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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
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.
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.
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!
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!
THEN ebooks will take off. When you can "curl up" with one, and no sooner.
--- Ban humanity.