Google eBookstore

December 6, 2010 9:19 AM

Google eBooks, the new Google eBooks store that will compete with Amazon on price and selection. Introducing Google eBooks (video). Launch USA only. NPR: "..independent booksellers will get a cut of the revenue when people buy e-books on their local seller's website instead of directly from Google."
posted by stbalbach (85 comments total)

Cool. I wonder what Google is taking from the publishers? Amazon, in spite of its PR spin about helping students with textbook prices, actually demands roughly 70% of the list price of an eBook from the publishers! So, instead of helping to decrease the cost of textbooks, Amazon's greedy ways actually force publishers to keep eBook prices higher than they would normally be, to maintain decent, sustainable margins.
posted by Vibrissae at 9:24 AM on December 6, 2010

I'm pretty excited by this. Both Amazon and B&N (Makers of the nook e-reader) have gaps in their e-book selection that Goog seems to have filled.
posted by boo_radley at 9:26 AM on December 6, 2010

Here are the public domain offerings. I'm usually fairly "meh" about these sorts of roll-outs and their hype across the interwebs, but I do like that you can keep all of your books open across platforms. Now Google knows what I like to read as well as everything else about me!
posted by Burhanistan at 9:27 AM on December 6, 2010 [3 favorites]

I see they have Henry Miller's The Books In My Life - which Amazon does not.

Still no Jean Giono or Dawn Powell though.
posted by Joe Beese at 9:29 AM on December 6, 2010

I was looking at their Terms of Sale, which is an interesting choice of words, since they seem to want no part of the First Sale Doctrine:

Restrictions. You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, transfer, or assign your rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party except as expressly permitted by Google.

No thanks.
posted by exogenous at 9:31 AM on December 6, 2010 [3 favorites]

Still no <insert major Canadian author> either, but such is the cost of being your own country I guess.
posted by GuyZero at 9:31 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm still trying to figure out how the offline reading action will work. I've downloaded a sample of a new book, and an entire public domain book, onto my ipod touch, and I'm not seeing a "read this offline" or "sorry, you can't read this particular book offline" button. I'm reluctant to cough up $ for a book if I don't know beforehand if I can read it offline, and if so, will it be available in a sucky PDF or a less sucky epub format?
posted by rtha at 9:32 AM on December 6, 2010

Has anyone allowed the first sale doctrine with any purely digital good? You can't resell itunes songs or Kindle ebooks either AFAIK.
posted by GuyZero at 9:33 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Their service sounds interesting, as they are including "some 9,000 publishers, including all of the major houses" (according to NPR), and the service supports a broad range of platforms (including Barnes & Noble Nook and Reader from Sony, but excluding the Amazon Kindle).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:33 AM on December 6, 2010

If nothing else, this provides the e-book shopper an option for boycotting Amazon over its Wikileaks cowardice.
posted by Joe Beese at 9:34 AM on December 6, 2010 [7 favorites]

I don't like the idea of google getting into commerce directly. They are begging for an anti-trust lawsuit.
posted by empath at 9:34 AM on December 6, 2010

Yes, how would one read their book offline? I noticed in the introduction video the voiceover says something about how you can enjoy your books on any internet enabled device. So it looks like for now you'll have to keep your network connection up in order to read.
posted by splatta at 9:35 AM on December 6, 2010

the service supports a broad range of platforms (including Barnes & Noble Nook and Reader from Sony, but excluding the Amazon Kindle)

All right! Who's up for Format Wars?
posted by Joe Beese at 9:37 AM on December 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

Actually, this time around, I suspect it will be App wars instead. A subtle, but significant difference, apps you have even less control over.
posted by bonehead at 9:39 AM on December 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm still trying to figure out how the offline reading action will work.

I tested this on my Droid. If you're reading it through the native Google Books app, it seems to download a copy. Putting the phone in Airplane mode still lets you read. I assume it'll be the same with your iPod. I assume the nook and kindle have a comparable system, even though they don't have the Google Books app.
posted by SAC at 9:39 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

splatta: On their "international availability" page, they advise "For U.S. users traveling abroad: Before you head to the airport, be sure to load and sync the ebooks you wish to have with you for continued reading without interruption.". So you must be able to d/l them and read offline.

This is interesting, but as I'm not in the US they aren't even showing me what books are available. Every name I type in gets zero hits.
posted by Infinite Jest at 9:39 AM on December 6, 2010

Only that first line should have been in italics. Sorry
posted by SAC at 9:39 AM on December 6, 2010

So it looks like for now you'll have to keep your network connection up in order to read.

Uh, they're saying that if you use ios devices (for one, probably allt he others too), offline reading is included.
posted by circular at 9:40 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

I can't find the app in the app store, and when i click on the download link, it says it's not available in my country (USA)
posted by empath at 9:40 AM on December 6, 2010

re Canadians: I went 2 for 3 in my first lookups: no Robertson Davies, but yes on Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:43 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

exogenous: I was looking at their Terms of Sale, which is an interesting choice of words, since they seem to want no part of the First Sale Doctrine... No thanks.

Serious question: have any digital goods been found to viable for resale? I remember hearing about some fellow who wanted to sell off some iTunes tracks early in the life of the iTunes Store, but there was a lawsuit, and I never heard what happened there. The selling of digital "licenses" is a messy thing, as compared to the selling of physical goods.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:43 AM on December 6, 2010

I can't find the app in the app store, and when i click on the download link, it says it's not available in my country (USA)

This is interesting; I started searching the itunes and android stores as soon as the wired article went live; android was available immediately, it took till after 9am for the itunes one to become available for me.

As far as I can tell, there's no way to use your own books with their service, no big surprise really.

They have Tom Robbins' Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, but way overpriced.
posted by nomisxid at 9:47 AM on December 6, 2010

So does this mean you don't get an actual file download for your e-book? Being a Kindle owner, i know that I can send an e-mail attachment to my account for a dime, and then read it on my device. But, if there is no file, then I guess Google and Kindle won't mix?
posted by Roger Dodger at 9:50 AM on December 6, 2010

I guess Google and Kindle won't mix?

that sucks.
posted by special-k at 10:00 AM on December 6, 2010

I don't have my kKndle on me right now to try this, but couldn't you just use Kindle's browser to read your Google Editions?
posted by Toekneesan at 10:00 AM on December 6, 2010

Yes, how would one read their book offline? I noticed in the introduction video the voiceover says something about how you can enjoy your books on any internet enabled device. So it looks like for now you'll have to keep your network connection up in order to read.

It appears that if your reader is compatible with Adobe Digital Editions, you can use it to put the ebook on an offline reader.

Transferring files to other supported devices.
posted by Anephim at 10:07 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

It looks as though most books can be downloaded DRM-free as either PDF or ePub once purchased, which seems like pretty big news!

I've found one book that specifically says it doesn't have a downloadble ePub, so I guess everything that doesn't have such a disclaimer is?
posted by Jonathan Harford at 10:07 AM on December 6, 2010

Oh. Not DRM-free. Adobe Digital Editions.
posted by Jonathan Harford at 10:09 AM on December 6, 2010

As a Droid and Sony Ereader owner, this makes me very happy. I always like another source of books . . . and not cluttering our house with more of the non-electronic version.
posted by bearwife at 10:09 AM on December 6, 2010

btw, I was also working on a post about this launch so here are some links that I think might enrich this discussion:

Boston Review has an excellent piece on Amazon and their power in the marketplace.

Pershing Square who owns 37% of Borders is considering buying Barnes and Noble.

Hacking your nook, and why that may make it the best for your buck reader on the market.
posted by Toekneesan at 10:10 AM on December 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

splatta: "So it looks like for now you'll have to keep your network connection up in order to read."

The eBooks section goes into some more detail (I will break this up a bit for clarity):

Google eBooks are stored in the cloud, so if you plan to read on the web using your computer, tablet, or on your phone, there is no file to download and you can read ebooks directly within the browser or application.

If you plan to read using an eReader, you should learn more about the available ePub and PDF file formats, and how to transfer Google eBook files onto your eReader.

A small number of ebooks may not be enabled for download to your eReader due to limits set by the publisher; those ebooks will display an alert message ("No download files included") before you purchase or get the ebook.

Here is my particular reading, which I constructed after some thought, and some familiarity with ORA's Android ebook apps and Nook's ebooks:

Let's say you have a Google Books runnable device. I think (!) that the books are in the cloud and transferred to the device on-demand and stored in a file cache. The "there is no file to download" is a contrast to a manual process of (a)finding the ebook (b) registering for the seller's site (c) buying the book (d) downloading the ebook to your PC and (e) finally transferring the file from your PC to your eReader.

The ePub and PDF formats are for people who have a "dumb" (no wifi/ cell) ereader like Sony's PRS line where shuttling files from the PC are a given. It's a dick move to say that some files aren't availble by epub/pdf, but that's the publishers' dick move, not google's.
posted by boo_radley at 10:13 AM on December 6, 2010

Here are the public domain offerings

FWIW, many, if not all of these are already available on Archive.org.

The timing of this announcement is funny for me -- today, I published an article on why people should scan their own books in New York Law School Review.

I am looking forward to see how market competition makes ebooks both better and worse. This is going to be a very exciting year for everyone interested in digital reading.
posted by fake at 10:15 AM on December 6, 2010 [4 favorites]

Kindle owners: Download the ePub to PC, convert to Mobi with Calibre (free), upload to Kindle.
posted by stbalbach at 10:15 AM on December 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

And let me qualify my response by saying I'm not a total nook fan, either: The case has cracked from wear, the "rotating screensavers" serve no purpose but draining my battery, I get a ridiculous amount of "BUY ROMANCE NOVELS NOW" junk from BN, and I'm peeved that they've come out with a color unit so quickly after their initial launch.
posted by boo_radley at 10:16 AM on December 6, 2010

That bit about independnent booksellers getting a cut seems to be the biggest news here.

Probably they're still doomed, regardless.
posted by notyou at 10:16 AM on December 6, 2010

So the upshot is my library lives "in the cloud", not on my machine(s), and if Google ever decides that selling eBooks isn't profitable, my library, um, evaporates.
posted by orthogonality at 10:19 AM on December 6, 2010

FWIW, many, if not all of these are already available on Archive.org.

And text/html (and recently ePub and mobi) versions may be available and Project Gutenberg.
posted by muddgirl at 10:21 AM on December 6, 2010

today, I published an article on why people should scan their own books in New York Law School Review.

Looks interesting, I'll read it.

Since scanning is technically illegal even for personal use (I think), there are some other options, such as the exploding pirate book marketplace, just download the book and save the trouble of scanning it (assuming a download is available).

For DIY book scanning, I'm coming to the conclusion the easiest method is chopping the spine off with something like this, and then feeding the sheets through something like this. Very fast and easy compared to a DIY book scanner.
posted by stbalbach at 10:26 AM on December 6, 2010

flight light thief: Serious question: have any digital goods been found to viable for resale?

For one, O'Reilly's ebooks allow this.
posted by exogenous at 10:26 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Kindle owners: Download the ePub to PC, convert to Mobi with Calibre (free), upload to Kindle.

I presume that all the commercial material is permission-restricted up the wazoo to prevent exactly this. Google isn't selling an actual book; they're selling the right to look at one.
posted by bonehead at 10:29 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

> commercial material is permission-restricted up the wazoo

Easily un-wazooed.
posted by stbalbach at 10:45 AM on December 6, 2010

Since scanning is technically illegal even for personal use (I think), there are some other options, such as the exploding pirate book marketplace, just download the book and save the trouble of scanning it (assuming a download is available).

Wrong. I have lawyers, and they are pretty clear that scanning your own books is Fair Use for the majority of cases.

For DIY book scanning, I'm coming to the conclusion the easiest method is chopping the spine off with something like this, and then feeding the sheets through something like this. Very fast and easy compared to a DIY book scanner.

I agree that sheet-fed scanning is fast, and sometimes easy (sheet feed scanners have their own problems -- I have one and can only insert a bit of a book at a time, and it's munged its fair share of pages).

However, most people don't want to destroy their books just to read them on the computer. That's why so many people have chosen to build their own scanning rig. I know it's not for everyone, and I don't think it's best in all cases, but it's a good option for a lot of people, getting better all the time.
posted by fake at 11:01 AM on December 6, 2010

I have downloaded the google books reader and added it to my stock of ereaders on my iPad. On first glance I feel comfortable saying that the UI experience on this ereader is not much different from the experience on the iBooks app. For sheer readability it's decent with no glaring omissions or useless extras.

What I feel sets the Google offering apart from all the rest is the bookstore UI. When I accessed the store from my iPad I was pleasantly surprised to find an interface that cleanly displayed various purchasing categories in an obvious, to me, order. Including a section of free books for download. Amazon and apple don't have a clean way of finding free books. And afaik nook has no free books at all.

My 0.02 p.
posted by Severian at 11:08 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Fake, stbalbach's comment is neither wrong nor right until there is president. I don't think there is here. Do your lawyers cite cases to prove it's legality? If so, which ones?
posted by Toekneesan at 11:08 AM on December 6, 2010

Yay, poor quality control.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:11 AM on December 6, 2010

president precedent.
posted by Toekneesan at 11:22 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Toekneesan, see Recording Industry Association of America v. Diamond Multimedia Sys., 180 F.3d 1072 (9th Cir. 1999). That case was about digital music, but the same idea applies with regard to digitizing books.
posted by exogenous at 11:24 AM on December 6, 2010

Kindle owners: Download the ePub to PC, convert to Mobi with Calibre (free), upload to Kindle.

Calibre doesn't convert epub files that have drm. I don't mind paying for books, and Amazon usually matches the price of other ebook sellers. But, I hope they realize their folly and allow other formats. I already know a few people who were getting Kindles for Christmas, but with this announcement, are considering Nooks and Sony Readers instead.
posted by bluefly at 11:24 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Wrong. I have lawyers, and they are pretty clear that scanning your own books is Fair Use for the majority of cases.

Does that mean I can scan a book that I own, and "lend" a copy of the scan to friends? I'm seeing Internet Archive do exactly that, they are scanning copyright books, and lending them out with Adobe DRM protection to ensure the book expires after a week or so.

Calibre doesn't convert epub files that have drm.

Remove the drm.
posted by stbalbach at 11:25 AM on December 6, 2010

exogenous, that case was about taking something already digital and moving it between devices. It does not cover the actual digitizing.
posted by Toekneesan at 11:31 AM on December 6, 2010

Imagine you find a new book, highly recommended by your Facebook friends or a blogger you trust. Instead of a limited free trial of the first chapters, from which the publisher and author get no recompense if you don’t ultimately buy, what if you were offered an ad-supported read of the book instead?

Ads are the 600lb gorilla in the room.
posted by infinitefloatingbrains at 11:36 AM on December 6, 2010

Metafilter: is neither wrong nor right until there is president.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:36 AM on December 6, 2010

Hay, Canucks: take Robert Service for your own (what, like the Scots are paying attention?) and you'll have something to brag about in no time!
posted by wenestvedt at 11:41 AM on December 6, 2010

Toekneesan, I'm not sure how the act of digitizing impacts the space-shifting argument of noninfringement WRT digitizing books one already owns. As the court stated in RIAA vs. Diamond:

The Rio merely makes copies in order to render portable, or "space-shift," those files that already reside on a user's hard drive. Cf. Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417, 455 (1984) (holding that "time-shifting" of copyrighted television shows with VCR's constitutes fair use under the Copyright Act, and thus is not an infringement). Such copying is paradigmatic noncommercial personal use entirely consistent with the purposes of the Act.

posted by exogenous at 11:45 AM on December 6, 2010

if Google ever decides that selling eBooks isn't profitable, my library, um, evaporates.

In Google's defense, I'm still using my Google Notebook account almost daily and that service was shut down a couple years ago, so that's not a given.
posted by JaredSeth at 11:57 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Fake, stbalbach's comment is neither wrong nor right until there is president.

You know, we already had this discussion, or one almost exactly like it, and since that time, I've had it in numerous public forums and at talks where I'm speaking as well as talks with lawyers, law professors, and other people, and I'm kinda done having it, especially since it is pretty obvious where you and I both stand.
posted by fake at 11:58 AM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

You don't need a digital copy to either time or space shift a book. And digital rights are often bought and sold as sub rights, like a translation, or a paperback edition, or turning a book into a movie or play. There is a lot of precedent for the protection of sub rights, and I suspect once the courts decide, that is how they will be treated. That said there may still be a fair use case for personal digitizing, but I sincerely doubt it will be based on RIAA vs. Rio.
posted by Toekneesan at 11:59 AM on December 6, 2010

Ads are the 600lb gorilla in the room.

I've got dozens of 1970s paperbacks on my shelves with full-color cigarette ads in the middle; the question is whether advertisers think it's a worthy place to spend their money, not that it's some unforeseen digression of the printed word.
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:01 PM on December 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

You don't need a digital copy to either time or space shift a book.

That's because time shifting and space shifting are general attributes of electronic media, and the specifics of digitization have nothing to do with them.
posted by fake at 12:12 PM on December 6, 2010

Yay, poor quality control.

What? You're saying I wouldn't want to pay fifteen clams to have a pseudobook all about my new favorite word, EPIZOOTIES?

For those of you who have a Kindle and aren't using calibre, you really should look into it. It makes the Kindle competitive with the Nook and has lots of other nifty features besides. It can convert many formats to many other formats surprisingly well. It can even convert CBR and CBZ for reading of comics. Although its output is a little small by default and optimized for full-page comics, with a little tweaking it does a pretty good job of displaying, say, Peanuts strips rotated for landscape view. It even has a fairly good automatic news scraper that can be used (if you have the mind) to get around Amazon's weird system of charging you to use your Kindle to read blogs off-line.

Someone above said that Amazon will email files to your device for "a dime." It turns out this is not necessarily the case. Their (username)@kindle.com service will send a file to your Kindle for $0.15 per megabyte sent, per file. But they now offer another address, (username)@free.kindle.com, that doesn't charge. The catch is it will only send via WiFi, and it only works on the most recent versions (v3) of the Kindle software. I have read somewhere that, if you go to your My Kindle page and set your spending limit to $0.00, that it will automatically use the free.kindle.com service to send files sent to the kindle.com address, but have not confirmed this yet.

EPIZOOTIES
posted by JHarris at 12:20 PM on December 6, 2010

Fake, stbalbach's comment is neither wrong nor right until there is president.

president precedent.

We all know you really meant to say pepsodent.
posted by JHarris at 12:24 PM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

It can even convert CBR and CBZ for reading of comics.

Tell me more. How do comic books in Calibre compare to CDisplay, that ultimate Zen nothing-but-the-image experience? I love, for example that CDisplay automagically picks a background colour on a page-by-page basis so as to be colour-neutral as possible.
posted by bonehead at 12:38 PM on December 6, 2010

The un-DRMing process is not trivial and I would not blithely assume that everyone will be able to do it with some simple googling. From what I understand of it, it depends on a very specific version of the Adobe Reader, and the decoding tool peeks at the Reader's memory to get the key.

This lends itself to a really unpleasant cat-and-mouse game where each new version of the Reader will break all extant tools, meaning you have to either keep an old version of the Reader around (and keep it from upgrading itself), or you have to constantly go out and hunt around obscure blogs, pastebins, etc. for the latest decoder.

Chances are most stuff you'll find available for download when you do a search won't work anymore, at least not without downgrading and a fair bit of work. Certainly it's not something that a non-savvy computer user is going to be able to do successfully, with any sort of reliability.

And it's pretty crummy work for the developer to maintain the tool in an environment like this; the glib answer is that the Internet will always have more coders-in-basements than Adobe has developers to throw at the task, that's really not the case. There are a limited and finite number of people who have both the technical capability and interest to comb through an intentionally obfuscated program to figure out where it's storing it's key. People tend to do it once, as a challenge, or a few times, and then lose interest and move on to other projects -- as is their right -- but when that happens the users end up DRM creek without a paddle.

More broadly, if you look over the messy history of DRM systems, the breaks that really matter are the ones that work without anything except the content that you want to liberate. De-DRM strategies that depend on software supplied by your adversary (the person supplying the DRM system) are inherently fragile, and I'm not sure we should really count them as more than technical curiosities.

DeCSS was like this;* there were previous DVD decryptors that relied on having particular versions of software players installed, but they were obnoxious to use. DeCSS didn't require anything except the DVD you wanted to decrypt, and that was what made it significant in the history of opening the DVD format up. (That and its source code was available.)

I'm unwilling to call a DRM system broken until that sort of decryption utility is available; otherwise it's too easy for the DRMer to simply roll out a new point release of their software every week (or every day, or every two hours, or as often as they want -- online updates make this pretty trivial) and make it so that only extremely dedicated individuals (which ironically in many cases means actual with-intent-to-redistribute "pirates") will bother to go through the hoops to do the decryption.

The ebook formats are very close to being broken by this definition, but they're not quite there yet. Kindle books can now be decrypted using a standalone utility and one user-information file that the Kindle Reader program saves to the hard drive. (The Mac version is "grandma easy.") I'm not sure that Adobe ADEPT really is, though.

* Although it did use a compromised decryption key, which in some respects might have been cheating; modern libdvdcss doesn't do this.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:45 PM on December 6, 2010 [4 favorites]

The default settings seem to do fairly well at converting full-size comic pages. The only problem I've encountered is that the Kindle's screen is a little small for that sort of thing. I'm not sure if it can be set to split tall pages so they can be viewed more legibly in Landscape mode. For Peanuts it requires a little configuration but works well. I find that using Keep Aspect Ratio, Wide and Landscape are best; if you don't set these they distort on conversion.
posted by JHarris at 12:57 PM on December 6, 2010

My wife is an author whose books are being published by the leading publisher in her genre, but they're not doing her books in print, only electronically. And it's been fascinating watching people deal with the fact her book is e-published only.

Reviewers love the book, but the comments on the reviews always turn into a referendum on whether e-books are "real" books, mainly from people who go on about "how a book feels" and "the smell of books" and "it's what Amazon is forcing us to do, EVIL Amazon."

And it drives me nuts in two ways: one, that people are so stupidly close-minded about e-books; and two, that the arguments they throw up are shallow and have nothing to do with the real problems with e-books, mainly portability and DRM.

Luckily, none of her friends and family have been anything but supportive. It was a touch annoying when a few family members only bought the book when it was on sale for 99 cents on Amazon, though.

This is the future. But it won't truly be the future until we work out portability and eliminate DRM.
posted by dw at 1:11 PM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Theoretically, now that you can develop apps for the Kindle, nothing could stop Google from porting its reader to the Kindle hardware.

Nothing, that is, but Amazon's Kindle Developer Guidelines.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 1:25 PM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

mainly from people who go on about "how a book feels" and "the smell of books"

I'm not much of a book-smeller but I have to say I am one of these people, in some ways. Specifically, for me there is a lot to be said for the tactile experience of plucking a book from the shelf and sitting down to read the thing, maybe with a mug of tea, if possible.

But having said that, I still plan to get an e-reader one of these days if for no other reason than travel. It makes so much more sense than to lug around a couple heavy books.

And more to the point, I will not pretend that the above statement regarding tactile experience, etc. is anything but outdated and probably a bit stubborn of me, as well. I cannot fathom the sort of mind which believes the world should change to suit one's outdated preferences as opposed to vice-versa.

And for the record, if a book were good and only available electronically, and I had a reader, then I would just get it in that format. No sense missing a good book over something so silly.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 1:31 PM on December 6, 2010

dw: The DRM is a big reason why I'm an ebook curmudgeon. Just about everything that comes into our house gets read at least twice, and a fair chunk gets swapped out to family and friends.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:41 PM on December 6, 2010

Although it seems that many of my arguments for out of print used book buying have been popping back into print, although it looks like John Crowley's Little, Big isn't available in digital form.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:50 PM on December 6, 2010

Over the last several months, someone has been posting huge batches of new release books, usually in at least four formats, often weeks before the books hit the stores, to the big book sharing sites. I will be quite curious if I can make a correlation between the posts and the newly available books for one retailer or another. The breadth of subject matter and sheer volume suggest an inside source. One wonders how strict internal controls are at ebook retailers. Employee shrinkage losses are a lot easier to ignore when there's no inventory to go missing.

Also, when it comes to self scanning books, my feelings are that if I just read the physical book once, I'd have to turn through all the pages anyways, so why not do all the page turning at once with a camera over my shoulder. It takes less time than you'd suspect, and perfectly readable results can be had with just two hands.
posted by No1UKnow at 2:23 PM on December 6, 2010

I'm with KirkJobSluder. I don't buy stuff I don't own. I didn't buy anything through iTMS until they ditched the DRM and I won't buy an eBook until prices fall in line and they are DRM free.
posted by entropicamericana at 2:27 PM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

it looks like John Crowley's Little, Big isn't available in digital form.

But the bestest edition ever will be coming out Real Soon Now.*

The DRM is a big reason why I'm an ebook curmudgeon

I remain a DRM-ed ebook curmudgeon, but have become a satisfied e-reader user. There are plenty of free books out there...

* real soon now status has been going on for a couple of years...
posted by Zed at 2:32 PM on December 6, 2010

I have read somewhere that, if you go to your My Kindle page and set your spending limit to $0.00, that it will automatically use the free.kindle.com service to send files sent to the kindle.com address, but have not confirmed this yet.

I can confirm that this is true. I do it all the time.

Also, I concur with Kadin2048 about the ease of removing DRM. The current scripts which remove the DRM from Barnes & Noble epub books involve inputting your credit card number in order to generate a key. I'm wary about sticking my CC number in some script I've just randomly downloaded from the internet (especially when the express purpose of that software is to circumvent the law).
posted by bluefly at 2:33 PM on December 6, 2010

dw:

Why doesn't the publisher use a print on demand service to print your wife's books for those who want that format?
posted by sien at 2:39 PM on December 6, 2010

What's the problem? When you type in your credit number into a computer the security chip makes sure it just shows up as asterisks to everybody else. Watch:

**** **** **** ****

It looks like numbers to me, but I bet it looks like asterisks to you!
posted by obiwanwasabi at 2:47 PM on December 6, 2010

It looks like numbers to me, but I bet it looks like asterisks to you!

You're so funny!
posted by special-k at 3:20 PM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

As someone who reads a lot of academic books and would LOVE to be able to read his piles of smartypants reading in an iPhone or laptop, the main deal-breaker is the lack of highlighting and copy-and-paste. I need both of these capabilities if I'm going to make reasonable use of my reading time. iBooks on the iphone allows for highlighting and copying, but only if you already have your dirty little hands on a clean .epub file.
posted by LMGM at 4:31 PM on December 6, 2010

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that obiwanwasabi was aware it's an old joke.
posted by Kadin2048 at 4:32 PM on December 6, 2010

dw: The DRM is a big reason why I'm an ebook curmudgeon. Just about everything that comes into our house gets read at least twice, and a fair chunk gets swapped out to family and friends.

I'm the same way, even though I have a bunch of Kindle books. One of the books my wife wants for Christmas I own on Kindle, but I can't lend it to her because of their current policies. Seems stupid.

As is, the publisher is offering my wife's books as DRM-free ePub and PDF as well as Kindle. So there's that.

Why doesn't the publisher use a print on demand service to print your wife's books for those who want that format?

POD would still be too expensive for the common reader, especially in her genre, where most books are mass market paperback. The publisher has talked about doing a press run of some of the more popular e-books, but they're wait and see on it, and right now they're able to run a lean ship without having to pay to print.
posted by dw at 4:58 PM on December 6, 2010

Files created for print are pretty expensive to produce, and the files created for ebooks shouldn't really be used. The process for producing both is very different because in one the text flows depending on font size and device, and in the other it is fixed, very fixed. Far too many print files are used for ebooks, and turning an ebook file into a print file, when done correctly, is going to run in the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, depending on the complexity of the design. Is the index and table of contents linked? Is it noted? Footnotes or endnotes? Are those notes linked? does it have images? Are they print resolution? These are just some of the factors. Just because you have one kind of file, that doesn't mean you have the function or properties of the other.
posted by Toekneesan at 5:32 PM on December 6, 2010

I can't wait until people start downloading the public domain epubs for their readers only to find files that are badly corrected OCR files from the library projects. Sticking with Archive.org and Gutenberg for now. I do like that you can read on screen or download epub or PDF files.
posted by rodz at 5:57 PM on December 6, 2010

dw: I bought your wife's book when it came out! And for the full price!

I'm really interested in what her publisher is doing, actually. (I have some friends who are pubbed there, too.) They definitely have the pulse of what's going on in commercial fiction -- their print reach is damned enormous, and the way they sell their traditional books in ebook format is pretty genius. (Bundling a whole month's worth of books for a set price, etc. It's just like what they did with the monthly book clubs before.)

I admit that I want that 'print book' experience if and when I publish a book, but I have a Kindle and buy most of my books electronically now. I culled maybe half of my paper books this year and I just don't have the room for more, especially since I buy a lot of books (a LOT) and I might only read them once. And as a writer, I don't CARE how someone reads my book, as long as they do. I admit that at first I was swayed by the smell of books etc etc but once I opened that Kindle box I haven't looked back.

Here's why I'm probably not going to screw with Google Books, at least as long as I have this device. First, I don't want to fuck around with Calibre and stripping the DRM and all that. I mean, I can, but I just don't want to be bothered. I'm not interested in a race to the bottom for price -- I want writers to get paid a fair wage for their work.

I'm sure I'll feel differently when I move on from the Kindle to whatever reading device is the next thing. I bought it knowing that I wouldn't have it forever -- I figure three to four years will be the max I get out of it, which is about what I got from my first ipod. But I will be really sad if eink disappears. I much prefer it to backlit reading on the ipad or on my phone. If I wanted to read books on my laptop screen, I would. I know that it's a unitasker device but that's fine with me.
posted by sugarfish at 9:50 PM on December 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Oh, and it's funny that someone mentioned Little, Big. That was the last book I bought in print (a few weeks ago) and I was irked I couldn't get it digitally.
posted by sugarfish at 9:51 PM on December 6, 2010

First, I don't want to fuck around with Calibre and stripping the DRM and all that.

I should be clear here, calibre does not itself circumvent DRM. It is a general ebook management tool. It also has news scraping and ebook conversion functions, but it's useful even without those. It's intended to be an all-in-one ebook maintenance tool. The interface could use some work but it's far from unusable I think.
posted by JHarris at 1:36 AM on December 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Cool. I wonder what Google is taking from the publishers? Amazon, in spite of its PR spin about helping students with textbook prices, actually demands roughly 70% of the list price of an eBook from the publishers!

Mmmph? Where are you getting this number from, Vibrissae? It can actually be the reverse -- if you price within a certain band, Amazon gives you the publisher (or author, if you're pubbing it yourself) 70% of the sales price. I can speak to this from experience, as my company published my most recent book within their preferred price range to take advantage of the full 70% royalty. If you price higher than they want, then they take a higher percentage.

B&N is only giving 65% tops, for what it's worth.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 4:16 PM on December 8, 2010