Slashdot Mirror
Novelists On the E-Book Experience
An anonymous reader writes "How is reading different on a Kindle, a Nook, or an iPhone? The NY Times asked two writers what they thought. Joseph Finder, the author of thrillers, misses the indices compiled by humans and finds it annoying the way that all of the fonts are the same. Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels, actually likes the simplicity because he can concentrate on the words themselves. And then there's the issue of monopoly, which must give the authors the willies."
I believe they are called MMOs these days.
Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher novels, actually likes the simplicity because he can concentrate on the words themselves.
Someone at work suggested I might like his books. I found one at a used book stand and started reading. The words to describe his writing style are stilted and simplistic. I felt like I was running into a wall at the end of every sentence. (get the hint?)
I think I got through the first paragraph before skipping around the next few pages then finally giving up. There might be an interesting story somewhere in those pages, but I couldn't stay around long enough to find it.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Actually, the summary makes him sound like an ass, while his statements in TFA are pretty reasonable:
Joseph Finder, the author of high-tech thrillers like “Vanished” and “High Crimes,” praises the ability to pack an entire bookshelf into his carry-on luggage. “I read a lot of nonfiction, particularly for research,” he said, “and since I read a lot when I travel, I like the convenience of being able to lug a huge pile of books in one slim device.”
But e-readers don’t always make research easy. Mr. Finder said that many books he has read on the Kindle lacked a real index compiled by a human, adding that the ability to search for keywords was hardly an adequate replacement.
which is totally what she said
You can set bookmarks. However, navigating the bookmark screen is slower than flipping to the page you have a post-it hanging off of. So if you go digital with your reference books, you will gain the ability for text search, but it will come at the cost of slower access to existing bookmarks.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
http://www.webscription.net/ for Baen Books and several other related imprints.
---dragoness
To be clear, and this FUD has been going around since the thing came out, you can use non-DRM formats on the Kindle. TXT and MOBI/PRC files can be read no problem -- the device mounts as a flash drive, you copy them over and they appear readable on the home screen.
Text has been available for everything, and mobi pocket is going the way of the dinosaur. I appologize for not including them, but it's a non-issue as everything else does it too, and text ebooks suck monkey balls. However, anything other than those (like .doc or .pdf, the most common document formats in the world) must be sent to Adobe and, at their grace, sent to your Kindle. Also, books purchased from Amazon for the Kindle are non-transferable, even to another Kindle, and you cannot buy books from another store for use on a kindle (unless they, for some reason, give it to you as a txt file). That's a huge deal-breaker for me.
The lack of ePub could be a frustration if a good DRM-free ePub store appears...
You mean like the Sony Store and Google Books who, combined, are far larger than Amazon's store? Yeah, ePub is already more available, and more transferrable than Kindle books.
...but given that the spec leaves room for any DRM scheme to I expect that it will be just as fractured as anything else.
So far, the exact opposite has happened, and I'll tell you why: who the hell wants to be the publisher of an ebook that nobody else can buy? What sense does that make? Also, you can now check out library books on any e-reader that suports ePub DRM, and like I said there are more ePub books available than there are Kindle books. If you include public domain books available in ePub (which number in the millions, thanks to Google Books and Project Gutenberg), Amazon's kindle is left in the dust.
There is no source that I know of for new, legal novels without DRM.
By the same token, there is no source that I know of for new, legal DVDs without copy protection, and no source of new, legal Blue Ray movies without DRM. What's your point? It's a stupid argument because it will never happen (except on a select, book by book basis), and if we have a ubiquitous technology for managing legal copies, like ePub is fast becoming, it will only be a problem for people who wish to copy the material illegaly.
Frankly, there are already half a dozen ePub stores, and there are more opening up all the time, like the Barnes & Nobel store, which was formerly all proprietary .pdb books, but now offers ePub books as well. I don't know if you know this, but B&N is one of the largest book sellers in the world.
Your information is out of date, just like mine was. Unfortunately, correcting me doesn't make the Kindle look any better, while correcting you just makes it look worse.
The one thing I'll praise the Kindle for is the Wireless-G access - this was a huge boon and a number of ebook readers - including the latest Sony - are emulating it. However, in the long run the Kindle was the wrong horse to bet on, as they are the ones that are going to have all the troubles you describe.
Lastly, it's not FUD if it's true, damnit!
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Just to chime in here, you have a few facts wrong about the Kindle (which I do own). .mobi format (the kindle format is just a drm'd mobi file with a different file extension). Mobi is about as common as ePub, and most major ebook publishers offer books in this format. In fact, most of the books on my Kindle were purchased / downloaded from baen.com.
You can mount it as a USB mass storage device, and archive your books or add books that you acquired separately from the Amazon store. Only the encrypted books you purchased from Amazon will be unreadable on any other device you may have (although theoretically you can crack the encryption on the DRM'd books). I believe you can even reload books that Amazon may have "revoked" from your backup and still be able to read them.
You can also load any book onto the Kindle that is in the
I'm not exactly thrilled with the power that Amazon has over books you buy through them, but the device is not as tied to the Amazon service as many people think, and you can use it to read other books (even if Amazon were to die).
Indeed!
Ask editors, agents and other professional readers as well: you'll find they love e-Readers because a stack of manuscripts is heavy! It's way easier to carry around and read a stack of electronic manuscripts on your Kindle or Sony E-Reader than it is to manhandle all that paper around.
Ask a group of extremely avid consumer readers: romance readers. This is a group whose typical readers go through multiple books a week, bought and paid for, not freebies from Project Gutenberg. They were the first group to get on the e-book bandwagon in a big way, and there are a number of e-only small publishing houses in the romance genre. In fact, I find it vaguely depressing that the commenters on a forum for geeks, etc (Slashdot) is less informed and less interested in e-books and e-readers than that of a popular romance blog Smart Bitches, Trashy books.
I also recommend the Teleread blog, for keeping up on things e-book.
---dragoness
Wow. The idea of being able to have images, a contents page and an index appeals to many people -- probably including those who'll desperately find any objection they can to back up their objections, which are generally founded on the idea that they should be objecting.
ePub is pretty much a zipped XHTML file. So it's ultimately in tagged ASCII, except the file is much smaller, because it's zipped. It also supports images, which ASCII singularly fails to do, and allows one to have both contents and index pages.
ASCII, on the other hand, lacks all of this *and* gives you larger files.
Refuse all you like -- that's your prerogative, even if it is based on an absurd stance.
You do know that pretty much every ebook reader ever sold supports plain .txt/rtf formats, right?
OTOH, ASCII has limitations. For example, no formatting, no images, no MathML. ASCII is fine if all you care about is the latest Dirk Pitt novel, but it is woefully inadequate for everything else.
Good points all, but Amazon did send an email apologizing for the Animal Farm hubub AND offered a return of the book OR a $30 Amazon credit. And promised not to do it again.
Here is the email they sent in full -
Hello,
On July 23, 2009, Jeff Bezos, our Founder and CEO, made the following apology to our customers:
“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.
With deep apology to our customers,
Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com”
As you were one of the customers impacted by the removal of "Works of George Orwell" from your Kindle device in July of this year, we would like to offer you the option to have us re-deliver this book to your Kindle along with any annotations you made. You will not be charged for the book. If you do not wish to have us re-deliver the book to your Kindle, you can instead choose to receive an Amazon.com electronic gift certificate or check for $30. Please email Kindle customer support at kindle-response@amazon.com to indicate your preference. If you prefer to receive a check, please also provide your mailing address. We look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, The Kindle Team Please note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.
Sorry about the mess.
How can something which doesn't exist be under 'constant attack'? There is not, and has never been, any concept of 'fair use' in US copyright law. All fair use is is a DEFENSE which you may present when you have been sued for copyright infringement. It is up to the jury to decide if it is a valid reason. Copyright holders are under no obligation (and never have been) to allow fair use.
Go to books.google.com and browse any genre. On the left select "Public domain only". Not all of the books are in ePub only, some can be in pdf.
However I like manybooks.net. Most every book the have (25,439) is available in 20+ formats including the original Sony(.lrf) format, ePub(.epub), Kindle(.azw), mobipocket(.prc and .mobi), palm DOC(.pdb) heck even Newton(.pkg) format is supported.