ebooks...the price ascent to 'Everest'....

[MrPLD]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Oh I misunderstood. For a while I thought writer->reader means "writers webpage"->"ereader device" instead of content provider (self published writer) to end consumer (humanoid reader) bypassing all middle-men.

I actually have to admit - I really don't know what you're debating for/against from the last two posts. I suspect there's a crossed line somewhere in a previous post but at this point it seems best to start from scratch again.

[MrPLD]

Originally Posted by DHR

Of course we have a standard. In fact lots of them. As long as you don't need to support DRM, HTTP is the obvious transmission protocol. In fact, even if you do have DRM, HTTP is fine.

Okay, here's the system I'm envisaging...

1) Consumer clicks on [Buy now] on the book they want at author/writer's page
2) Book appears on consumer's ereader and is ready to read

Every additional step in between is one more annoyance/potential-hiccup. Amazon has this fairly well optimised, for 3G or WiFi but is of course naturally restricted to the Amazon-Kindle world only.

The "interface/standard" I'm referring to is the method of loading the purchased book into the reader directly without end-user intervention, not the transport medium/protocol it uses to move the data there (eg, HTTP/SCP/FTP/email/RFC1149

My guess is that the Kindle polls Amazon periodically (30~60 seconds) with what ever unique ID/code it has, and then if there's a book pending for delivery it downloads it and adds it to the internal store. What I'm wishing for is that it could be possible to do this for all devices for all content providers - but it'll never happen, more for reasons of market protection (perceived by places like Amazon) than anything truly technical (ignoring 3G delivery given that Amazon did the hard-yards with that).

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

.. it seems best to start from scratch again.

OK, can do.

Originally Posted by MrPLD

Okay, here's the system I'm envisaging...

1) Consumer clicks on [Buy now] on the book they want at author/writer's page
2) Book appears on consumer's ereader and is ready to read

Every additional step in between is one more annoyance/potential-hiccup.

Since 3g is out, it has to be wifi. The only common thing in wifi would be a browser. Now if the [buy now] buttons works then all that is left to do is to download the file. Simple functionality, but:

Originally Posted by DHR

I just tried a Project Gutenberg epub book from the Kobo Vox web browser -- download failed. Same story for Baen Free Library. Surely some kind of stupidity on the Kobo end.

maybe not. The Kobo Vox has a browser that does not let you download. I don't think it has anything to do with stupidity but intentional not allowing to "side load" through a web page. Gutenberg (mobile site m.gutenberg.org and normal www.gutenberg.org) works both on my Odyssey (just tried). Downloading puts it right into my library on the reader.

So even an ereader that has wifi and a browser does not guarantee that you could use that to get books on the reader directly.

Back to square one, and directly buying from webpage from the ereader does not work, even if your reader has a browser.

Edit: I just tried downloading the .mobi version from PG, and even that downloads fine on my Odyssey, even though the device clearly does not support displaying it. *shrugs*

[MrPLD]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

OK, can do.

Thanks.

Back to square one, and directly buying from webpage from the ereader does not work, even if your reader has a browser.

Exactly... it's all over the place - hence the "pie in the sky" dream of a consistent delivery mechanism irrespective of the eReader device. If all eReaders had an email address (like Amazon Kindles) and if all eReader distributors allowed external deliveries, then the process could become;

1) Click on desired book to buy
2) Provide email of the eReader (eg blah241@amazonkindle.com )
... wait 60 seconds...
3) User can read the book

I would dare say that if this becomes too commonly used, that places like Amazon will just throw a spanner in the works start blocking external deliveries (or charge more )

[DHR]

Originally Posted by DHR

I just tried a Project Gutenberg epub book from the Kobo Vox web browser -- download failed. Same story for Baen Free Library. Surely some kind of stupidity on the Kobo end. No trouble with my Firefox on Linux browser though (only tried Gutenberg).

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

maybe not. The Kobo Vox has a browser that does not let you download. I don't think it has anything to do with stupidity but intentional not allowing to "side load" through a web page. Gutenberg (mobile site m.gutenberg.org and normal www.gutenberg.org) works both on my Odyssey (just tried). Downloading puts it right into my library on the reader.

Well, I call that stupidity. It is probably intentional stupidity: makes it more awkward to get stuff from anywhere but Kobo.

I would guess that the browser is GPLed and hence open sourced. So I guess we could fix it. Or create another application to do the job (though running a distinct application is one more step).

Maybe, for safety, we'd need to have a facility to limit downloads to approved-by-the-user sites and file types.

[Reader Paradice]

Originally Posted by DHR

Of course we have a standard. In fact lots of them. As long as you don't need to support DRM, HTTP is the obvious transmission protocol. In fact, even if you do have DRM, HTTP is fine.

I just tried a Project Gutenberg epub book from the Kobo Vox web browser -- download failed. Same story for Baen Free Library. Surely some kind of stupidity on the Kobo end. No trouble with my Firefox on Linux browser though (only tried Gutenberg).

Is there a way to simply download Gutenberg stuff with the Vox? Some of Gutenberg is available through the Kobo store, but I don't like to be forced to use it.

----------------------------------------------------

Try OPERA MINI browser. I downloaded two free reads from BAEN FREE LIBRARY just this morning. To access them, you would bring up the DOWNLOAD tab for OPERA MINI, and then you would pick one. After you pick your book to open, a choice of readers would be offered you to accomplish that. In my case, two came up; Overdrive and Akido. If you do not have either of them installed, search for them and do that first. Then, you are good to go back to BAEN and have at it!