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Barnes and Noble Drops Ebooks
computx writes "I just recieved an email from Barnes and Noble that they will no longer sell ebooks and I have 1 month to download the books I have purchased. Wow!"
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This is exactly why I only buy unencrypted e-books and sci-fi magazines from Fictionwise
Their Multiformat books are available as:
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) for Macintosh and PCs
Palm DOC (PDB) for Palm compatible devices
Palm iSilo (PDB) for Palm compatible devices
Microsoft Reader (LIT) for PC and PocketPC devices
Franklin eBookman (FUB) for Franklin eBookMan devices
Hiebook (KML) for Hiebook devices
Mobipocket (PRC) (currently available for Palm, PocketPC, and Franklin eBookman devices)
Rocket (RB) for Rocket and REB/1100
I think I have a faily good chance of being able to read at least one of those formats in a few years time, and unencrypted Acrobat files can be transcoded into html easily.
Please note: Even though these books are not protected I have bought over a hundred books and short stories here and mysteriously failed to put them on kazaa or even give copies to my friends.
I am (shock horror for SCO, RIAA etc) both an open source programmer and I support copyright. Without copyright the GPL is meaningless.
- Paul
I can't see a lot of people "pirating" books that are in the public domain and available on numerous sites around the web, most notably the Gutenberg Project. Purchasing free books in a text format doesn't seem very smart. They could easily download them from Gutenburg in pure text and convert them to the desired format such as PDF or RTF. I'm sure such converted format books are available on the web too.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
Go to http://www.blackmask.com.
Thousands of *free* ebooks.
Who cares if B&N drops 'em? Blackmask has the good stuff, everything's free, and they're in six (at least) different formats for nearly every device under the sun. Plus no stupid DRM.
BOO! TERRO
Baen Books has an electronic publishing program that works for them and their authors. For $15 you get all of their books for a month (generally 6 titles, although 2-3 are usually reissues or the paperback release of a previous hardcover). If that's too much of a committment, individual books are available for $4-5. You can download the books in HTML, Palm Pilot, Rocketbook, RTF, and MS Reader formats. There's no DRM involved - Jim Baen figures that if he makes the books available at a reasonable price, people are generally honest and will pay for them rather than pirating them. They even give away electronic books in the Baen Free Library, and their authors have reported that they're seeing increased sales in their backlist, even from other publishers, that they can only attribute to appearing in the BFL.
OK, this has been covered ad nauseum. But if you really want eBooks, done the way that they should be, with no DRM, and an outright friendly redistribution policy that amounts to "Make copies for your friends and hand them out, as long as you aren't charging for them that's great", then go to Baen Books (follow the big "Free Stuff Here" link).
They seem to be making money on them. They sell the eBooks cheaper than the real paper ones (the problem with BN's was that they were ludicrously expensive) and you can get the full eBook whenever the hardcover comes out. Actually, you can get the book in pieces before the hardcover hits stores.
In addition to giving away free books, they also have free sample chapters of upcoming books.
You can read all about the how-and-why of it here on Baen's site. Go read that link. It's absolutely indredible. It seems that Jim Baen gets it. We'll wait and see who else does.
I've been reading Baen's eBooks for about a year now. Reading on a desktop PC with a CRT does suck. Reading on my PowerBook's LCD is awesome. It's not without some inconvenience (batteries, not being able to read in the john), but it's comfortable and easy, and it's way cheaper than buying the whole book (they offer individual titles for $5 each, or $15 for their selection of 5). I usually have enough magazines and stuff laying around to read in the john anyway.
If you purchase a selection you can download it in MS Reader shareable format (no DRM). Or HTML, or RTF. Whatever. No DRM on anything. There's no Adobe PDF, because Jim Baen doesn't like PDF (never have heard that story).
If you purchase the latest John Ringo Posleen series book (Hell's Faire) in hardcover you get a CD with the first 3 books on it, along with a boatload of other books (like a dozen books on one CD). And the license is "not for commercial redistribution", so you can use it, read the books, make copies for your friends, whatever.
I bought one, once upon a time. Didn't want to wait for the harcover version. Hilarity ensued:
1) Price was the same as hardcover, $24.95 WTF?
2) You could only read it on the PC you downloaded it to. WTF?!?
3) You could not make a backup of it. If it got hosed, kiss your $24.95 goodbye WTF!?!??!?!
No more of that crap for me.
And the funniest thing about all this? You can download a DRM-free version of just about any book you want for free on IRC and other places. The publishing industry need to quit following the RIAA's footsteps and instead learn from someone who is doing it right.
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
Baen Books does well with ebooks. They have a "webscriptions" page where you can purchase ebooks individually or a month of ebooks on a serial subscription model. There are even freebie books available.
With the month of ebooks, you get about 5 or so books for $15. Two of the books are usually new, and released in parts. 3 months before paper release, you get 1/2 of the book. 2 months before paper release, you get 3/4 of the book. 1 month before release you get the entire book in ebook format.
Many different formats are provided including HTML, Microsoft Reader, and RTF.
I've purchased a number of books and month "subscriptions" from them. I find it handy to have the books on my laptop when I travel. Not as good as paper, but handy when I've run through all of my paper books or I'm waiting for something to finish. Of course, sometimes, I just can't wait to get the latest book from some of my favorite sci-fi authors.
Honestly, I have been looking for a suitable reader, and have yet to find any hardware that has a large enough screen to read comfortably.
Those with a large screen and reasonable price (Gemstar and RCA) are closed platforms.
Those that are open platforms usually have hardware that has problems such as small screen or limited battery life.
The closest that I found was the hiebook, which is steep at about $300. Plus, it looks like there has been little in support for the product in over a year.
Until I can get a reader for a little under $200 that has an open platform and a large enough screen to read comfortably and a reasonable battery life, I won't buy any ebooks.
While I agree that eBooks would never replace the traditional books, they're good for some uses.
By now, everyone is familiar with Gutenberg Project, (been mentioned several times in the discussion already). It's a great resource to grab the classics and go over text, if you only need a chapter or an exerpt. It saves me lots of time instead of driving to the library, finding a book, then sifting through 500 pages to find a section, a quote or a paragraph. With Gutenberg Project, it's really convinient to just download/open the text file and search for whatever it is you're looking for by familiar strings or phrases.
As for commercial eBooks, I find them excellent for searching through the massive text for a specific mention of the subject I'm looking for (take political books for example). It makes research much more easier. Same goes for 400 page technical manuals.
Reading them entirely is a challenge though, since staring at the monitor/LCD/etc for hours is cumbersome and then there is the power factor.
So to sum up, there are many purposes for eBooks existing, but not as a substitute for traditional books. If authors were to include an electronic version of the book with the hardcover or paperback, I doubt there would be a mass piracy problem. People would still buy them. I have bunch of eBooks somewhere on the storage drive which I'd very much like to read, but they're just collecting eDust. I can't remember ever reading an entire eBook. I'd rather pay $10 dollars and save my eye-sight.
Barnes and Noble booksellers (NYSE symbol BKS) is not the same as bn.com (NASDAQ symbol BNBN). They are separate companies with separate management. BKS does however own about 38% of BNBN's stock. BNBN is a joint venture between BKS and Bertelsmann. Don't feel bad, the fools (Motley and otherwise) at Fool.com and Forbes magazine don't seem to know the difference either -- and they are both selling investment advice!
While I agree that looking at a little screen can cause eye strain, reading an actual physical book can cause eye strain too. I seem to remember anecdotes in history class about how Lincoln (an avid reader) suffered eye troubles because he read so much. What's more, he didn't have so many handy lights at night to help him read. Palm Pilots and the like at least typically come with backlights (or frontlights or whatever).
B&N stopped selling software and video games in the relatively few stores that carried them when they started aggressively expanding GameStop into just about every stripmall in the US (while pulling them out of big malls).
Now they're closing their B. Dalton stores over the next year, starting right after Christmas. The reasoning they gave employees was that the profitable B. Dalton stores were pulling sales away from the big stores. Borders only has a couple Waldenbooks left in the region, but this is Utah, and the LDS Church-owned book chain is in every mall, so B&N is pretty much just giving the mall business to them. Most of the people who come into my wife's B. Dalton have no clue they're part of B&N, and lots of them tell her how they won't shop at B&N because they're so awful and they don't want to give B&N their money...before buying $200 worth of books. These people aren't going to go across town to the B&N, they're going to go to the Deseret Books at the other end of the mall.
Clearly B&N has decided big malls are dead, and is moving out. But I think their reasoning is flawed.
THEN ebooks will take off. When you can "curl up" with one, and no sooner.
--- Ban humanity.
In case of eBooks, the way of reading adds something to the formula and as a result the most viable customers for eBook would be people who love (or just used) to read from the screen. Guess who? That's right - computer engineers and web artists. And what do they love to read? The stuff that they have to read: books for their job.
I can prove it. Just check the most successful eBook retail site and see yourself: they have lots books for that audience, new books are coming frequently and the price is very affordable. Oh, by the way, no need to even download it: you can read it right from the web or you can cache it for reading later on any off-line browser. You can cut and paste examples right to your editor or the terminal window. And you can even give up the book from your bookshelf back to to the store and get another one instead!
Less is more !