Ebooks on the way out?

[Nellisir]

I can picture an e-book that I'd really like, and it'd look a lot like a book. Full-open to a large screen, or "half-fold" to two screens (like, y'know...a book). Some kind of simple tab system I could operate with my thumb while holding the book in the same hand. Ultra-light.

The act of flipping a page is really...comforting, as is seeing two pages (and not flat, like two-page view on my monitor).

 

[Dioltach]

I can picture an e-book that I'd really like, and it'd look a lot like a book. Full-open to a large screen, or "half-fold" to two screens (like, y'know...a book). Some kind of simple tab system I could operate with my thumb while holding the book in the same hand. Ultra-light.

The act of flipping a page is really...comforting, as is seeing two pages (and not flat, like two-page view on my monitor).

I must say, that does sound good (I have a cover for my Kobo that flips open like a book, so I'm not too far off). But I'd like an e-book like that to have an option for using the left-hand screen for calling up maps, illustrations, a cast of characters, or searching through the book.

 

[Jhaelen]

Until Amazon takes your books away.
http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets...ndle-books-amazon-reminds-customer-f1C6626211

They can't. I always download books to my PC rather than directly to the Kindle. I also use Calibre to manage my collection.

This was one of the first issues I did some research on before buying the Kindle.

Which reminds me:
I always used to be afraid of losing my extensive book collection to a fire.

For my digital book collection I have backups stored on two different web storage providers.
Unless the whole internet infrastructure breaks down, I consider it unlikely to ever lose my e-books.

 

[Janx]

This might be of help -

http://calibre-ebook.com/

That's like step 2 on my migration from Sony to Kindle.

Which actually brings up one possible reason for the dip in ebook sales.

Sony just closed their ebook store and transfered all the purchases to kobo. We had about 3 years worth of books on Sony (345 titles if I recall). There's likely a lot of no purchases going on, just because one of the players vanished. We stopped buying books when we found out it was going to happen until we figured out what we were going to switch to and how.

Past experience with Kobo is that they suck. their support is terrible. The only redeeming quality is their lack of responsiveness makes winning a PayPal dispute with them easy, because they simply don't respond and thus lose by default.

My next step is to buy a DRM removal tool to strip my files that i bought, so I can use Callibre to convert them to Kindle format (because Kindle does NOT use ePub format).

 

[Quartz]

I hava a Kindle Paperwhite and so far I'm not really impressed. The problem of flipping back and forth has already been mentioned, but physically, the screen isn't all that good. It has a 200 dpi screen but the text looks dreadful. It's decent enough for penny dreadfuls.

OTOH my nephew loves his.

 

[Nellisir]

They can't. I always download books to my PC rather than directly to the Kindle. I also use Calibre to manage my collection. This was one of the first issues I did some research on before buying the Kindle.

So basically, there's a workaround. That gives you possession, not ownership.

I always used to be afraid of losing my extensive book collection to a fire.

Keeping your books in a fireproof vault. Also, insurance.

 

[Umbran]

So basically, there's a workaround. That gives you possession, not ownership.

Legally speaking, you're correct. I haven't gotten anything from Amazon, so I don't know if this is technically a violation of their license terms.

But, I think the point was more on the practical side than the legal niceties side.

 

[Janx]

Legally speaking, you're correct. I haven't gotten anything from Amazon, so I don't know if this is technically a violation of their license terms.

But, I think the point was more on the practical side than the legal niceties side.

I'm inclined to think (and this is not legal advice), that until you actually attract the attention of lawyers or cops, the details don't matter on what you do with a file you paid money for that stays inside your home/tech-property.

 

[Dioltach]

Kobo has a desktop program that downloads any books you buy onto your compueter -- I assime that means you own those files.

 

[Nellisir]

But, I think the point was more on the practical side than the legal niceties side.

The way I read things right now, courts are leaning towards "purchase" of an ebook as a lease, not a sale - there's no right to resale, for instance. I'm secure in my ownership of my books now, a year from now, and twenty years from now. I don't think the same can be said for ebooks. I realize that right now, as a "practical" matter, it doesn't matter, but what about in a year? Two years? Twenty years? It's optimistic to say you're always going to have a disconnected device to store all your books on, and they're never going to implement some kind of DRM.

I like ebooks just fine, but I'm not going to bury my head in the sand and suffocate for them.