earlier, why not?

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by januaryman

Should a book not be available for my reader-app, I click the button on Amazon, or B&N, saying I'd like the publisher to know that I would have bought that version of e-book, had it been available. Then I go off and hunt down a decent used copy of the print book I want. If there's no "very good" copy available, I'll buy new.

Yeah, me too, except I don't buy new, and my first stop is the neighborhood used book stores before I buy used at Amazon. But I'm one of the lucky ones with two decent used bookstores within a block of my condo.

[GA Russell]

Inkmesh shows no eBooks available for a number of series I am interested in, including Perry Mason, Ellery Queen, Mr. & Mrs. North and Mike Shayne.

So the first thing I did was email letters to the most recent publishers requesting eBooks of them. I got a couple of replies. My emails may not have any effect on the publishers, but they make me feel good.

Then I went to Amazon, only to find out that there are few paper books currently in print of these series! I always click on the "Please publish an eBook button". It's effortless, and can't hurt.

One day I'll buy the paper books I can, but so far I've just read other things.

[chamekke]

Originally Posted by januaryman

Should a book not be available for my reader-app, I click the button on Amazon, or B&N, saying I'd like the publisher to know that I would have bought that version of e-book, had it been available. Then I go off and hunt down a decent used copy of the print book I want. If there's no "very good" copy available, I'll buy new.

As no one has yet replied to amoroso's question, I'll take a crack at it.

amoroso, I see you're in Italy. I'm in Canada. I can see the "Tell the publisher!" button that januaryman mentioned, but only by employing the following ruse.

I signed out of Amazon.com, selected the Kindle Store from the drop-down menu on the homepage, selected my country/region as 'United States'...



...hunted down a book that I know isn't available even to Americans (e.g. John Crowley's Little, Big), and looked for that button. When I did it that way, I did find the button. Here's what it looks like. It's directly below the image of the front cover:



When I clicked the button, I was taken to a webpage with the following message:

Thank You
Thank you for requesting [title] by [Author] in Kindle Edition. Our goal is to make every title available for Kindle. We will pass your specific request on to the publisher.
Return to the item you were viewing or Shop in the Kindle Store

However, if I select 'Canada' from the drop-down menu -- or if I sign in under my account (which carries my country information with it) -- here's how the same page looks. No sign of the "Tell the Publisher!" button, either in its usual place or anywhere else on the page:



So, it's clear that this button is not intended for customers outside the United States. If Amazon.com doesn't detect your ISP automatically as being from Italy, and screen you that way, you may be able to select 'United States' as I did, and "vote" for a book you want as an e-book. The problem is, your vote will be interpreted as that of an American customer.

Am I annoyed? Yes. I would have clicked it at least 30 times over the last week, if I thought there was a chance they might listen. But even if a title does become available to Americans in e-book format, there is no guarantee it'll ever be available to readers outside the United States. Marilynne Robinson's luminous novel Housekeeping was published in 2004 and is available to U.S. readers... but there is no way for me, as a Canadian customer, to tell Amazon.com that I would give my eye-teeth to own an e-book copy.

[amoroso]

Originally Posted by chamekke

So, it's clear that this button is not intended for customers outside the United States.

Thanks for the explanation. This feature would provide valuable feedback on ebook demand to both publishers and Amazon, yet they refuse it. Yet another artificial barrier they erect to make their bottom line worse.

I hate DTB's, but sometimes you can't get around it. If possible, I borrow a used one and scan it. Take me approx. a hour and a half, but then I've got my own version.

[Larksong]

There are authors I collect, love, and read over and over. These I prefer in print versions -- or, to be honest, what I would prefer is to have them in both formats. The bound copy I will read at or close to home; the e-book copy I would read on the road. I say "would" because by and large, I can't afford to pay twice for a book. Some paperbacks eventually drop in price enough for me to purchase the e-book copy in addition to the bound copy.

You'd think the publishers would get wise to this, and bundle an e-book copy with the bound copy. I'd pay a dollar or two extra for that, even buying a book in hard cover.

I'm not willing to have books by favorite authors -- books I know I will re-read more than once -- in ebook format only. ePUB is nice, but there's no guarantee that 10 years from now, I'll be able to buy a device that can read it. That's probably true of any format -- and certainly true of any format if you project 20 years down the road. And I'm really not enthralled with the idea of having to do for my book collection what we're having to do for our music collection and video collection -- purchase CDs and/or MP3s to replace what we had on vinyl or cassette tape, and DVDs or Blu-Ray to replace our now-wearing-out videotapes.

I love the portability of ebooks, but NO technology lasts forever, and recent technologies seem to become obsolete (or wear out, e.g. videocassettes) more and more quickly. Bound books do at least stick around and stay readable for something between half a lifetime and several lifetimes.

[tponzo]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

10 years from now, I am expecting reasonable prices with proper covers, well formatted, and no more errors then in the pBook.

Do you really think we'll have to wait ten whole years?

[tponzo]

Originally Posted by Larksong

There are authors I collect, love, and read over and over. These I prefer in print versions -- or, to be honest, what I would prefer is to have them in both formats. The bound copy I will read at or close to home; the e-book copy I would read on the road. I say "would" because by and large, I can't afford to pay twice for a book. Some paperbacks eventually drop in price enough for me to purchase the e-book copy in addition to the bound copy.

You'd think the publishers would get wise to this, and bundle an e-book copy with the bound copy. I'd pay a dollar or two extra for that, even buying a book in hard cover.

I'm not willing to have books by favorite authors -- books I know I will re-read more than once -- in ebook format only. ePUB is nice, but there's no guarantee that 10 years from now, I'll be able to buy a device that can read it. That's probably true of any format -- and certainly true of any format if you project 20 years down the road. And I'm really not enthralled with the idea of having to do for my book collection what we're having to do for our music collection and video collection -- purchase CDs and/or MP3s to replace what we had on vinyl or cassette tape, and DVDs or Blu-Ray to replace our now-wearing-out videotapes.

I love the portability of ebooks, but NO technology lasts forever, and recent technologies seem to become obsolete (or wear out, e.g. videocassettes) more and more quickly. Bound books do at least stick around and stay readable for something between half a lifetime and several lifetimes.

I completely agree and don't know why publishers haven't jumped on the bundle bandwagon. They would have nothing to lose. Movie distributors already do this and people take advantage of it. It would make so much sense.

My biggest complaint at the moment is that not all ebooks are available from my public library. We actually have a better selection than most but it's still not great. I am currently reading a book which I know is available as an ebook but I don't want to own it. Searched high and low and can't find a library copy. I'm stuck with the hardcover.