7 ms·

Are there similar platforms for buying ebooks? I like ebooks but I'm not comfortable with all the layers of DRM involved in it.

lrvick 6y ago
I looked and looked and looked for an option here, and almost pulled the trigger on book scanning gear. Eventually I gave up realizing it is an extraordinary effort to personally rip books just to have drm-free digital copies. Instead I built a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and filled it. I read ink on slices of dead trees now, like a barbarian.
- throws23577 6y ago
  That's one of my dreams, floor to ceiling bookshelves filled with books. Can't you try 'Calibre' [1] instead of paid book scanning gear? It's GPL. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibre_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibre_(software)
  - lrvick 6y ago
    That means buying the DRM copies in the first place, further contributing to that system. Also it is a PITA. Pretty much all e-paper readers are proprietary and track all reading too which is a second order problem.
    - Qwertious 6y ago
      IMO the long-term solution is attaching an author-payment system widget to pirate sites. It's not illegal to pay authors, so a payment system can't be DMCA'd, and pirate websites pop back up like weeds and can't realistically be stamped out. Magnet links are way too portable for that and anyone can spin up a new VPS with 100MB or so of data (the size of TPB's db IIRC) to keep on going.
      - lrvick 6y ago
        Honestly, this is an amazing idea be if for individual creators or studios. It should also have a way to tag specific media that caused them to want to contribute so it is a wallet vote for more like this. Really all creators should just have anonymous donation options for people that want to support -them- without supporting the toxic labels and DRM situation.
- abawany 6y ago
  There are ebook scanning services that do a great job. I have used bookscan.us for hundreds of books for years and it works well.
  - lrvick 6y ago
    The only issue I have is most of them require the destruction of the book by removing the pages. Many of mine are very rare and collectible now costing hundreds of dollars so it would be a crime to damage them. Do you know of services that can do this without damage?
    - abawany 6y ago
      I unfortunately don't know of any services that do this non destructively. However, there are scanner designs that Archive.org use to scan rare books. I'll try to find references but I think they'll require construction - afaik, no one sells such a scanner ready to purchase. Edit: Ask and ye shall receive: https://www.amazon.com/Fujitsu-ScanSnap-SV600-Overhead-Scanner/dp/B01FW17FGI/ref=asc_df_B01FW17FGI/ https://www.amazon.com/Fujitsu-ScanSnap-SV600-Overhead-Scann... - had no idea this existed. Very tempting - Fujitsu makes solid scanners .
ceejayoz 6y ago
You can actually find quite a few on Amazon. Example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QGM36KB/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QGM36KB/ "At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied."
dsign 6y ago
Smashwords comes to mind: https://www.smashwords.com/ https://www.smashwords.com/ . Once you buy a book, you get a DRM-free epub that you can open in whichever e-book reader you fancy. There are in fact more of such stores, but this is the one that I use and remember.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
Yeeeesssss.....buuuuut.... Only for certain books. Book DRM has been a nightmare. Tying a book to certain readers is an automatic showstopper for a lot of folks (like me). I recently bounced a tech book I purchased, because I had to download their crappy hybrid app to read the book. The same people that sold it to me, used to sell unlocked reflowable EPUBs (my preferred format), or watermarked PDFs (I have no problem with simple margin watermarks). I'll lay odds that the app they make you use phones home. I didn't bother downloading it, or reviewing their privacy policy. I'm not so concerned with privacy, as I am, with perpetual access to the books I want to read, on whatever reader I want to use. I often go back and re-read books, years after the the last time I read them. I want to have that book available, then. Also, this goes for all types of media, region locks are garbage.
- sammorrowdrums 6y ago
  Adding for people who want sources: There are quite a few places especially technical ones. However, many major pulishers don't offer them, so you then have the choice of DRM stripping, searching for illegitimate copies or giving up/in and using a DRM copy somehow. https://www.ebooks.com/en-nl/drm-free/ https://www.ebooks.com/en-nl/drm-free/ https://leanpub.com/ https://leanpub.com/ https://www.libreture.com/bookshops/ https://www.libreture.com/bookshops/ Note places like ebooks.com don't sell exclusively DRM free, so you will need to check per book. I returned one to them and got a refund because of my mistake in buying a DRMd copy.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    I'd add Lulu to that list. https://www.lulu.com/search/?contributor=Nils+M+Holm https://www.lulu.com/search/?contributor=Nils+M+Holm
  - FabHK 6y ago
    For free books in the public domain, https://standardebooks.org https://standardebooks.org > Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of copyright restrictions, and free of cost. (Not affiliated, just think they do great work! Discussed before: 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20594802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20594802 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138534 )
throws23577 6y ago
This HN thread has some DRM-free https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26892249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26892249
lofi_lory 6y ago
Ironically, DRM drives me towards Z-Lib and Libgen, when I happily payed No Starch for their stuff. Especially their bundles are a smart move in the digital age. Also, see e.g. Steam, you cannot charge for these digital goods the way you used to. It's shifting towards (searchable) collections, not just individual books. It's ridiculous, when digital edition cost almost as much as print. They are emotionally and functionally different things.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  I used to work in the industry: Print really isn't much more expensive to produce than ebooks, so there's not a huge different in cost. A hardcover will cost around $3-$4 in printing costs. Even still, ebooks can be a good deal. To use a recent example that wouldn't yet have any digital discounts, there's the John Boehner book [0]. As of this comment, it has an MSRP of $29.99. The Kindle version is $14.99. At actual retail, Barnes & Noble charges $23.99. At Amazon it's $17.99, which makes the savings on print costs a wash. Mid-size paper backs are usually a fair bit cheaper too. Mass-market editions are the bad deals: In print they retail around $8 to $10, which is usually the ebook cost too. However, many books never make it to mass market editions theses days. The bulk of the costs involved in bringing a book to market are the people: Time to review the "slush pile", pay the author, editor, copy editor, typesetting, marketing. And many books either lose money for the publisher or barely earn out the author's advance. Mid-list authors who can consistently earn out their advance with a healthy margin are the ones that keep the lights on long enough for the publisher to (hopefully) catch lightning in a bottle with a block buster, or at least an outsized success. Of course all of the costs above assume you're buying a new copy. Used books are often a very good deal. [0] https://www.amazon.com/House-John-Boehner/dp/1250238447/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= https://www.amazon.com/House-John-Boehner/dp/1250238447/ref=...
  - lofi_lory 6y ago
    Thanks for the insights! Still I think ebooks are a different product. At least in my head. I have a different emotional relationship with a physical book. The information within isn't in competition with the endless a "wealth" of information available legally or not. For text books piracy is a victimless "crime" in my case, as having a digital copy or not, is independent from financial loss above a certain price tag. That is, I can't afford most text books, so I won't buy them; piracy does not influence the income of the publisher. On the other hand, if I really need/want to buy a book, I am likely gonna get much more intimate with it. Let's face it, digital copies are much more likely not to be read. Maybe only indexed and searched as part of a collection. Digital has a different value. (Although, I ofc understand the superficial dilemma here.) This is the situation we got IMO. Side note: You, as someone from the industry, I assume we can both agree that at the very least, a free digital copy should be included with every physical one, right? That just silly and artificial to separate, if you make an argument for the value of content and presentation.
__david__ 6y ago
Yeah, ebooks are particularly egregious because the readers actually have features that are good or bad and being locked into one or two options at the most severely limits how you consume your books. What I've doing is buying physical books and then downloading DRM free ebook versions from pirate bay. I know not everyone will agree with those ethics, but I'm ok with it.

lrvick 6y ago

I looked and looked and looked for an option here, and almost pulled the trigger on book scanning gear. Eventually I gave up realizing it is an extraordinary effort to personally rip books just to have drm-free digital copies. Instead I built a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and filled it. I read ink on slices of dead trees now, like a barbarian.

throws23577 6y ago
That's one of my dreams, floor to ceiling bookshelves filled with books. Can't you try 'Calibre' [1] instead of paid book scanning gear? It's GPL. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibre_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibre_(software)
- lrvick 6y ago
  That means buying the DRM copies in the first place, further contributing to that system. Also it is a PITA. Pretty much all e-paper readers are proprietary and track all reading too which is a second order problem.
  - Qwertious 6y ago
    IMO the long-term solution is attaching an author-payment system widget to pirate sites. It's not illegal to pay authors, so a payment system can't be DMCA'd, and pirate websites pop back up like weeds and can't realistically be stamped out. Magnet links are way too portable for that and anyone can spin up a new VPS with 100MB or so of data (the size of TPB's db IIRC) to keep on going.
    - lrvick 6y ago
      Honestly, this is an amazing idea be if for individual creators or studios. It should also have a way to tag specific media that caused them to want to contribute so it is a wallet vote for more like this. Really all creators should just have anonymous donation options for people that want to support -them- without supporting the toxic labels and DRM situation.
abawany 6y ago
There are ebook scanning services that do a great job. I have used bookscan.us for hundreds of books for years and it works well.
- lrvick 6y ago
  The only issue I have is most of them require the destruction of the book by removing the pages. Many of mine are very rare and collectible now costing hundreds of dollars so it would be a crime to damage them. Do you know of services that can do this without damage?
  - abawany 6y ago
    I unfortunately don't know of any services that do this non destructively. However, there are scanner designs that Archive.org use to scan rare books. I'll try to find references but I think they'll require construction - afaik, no one sells such a scanner ready to purchase. Edit: Ask and ye shall receive: https://www.amazon.com/Fujitsu-ScanSnap-SV600-Overhead-Scanner/dp/B01FW17FGI/ref=asc_df_B01FW17FGI/ https://www.amazon.com/Fujitsu-ScanSnap-SV600-Overhead-Scann... - had no idea this existed. Very tempting - Fujitsu makes solid scanners .

ceejayoz 6y ago

You can actually find quite a few on Amazon. Example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QGM36KB/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QGM36KB/ "At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied."

dsign 6y ago

Smashwords comes to mind: https://www.smashwords.com/ https://www.smashwords.com/ . Once you buy a book, you get a DRM-free epub that you can open in whichever e-book reader you fancy. There are in fact more of such stores, but this is the one that I use and remember.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

Yeeeesssss.....buuuuut.... Only for certain books. Book DRM has been a nightmare. Tying a book to certain readers is an automatic showstopper for a lot of folks (like me). I recently bounced a tech book I purchased, because I had to download their crappy hybrid app to read the book. The same people that sold it to me, used to sell unlocked reflowable EPUBs (my preferred format), or watermarked PDFs (I have no problem with simple margin watermarks). I'll lay odds that the app they make you use phones home. I didn't bother downloading it, or reviewing their privacy policy. I'm not so concerned with privacy, as I am, with perpetual access to the books I want to read, on whatever reader I want to use. I often go back and re-read books, years after the the last time I read them. I want to have that book available, then. Also, this goes for all types of media, region locks are garbage.

sammorrowdrums 6y ago
Adding for people who want sources: There are quite a few places especially technical ones. However, many major pulishers don't offer them, so you then have the choice of DRM stripping, searching for illegitimate copies or giving up/in and using a DRM copy somehow. https://www.ebooks.com/en-nl/drm-free/ https://www.ebooks.com/en-nl/drm-free/ https://leanpub.com/ https://leanpub.com/ https://www.libreture.com/bookshops/ https://www.libreture.com/bookshops/ Note places like ebooks.com don't sell exclusively DRM free, so you will need to check per book. I returned one to them and got a refund because of my mistake in buying a DRMd copy.
- sitkack 6y ago
  I'd add Lulu to that list. https://www.lulu.com/search/?contributor=Nils+M+Holm https://www.lulu.com/search/?contributor=Nils+M+Holm
- FabHK 6y ago
  For free books in the public domain, https://standardebooks.org https://standardebooks.org > Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of copyright restrictions, and free of cost. (Not affiliated, just think they do great work! Discussed before: 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20594802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20594802 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138534 )

throws23577 6y ago

This HN thread has some DRM-free https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26892249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26892249

lofi_lory 6y ago

Ironically, DRM drives me towards Z-Lib and Libgen, when I happily payed No Starch for their stuff. Especially their bundles are a smart move in the digital age. Also, see e.g. Steam, you cannot charge for these digital goods the way you used to. It's shifting towards (searchable) collections, not just individual books. It's ridiculous, when digital edition cost almost as much as print. They are emotionally and functionally different things.

ineedasername 6y ago
I used to work in the industry: Print really isn't much more expensive to produce than ebooks, so there's not a huge different in cost. A hardcover will cost around $3-$4 in printing costs. Even still, ebooks can be a good deal. To use a recent example that wouldn't yet have any digital discounts, there's the John Boehner book [0]. As of this comment, it has an MSRP of $29.99. The Kindle version is $14.99. At actual retail, Barnes & Noble charges $23.99. At Amazon it's $17.99, which makes the savings on print costs a wash. Mid-size paper backs are usually a fair bit cheaper too. Mass-market editions are the bad deals: In print they retail around $8 to $10, which is usually the ebook cost too. However, many books never make it to mass market editions theses days. The bulk of the costs involved in bringing a book to market are the people: Time to review the "slush pile", pay the author, editor, copy editor, typesetting, marketing. And many books either lose money for the publisher or barely earn out the author's advance. Mid-list authors who can consistently earn out their advance with a healthy margin are the ones that keep the lights on long enough for the publisher to (hopefully) catch lightning in a bottle with a block buster, or at least an outsized success. Of course all of the costs above assume you're buying a new copy. Used books are often a very good deal. [0] https://www.amazon.com/House-John-Boehner/dp/1250238447/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= https://www.amazon.com/House-John-Boehner/dp/1250238447/ref=...
- lofi_lory 6y ago
  Thanks for the insights! Still I think ebooks are a different product. At least in my head. I have a different emotional relationship with a physical book. The information within isn't in competition with the endless a "wealth" of information available legally or not. For text books piracy is a victimless "crime" in my case, as having a digital copy or not, is independent from financial loss above a certain price tag. That is, I can't afford most text books, so I won't buy them; piracy does not influence the income of the publisher. On the other hand, if I really need/want to buy a book, I am likely gonna get much more intimate with it. Let's face it, digital copies are much more likely not to be read. Maybe only indexed and searched as part of a collection. Digital has a different value. (Although, I ofc understand the superficial dilemma here.) This is the situation we got IMO. Side note: You, as someone from the industry, I assume we can both agree that at the very least, a free digital copy should be included with every physical one, right? That just silly and artificial to separate, if you make an argument for the value of content and presentation.

__david__ 6y ago

Yeah, ebooks are particularly egregious because the readers actually have features that are good or bad and being locked into one or two options at the most severely limits how you consume your books. What I've doing is buying physical books and then downloading DRM free ebook versions from pirate bay. I know not everyone will agree with those ethics, but I'm ok with it.