Icarus quietly goes out of business

Originally Posted by shalym

Yes...but couldn't you have downloaded the .mobi version from Smashwords? (I know you used to be able to, but I haven't been to Smashwords in years)

Shari

I must have drawn the short straw. It was only available in epub, and converting it to read on my then Paperwhite left it literally unreadable. When I got my first Kobo, I bought it there, and after sideloading a few devanagari fonts, I saw words I could read, instead of empty squares

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I would say that the vast majority of readers are quite happy with on demand reading and would likely be quite happy with a subscription service as long as it includes the NYT best seller list books.

The freedom allowed by "on demand reading" (as you call what we've described) is entirely at odds with the concept of a subscription-based service, in my opinion. Why the weird lumping?

I have zero interest in subscriptions OR NYT best sellers. The fact that someone doesn't care to curate a personal (not to mention local) digital library doesn't mean they're casual readers looking to be spoon fed whatever's popular this week. I have many dear, and obscure, favorite books that I'll probably never own ecopies of.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The freedom allowed by "on demand reading" (as you call what we've described) is entirely at odds with the concept of a subscription-based service, in my opinion. Why the weird lumping?

I have zero interest in subscriptions OR NYT best sellers. The fact that someone doesn't care to curate a personal (not to mention local) digital library doesn't mean they're casual readers looking to be spoon fed whatever's popular this week. I have many dear, and obscure, favorite books that I'll probably never own ecopies of.

Hardly weird. On demand is what subscription services are all about. Be able to read any book for $10 a month, or whatever the price. That's what you get with music subscription services. There are few songs I can't listen to via Apple Music. The limited select that Pandora has is what is eventually going to see them go under, IMPO

The issue that book subscription services have is that currently have a much more limited selection of books. For book subscription services to be more than a niche market, that will have to change.

A large percentage of readers are readers who stick mostly to either a specific genre (i.e. romance) or best seller type books, read them once then move on. Those of us with extensive digital libraries are the exception rather than the rule. If you don't want to have a digital library, then more power to you.

I also have a collection of old, obscure paper books. What's interesting is that quite a few of those somewhat obscure books are actually available as ebooks since they are in public domain. It's a big enough world and scanning devices are cheap enough that someone is going to scan most books given the chance.
It's the old obscure books that aren't in PD that you want see as ebooks.

[DiapDealer]

Understood. We're just talking about different things, I guess. I wouldn't call what i do (and what issybird described) as "on demand reading." A more accurate moniker for what we were discussing would be JIT Buying/Reading: only purchasing a book when you're ready to begin reading it (from any and all sources), and not worrying about maintaining personal, digital libraries of read books. We weren't discussing paying a subscription fee for unlimited access to limited choices. That's something I certainly wouldn't have any interest in.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Understood. We're just talking about different things, I guess. I wouldn't call what i do (and what issybird described) as "on demand reading." A more accurate moniker for what we were discussing would be JIT Buying/Reading: only purchasing a book when you're ready to begin reading it (from any and all sources), and not worrying about maintaining personal, digital libraries of read books. We weren't discussing paying a subscription fee for unlimited access to limited choices. That's something I certainly wouldn't have any interest in.

ok, yea that's a bit different that I was thinking that we were talking about. Thank you for clarifying what you were talking about.

My two biggest reasons for scarfing up ebooks when I see them rather than waiting until I'm ready to read them are 1) I've seen quite a few ebooks disappear from the stores over the years. Most of the time, I'm not even aware of it until someone mentions a book not being available and I think "what do you mean, I bought it". 2) I have a terrible memory for such things and unless I go ahead and buy it, odds are that I'll forget about the book. I do know that many people use wishlist to manage such things. I do that on audible.com, but once again, I have had a number of audio books go unavailable after I put the on the wishlist. That's why I go ahead and buy something that I know that I'm going to listen to, rather than just "that looks like it might be interesting".

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by issybird

I think ereaders (the people, not the devices) of the voracious type have been very slow to adapt their buying/hoarding habits to the new reality*. Back in the paper day, you needed a backlog, so you always had something to read on hand. There also was the factor that you had to pick something up when you saw it, as it might not be available later**. Both of these factors have been largely obviated by digital books so there's no reason to have a huge virtual stack of unread books, but old habits die hard, as they say.

If one's reading is limited to NY Times top twenty, then perhaps your hypothesis is correct.

If one's reading is in niche fields, then titles come and go all of the time.
There are several ebooks (and dead tree editions) that used to be available from Amazon, but are no longer listed there. Not listed, as in there is no page for either the title, or the author.

I've got ebooks from half a dozen defunct publishers. Nobody is selling those titles.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Fiat_Lux

If one's reading is limited to NY Times top twenty, then perhaps your hypothesis is correct.

If one's reading is in niche fields, then titles come and go all of the time.
There are several ebooks (and dead tree editions) that used to be available from Amazon, but are no longer listed there. Not listed, as in there is no page for either the title, or the author.

I've got ebooks from half a dozen defunct publishers. Nobody is selling those titles.

True. I have several ebooks on my Amazon shopping list that are no longer available. Aside from ones I own that are also no longer available.

[ernieh]

This thread was about Icarus so I was interested as we have 2 but it got off track almost immediately and became the usual stuff... Sighs

[HarryT]

The subject has been exhausted: what more is there to say other than "they've gone out of business"? What that happens it's normal for threads to wander.

[ernieh]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The subject has been exhausted: what more is there to say other than "they've gone out of business"? What that happens it's normal for threads to wander.

True but it would have been better for it to remain as a single post and the rest posted to a more appropriate thread..
Would have liked some gossip about the Kaaskoppe (cheese head or Dutchmen) owners, what they are doing now and so on. Seems they had a good go at running an efficient business for a while, suppose there just is not a lot of money in the books and reading industry. In this country the only thing you can send by post without being stolen is paper books as no one actually reads

[blue_skies]

Originally Posted by Fiat_Lux

If one's reading is limited to NY Times top twenty, then perhaps your hypothesis is correct.

If one's reading is in niche fields, then titles come and go all of the time.
There are several ebooks (and dead tree editions) that used to be available from Amazon, but are no longer listed there. Not listed, as in there is no page for either the title, or the author.

I've got ebooks from half a dozen defunct publishers. Nobody is selling those titles.

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

True. I have several ebooks on my Amazon shopping list that are no longer available. Aside from ones I own that are also no longer available.

Sorry to post on an exhausted topic, but I read the above posts and have a question.

I too have occasionally noticed books I've bought at Amazon that seem to no longer be in their store, but they show in my digital content when I search the them. Does Amazon keep a copy on their servers somewhere of all the books that they sold, so people can download the books they purchased even if they've been pulled from the store?

I never tried downloading a book that I purchased that was pulled from the store, and I can't think of a specific title to test right now.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by blue_skies

I too have occasionally noticed books I've bought at Amazon that seem to no longer be in their store, but they show in my digital content when I search the them. Does Amazon keep a copy on their servers somewhere of all the books that they sold, so people can download the books they purchased even if they've been pulled from the store?

Generally speaking, yes, if you've bought a book you'll still be able to download it, even if it's no longer offered for sale. It would, however, be prudent to keep a copy of it yourself; don't rely on a third party to keep your books safe for you.

[blue_skies]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Generally speaking, yes, if you've bought a book you'll still be able to download it, even if it's no longer offered for sale. It would, however, be prudent to keep a copy of it yourself; don't rely on a third party to keep your books safe for you.

Thank you for your reply HarryT. The problem is that I have such a ridiculous number of books from Amazon that I don't even know where to begin sorting through them and downloading the books to my Calibre library.

At one point I was at least sorting them into Kindle4PC book shelves, but then that got all messed up - I'm not even sure how, maybe an update - and I ended up having a mix of book shelves from my Kindle4PC and my Kindle Keyboard. It is such a huge mess with same and similarly named shelves with different books in them. I just gave up years ago, and it's only gotten much worse since then.

There used to be a way to hide certain books but not completely delete them from your account - I think it was a 'trash' feature - that is no longer available. Something like that would be helpful in sorting out books that I don't think I'll read, but I don't want to permanently delete in case I change my mind and want to read them in the future.

I wish the online Amazon's My Kindle Content was easier to use, sort and organize.

Of course this is all my own fault for buying way too many free books. There are so many that are absolutely terrible, but I've also found some gems that way that I never would have tried otherwise... so that kept me accumulating them.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by blue_skies

Thank you for your reply HarryT. The problem is that I have such a ridiculous number of books from Amazon that I don't even know where to begin sorting through them and downloading the books to my Calibre library.

As somebody wiser than me said, “Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”


You should be able to download all of your books and import them into Calibre. Calibre will generally warn you if it thinks you are importing duplicates.

[blue_skies]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

As somebody wiser than me said, “Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

You should be able to download all of your books and import them into Calibre. Calibre will generally warn you if it thinks you are importing duplicates.

Thank you, yes I know... but I have almost 9,000 books and so many of them are terrible, I'm sure. I may have to do that at some point just because I don't have any other way to sort them. But it's such a huge undertaking and I don't really want to download and process so 9,000 books and store them locally. I don't know how many GBs they will waste. Plus, it seems like they don't tend to include all the meta-data, so that will be a huge job to add it for each book.

I had the idea that, if Amazon ever sells a high quality 8" or larger Kindle with all the features I require, maybe I can buy one and set it up like it's for a family member and have better sorting options that way. Doesn't Amazon have some type of parental controls that allow the primary account holder to only allow certain books from the parent account to a sub/child account? I feel like I read about something like that. Then I can separate out the best books but still have all of them on my account.