How can we convince Amazon to sell ePub format?

[KenJackson]

I bought a Sony eReader, which does not support Amazon's exclusive format. Therefore I cannot (legally and easily) purchase ebooks from Amazon and conveniently read them.

I did not make my choice lightly. I looked at the matrix, read reviews, and thought about it for perhaps a month. I think I made a good choice.

But the result is that I can't buy books at my favorite book site any more. Amazon is a wonderful website. I'm always pleased if I can buy something from them instead of anywhere else because they have lots of information and are easy to buy from (and the ship fast, though that's moot for eBooks).

But I can't find any place on their website where they are looking for feedback or suggestions or input. Did I miss it? How can I tell them that I wish they would sell books in .epub format too?

And do you agree? Don't you want them to sell in .epub format too?

[Ervserver]

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos says we don't epub

[wvcherrybomb]

I imagine the day they start selling epub will be the day they release a Kindle that supports it.

I would very much like to see that happen.

[daffy4u]

You can try kindle-feedback@amazon.com.

[ATDrake]

Don't they have a kindle-feedback [AT] amazon [dot] com address? At least, so the screensaver on my K2 says.

Personally, I'd love ePub support, even if it's only the DRM-free variety with embedded fonts (out of the box, not via Duokan firmware hack, useful as that is). But I don't see it happening any time soon.

Now if only they'd start improving Mobi or even the dreaded Topaz format, ownership and control of which are apparently one of the excuses they use for not supporting ePub.

Somewhere on MR, someone has a post quoting Bezos saying that with their own format, they can innovate and improve the e-book experience without having to wait for an external committee to accept proposals for new standards, or words to that effect.

So, like, innovate the bloody thing already!

[KenJackson]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Somewhere on MR, someone has a post quoting Bezos saying that with their own format, they can innovate and improve the e-book experience without having to wait for an external committee to accept proposals for new standards, or words to that effect.

That's very ironic!

Their current format is totally opaque and useless to me, while epub works just fine as it is.

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by KenJackson

That's very ironic!

Their current format is totally opaque and useless to me, while epub works just fine as it is.

What advantages do feel epub has over mobi? For my reading style it doesn't really matter.

[KenJackson]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

What advantages do feel epub has over mobi? For my reading style it doesn't really matter.

I haven't experimented with mobi yet. As I've looked around, I see three very dominant formats: Amazon's AZW, EPUB and PDF. I can't read AZW and PDF usually renders like crap.

But Sony is supposed to support .mobi, so if they started offering that one, and If I can buy DRM corrupted books and read them, I'd be happy.

Although I haven't looked into what official software you need to install to decorrupt the file for reading. I doubt they support Linux, so I would probably have to run yet-another piece of proprietary junk software in a Windows VirtualBox.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

What advantages do feel epub has over mobi? For my reading style it doesn't really matter.

Speaking only for myself, as someone who not only reads Mobi books but also assembles them to read on my Kindle, ePub is a lot easier to work with if you ever want to tweak anything at all. When I reformat my Fictionwise, Smashwords, and Baen stuff, I always start from an ePub base and convert to Mobi.

Mobi is very, very annoying to deal with if you need to change more than the metadata, and it doesn't help that the tools that Amazon officially supplies are kind of buggy.

From a reader's perspective, while the differences aren't all that important for fiction, Mobi is very (and in this day and age, unnecessarily) limited in comparison to ePub for what it can display.

Leaving aside typographical niceties such as drop caps, Mobi also doesn't apply right-hand margins at all. So if, say, your book is quoting a newspaper column and wants to maintain that columnar effect with a narrow facsimile-looking text-block in the center, you can't really do that with Mobi.

On the more functional side, ePub allows for embedded fonts, which enables ePubs on a supporting reader to display additional scripts and therefore quote something like Thai in the middle of English text without resorting to images. Mobi is reliant on whatever font's already installed.

And speaking of images, Mobi has a strict limit of up to 128kb (used to be 64) for any individual image. Anything above that gets forcibly downconverted and the results can be less than attractive (surprise pixelation and whatnot). They all get converted to GIF or JPEG internally, I think.

Whereas with ePub, what you put in is what you see, and you could add in a honking huge full-resolution picture that your reader will downscale on the display and will be pretty useless to you then. But when you go back in a couple more years and make some adjustments so that your book will look good on the new 12-inch e-ink colour whatevers, you'll finally be able to take advantage of having a nice big pic to begin with instead of having it look pitifully zoomed.

But yeah, from an end-user reader-only standpoint, there's probably not much difference to notice if you're not terribly attached to drop caps and varied fonts.

Originally Posted by KenJackson

Although I haven't looked into what official software you need to install to decorrupt the file for reading. I doubt they support Linux, so I would probably have to run yet-another piece of proprietary junk software in a Windows VirtualBox.

They don't, and the Kindle for PC app doesn't work under Wine (you can get it to run and read files, but not register to the account with which you can download DRM-ed books that can be stripped, now that you can no longer do it with the hardware Kindles).

And they used to not support Mac very well, but that's been somewhat improved, and best of all, the liberation tools mostly now work on the Mac, provided you've got an Intel one running 10.5 or better.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

What advantages do feel epub has over mobi? For my reading style it doesn't really matter.

Their books that are Topaz format are scanned images from the print book that I read don't display very well even on a Kindle. If you need to increase the font size the type is not as clear. Epub is a huge advantage over that.

[daffy4u]

Thanks ATDrake for your insight. Last December I bought a used Sony 505 on eBay just to see what ePub was all about. To quote myself a few months later:

Originally Posted by daffy4u

I have to say "no". For the books I read and my reading style (YMMV), ePub is just another eBook format. I still have not found the necessity to purchase a book in ePub. Even if I didn't know how to format shift, it is still very easy for me to live on mobi books alone.

Right now, Sigil give ePub the advantage of being able to correct mistakes in ePub but I'm not as picky about formatting as some. As long as no freaky characters pop up (gibberish), spelling is mostly good and there aren't huge line spaces between paragraphs, I pretty much good to go.

From what I'm gathering about the MobiUnpack script pulling html from mobi books (if I understand correctly), it will be easier to correct mobi books as well.

It's a wash.

Basically, I'm not that picky. If there are enough mistakes in a book to make me crazy, I'll return the book (I have a few times). I'm much too lazy to do the correcting myself (though I have attempted it). Just let me buy what I want at a good price and I'm pretty much good to go.

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Their books that are Topaz format are scanned images from the print book that I read don't display very well even on a Kindle. If you need to increase the font size the type is not as clear. Epub is a huge advantage over that.

Yeah Topaz is a whole other animal. I used to hate it because it was creepy looking and used to freeze my Kindle 1, so I avoided it like the plague. K2 and 3 handle Topaz books better so they don't bother me anymore. If I want the book and it's Topaz, I'll buy it.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by KenJackson

I bought a Sony eReader, which does not support Amazon's exclusive format. Therefore I cannot (legally and easily) purchase ebooks from Amazon and conveniently read them.

I did not make my choice lightly. I looked at the matrix, read reviews, and thought about it for perhaps a month. I think I made a good choice.

But the result is that I can't buy books at my favorite book site any more. Amazon is a wonderful website.

I suffered a bit of Amazon withdrawal pains when I bought my Jetbook Lite two months ago. But ... I'm over it. It is rare that there's a book I want that is not available elsewhere, and I can price-shop for non-Agency books and find better deals than Amazon offers. I can use the public library.

I don't need Amazon anymore. I broke the habit, and I don't much care if they ever support epub.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

Yeah Topaz is a whole other animal. I used to hate it because it was creepy looking and used to freeze my Kindle 1, so I avoided it like the plague. K2 and 3 handle Topaz books better so they don't bother me anymore. If I want the book and it's Topaz, I'll buy it.

Can you increase the font and still have it look ok on the K2 or K3? I'm probably an extreme case, but I use 175% - 225% font size increase.

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Can you increase the font and still have it look ok on the K2 or K3? I'm probably an extreme case, but I use 175% - 225% font size increase.

I'll pick a Topaz book and post some screen shots but it won't be until tomorrow night, if that's okay.