When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too • Hacker News Board

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#261

Post by andrewla » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

ghostDancer wrote: post #248

andrewla wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All your points are dead on. I'll throw in these cons as well: 5. visibility (as noted by angrygoat) and browseability is terrible. 6. Flipping through an ebook looking for something is impossible. 7. Illustrations or drawings are rendered terribly. The list of pros of ebooks: 1. It's just a better experience. Ebooks are lighter than their equivalent books, easy to use one-handed, fonts can be adjusted, you can carry…

I only consider the option for ebooks in linear reading ones, like novels. For non linear ones I don't, so cookbooks (cooking or any other subject) or manuals I can't use them , I need paper. And you're right don't even began talking if there's a diagram/image/map.

Definitely, and I should have included that caveat. Kindle/epaper is ideal for linear books in my mind, but for non-linear, paper still rules, though I'm hopeful that some day someone will figure out a better way to use phones/tables for accessing that sort of content.

Cookbooks are strange. With the number of recipes out there in electronic form it seems like the tide has shifted, but I still buy cookbooks for general cooking stuff, and still find myself printing out recipes that I find online (like an old person!) so that I can actually use them in a kitchen environment.

Technical books, reference books, textbooks seem so incredibly natural for an interactive format, but I'm not aware of anyone that has cracked this. The closest metaphor I've found is having tabs in a browser, so I can store a limited history of my exploration of a topic, but it rapidly becomes an unnavigable mess.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#262

Post by criddell » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

Finnucane wrote: post #227

criddell wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood the argument that ebooks should cost less. The price of a good usually isn't determined by the cost to manufacture and sell. Why should books be different? For me, I'll pay more for an ebook than a paperback because it's a more valuable format for me. Aside from being more compact and searchable, I can select a larger font. If it's more valuable, why shouldn't it cost more? One thing we do agree on…

Typically, the price of books is largely a function of the costs of manufacture and distribution. There are some fixed, up-front costs that don't vary with print run (editorial, typesetting, proofreading, cropyediting and so on), which is why a bestseller novel is way more profitable than a complex academic book that is expensive to produce and limited in sales, even though you're probably spending more on royalties…

> Typically, the price of books is largely a function of the costs of manufacture and distribution.

I don't think that's always true. The cost to print and ship hard cover vs paperback books is less than the price difference between the two.

I'm surprised about ereaders not supporting what you need for complex books. When I looked at Apple's version of epub it I thought it was pretty impressive. The Kindle format is more limited, but if you can represent something with html, css, and javascript, iBook should work.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#263

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

sdinsn wrote: post #20

ohithereyou wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an issue if there were ebooks exclusive to Microsoft and not available anywhere else. You've lost access to something that you can't get access to (legally) again at any price.

Well, is that actually the case for any books?

[deleted]

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#264

Post by panzagl » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

wlll wrote: post #214

criddell wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood the argument that ebooks should cost less. The price of a good usually isn't determined by the cost to manufacture and sell. Why should books be different? For me, I'll pay more for an ebook than a paperback because it's a more valuable format for me. Aside from being more compact and searchable, I can select a larger font. If it's more valuable, why shouldn't it cost more? One thing we do agree on…

Good for you that you get more value out of them. I won't pay more though, because I personally have less rights and convenience with ebooks. There's also an element of being taken for a ride here. I can afford the $8 snickers bar from the minibar in the hotel, but I won't buy it because I feel like someone is taking the piss. Attempting to use their position to extort me. Same for ebooks. When your costs are lower,…

How are you taken for a ride? The kindle version is almost always cheaper than the retail price of the physical version, and usually cheaper than the discounted price as well.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#265

Post by panzagl » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

ozzyman700 wrote: post #202

wlll wrote: post #165

I don't buy ebooks, and this is just one reason. This is the complete list: 1. For some reason they cost a similar amount to print books Sometimes a bit less, sometimes the same, sometimes more. Distributing a physical book means you have to print, handle, store, transport, store again, handle again and transport again (using a simplified model of the journey a book takes to the end user). That costs money, and it co…

I pirate ebooks for this reason. If I like the book or the book has valuable illustration done in color I will purchase the physical copy, otherwise backing up my calibre library according to 3-2-1 is easy peasy.

No, you pirate because you're selfish and self-entitled.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#266

Post by ghostDancer » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #261

ghostDancer wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only consider the option for ebooks in linear reading ones, like novels. For non linear ones I don't, so cookbooks (cooking or any other subject) or manuals I can't use them , I need paper. And you're right don't even began talking if there's a diagram/image/map.

Definitely, and I should have included that caveat. Kindle/epaper is ideal for linear books in my mind, but for non-linear, paper still rules, though I'm hopeful that some day someone will figure out a better way to use phones/tables for accessing that sort of content. Cookbooks are strange. With the number of recipes out there in electronic form it seems like the tide has shifted, but I still buy cookbooks for gener…

I do the same with recipes, the ones I find interesting on the net I import them to a recipe manager (Gourmet) but when I'm going to use them I print them and keep the paper copy in a folder .

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#267

Post by specialist » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #3

John Beezer built the Weed Share P2P music sharing service built on top of Microsoft's DRM. Microsoft discontinued the service without notice. All the music everyone bought was lost (unplayable).

These downvotes capture the "hate" portion of my relationship with HN.

Here's the cite:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/05/media_player_weedsh...

I misremembered the technical details, but the end result is the same: user's lost the content they purchased.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#268

Post by username223 » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

miki123211 wrote: post #259

username223 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually not that easy for most books, because most books aren't popular enough to sustain a torrent. A PDF of a book is usually tens or hundreds of megabytes, which is too big to get through most mail servers. Mass-sharing an ebook takes just enough work that it won't happen for anything that's not a best-seller.

Mass sharing a scanned book, particularly one that was not OCRed, indeed usually takes too much work. EBooks, or rather most of them, are tiny epub files with little to no images, 5mb maximum. There are sources distributing ebooks at scale, libgen.io is a prime example, the ebooks channel on IRC highway and myanonamouse, a private ebook and audiobook torrent tracker that some people apparently use also exist. There a…

Gotcha -- an epub/mobi of a novel is tiny and easy to host. I was thinking of more design-heavy books with figures and images, which tend to be much larger.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#269

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #224

bo1024 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I got confused about was where they actually sell these DRM-free ebooks. (Apparently not on their website.) I went out on a limb and bought some Tor books from ebooks.com and they did turn out to be DRM-free, but there was no way to tell in advance.

Tor's Kindle books are also DRM free, although IIRC the process of exporting the DRM free files outside the Kindle app is somewhat non-intuitive.

Thanks to lawyer back and forth Amazon now has an explicit note on Tor (and Baen and a few other similar publisher titles) making it clear that the file is DRM free at publisher request. It seems like funny language in Amazon's store pages because it sounds like they are treating it like a book defect the way it is written, but the bonus is that you can look for that "warning"/"acknowledgment" when you want that best of both worlds situation where you want to get Kindle features on a book but support a DRM-free publisher over alternatives.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#270

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #231

dnate wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aren't those still mainly activated on steam?

Every game in a Humble _Indie_ Bundle has always been available DRM free. Titles in their "Humble Trove" (a monthly subscriber perk) are also DRM free. Other bundles Humble Bundle sells are often Steam only.

I find it slightly sad that Humble Bundle watered down their brand by allowing Steam-only sales in the (Not So) Humble Store, then further by increasingly having Steam-only bundles.