13 ms·

Kindle, ePub, and Amazon’s love of reinventing wheels

193 points by lxm 4y ago

dmitriid 4y ago
As is often the case, it's the perfect intersection of corporate greed, bored engineers with a NIH syndrome and device limitations
- sien 4y ago
  It would be very interesting to find out how much data Amazon has on pirated books being uploaded onto the Kindle. The article ends with a discussion of Calibre. It would also be very interesting to know how much Calibre is used with pirated books. Amazon must be following an interesting dance with copyright, piracy and the Kindle. They know if it gets too out of hand that's the end. But if they were to entirely lock down the Kindle to anything without DRM they would also know that many people would shift devices.
  - lkois 4y ago
    Calibre is good for library management, but for simply adding the odd book I've found it surprisingly easy to simply direct download a .mobi from any easily googled website and email the file to my kindle email address. This obviously feels very sketchy, not only because you might be including Amazon in some very transparent piracy, but because it works TOO well. By which I mean, these files aren't simply added to your device, but to your Amazon library; these are then readily available OTA to all devices you own and any you add later.
    - lstamour 4y ago
      It's a little weird that we're impressed when a relatively tiny book can be stored in the cloud and synced to every device. I get the same feeling from Google Play Books or iBooks. Yet this is a standard feature of [insert name of every cloud storage service ever] and I don't think that much of it at all in those contexts, except maybe when iCloud or OneDrive or Dropbox seems to magically put files on my desktop. I wonder if the difference is that with the exception of comic books (sigh), most ebooks are small enough that they download quickly, yet have good metadata and often excellent cover art, so they replicate quickly. And they rarely get buried inside of unnecessary folders the way other files do. It'd be pretty awesome if say, you could visit Humble Bundle and after buying a DRM-free collection of ebooks, just hit a button to transfer the entire bundle to a Google Drive folder or iCloud Drive folder without having to download and upload things. That's still maybe a missing thing. But it's not terrible to have to send files manually. It's just extra work. (How lazy can I get, apparently?)
  - urthor 4y ago
    It's a very intelligent dance on Amazon's part I find. The objective of antipiracy restrictions shouldn't be to restrict the top 5% of most technical power users. That takes far too much time and effort, and frankly power users provide word of mouth recommendations. The objective of antipiracy restrictions is to stop 95% of users going to the trouble of piracy.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    They aren't helping by charging $15 for fiction ebooks with near zero distribution costs and marking up paperbacks even higher to make the ebook look like a "deal".
    - fullstop 4y ago
      I asked the authors of The Expanse series which format put the most money in their pockets, per sale. They said that it was even between all formats, even though the cost to distribute the ebook version was significantly less. I don't mind paying $15 for a book if the author(s) are paid well.
  - TMWNN 4y ago
    >It would be very interesting to find out how much data Amazon has on pirated books being uploaded onto the Kindle. I don't see how Amazon could know for sure. I have never uploaded a pirated book to my Kindles, but have uploaded dozens of books via Calibre, either public library books that aren't available in native Kindle format for some reason, or obtained elsewhere (notably Tor.com's regular offers of free ebooks).
goodguyamerikan 4y ago
Truth is every last company on earth wants to monopolize and lock its customers. There's a reason why king of pretend-openness Google doesn't support carddav and caldav
- LinAGKar 4y ago
  Yes, they do. They've got CalDAV at https://apidata.googleusercontent.com/caldav/v2/calid/events https://apidata.googleusercontent.com/caldav/v2/calid/events and https://apidata.googleusercontent.com/caldav/v2/calid/user https://apidata.googleusercontent.com/caldav/v2/calid/user, and CardDAV discoverable through https://www.googleapis.com/.well-known/carddav https://www.googleapis.com/.well-known/carddav.
  - goodguyamerikan 4y ago
    In Android I meant (sorry I wasn't clear) Your comment further shows how disingenuous their stance is
    - fredoliveira 4y ago
      > Your comment further shows how disingenuous their stance is Does it really? I think it just shows that you didn't know about something they offer, and decided to attribute that to them being malicious.
- criddell 4y ago
  It's the publishers that have handed Amazon their (near) monopoly on ebooks. If they wouldn't have insisted on DRM or at least had insisted on non-proprietary DRM, you would be able to buy books anywhere and read them anywhere. I prefer reading on my Kindle to paper books but I also love browsing and supporting book stores and the people who work there. I've always wished that I could browse a bookstore, take a stack of books to the front and have them scan a QR code (or something like that) on my ereader and sell me digital copies of books rather than the paper copies.
chrisfosterelli 4y ago
Part of the reason I went with a kobo over the kindle is that they support ePubs. The kindle honestly seemed a bit nicer hardware wise but I like the ability to build and read my library of DRM free books well into the future. No complaints about the kobo so far and it's lasted me nearly a decade by this point. Once it finally kicks the bucket I'll definitely stick with them.
- robinsoh 4y ago
  I've also heard (but not verified) that kobo's firmware isn't locked down the way amazon's is, so you can compile and install your own apps and modify system scripts. In other words it's your device, not Amazon's.
  - mkozlows 4y ago
    It's true, and the open source koreader software is great.
    - BbzzbB 4y ago
      Made my Aura much more responsive, with better UI. Easy install too.
  - llui85 4y ago
    Kobo's firmware is very open, although it's technical enough that your average (non-developer) end-user would have trouble modifying. You upload a `KoboRoot.tgz` file to a hidden folder when it's plugged into USB, which is extracted to the root directory of the device (which is linux + busybox, with a QT gui 'nickel'). Newer FW versions also have a development telnet server which can be enabled in settings. The MobileRead forums are where most of the unofficial discussion/development happens: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=223 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=223 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
fassssst 4y ago
The DRM bothered me until I discovered the Libby app’s excellent Kindle integration, now I don’t pay for anything since I have a great local library.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Wait until you discover LibGen and ZLib. There's also Gutenberg, Archive.org, and numerous other public-domain e-book collections such as StandardEbooks (https://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/)
beninsydney 4y ago
The lack of support for ePub is very annoying, when my 2013 Paperwhite finally breaks I'll definitely replace it with a non-Amazon ebook reader with better file support. Probably one with Android so it has proper browser support since there is a web frontend for Caliber and it might be nice to access Readarr directly too.
- jay_kyburz 4y ago
  I've been waiting for my paper white to break, but it just keeps on going. I might just have to upgrade anyhow.
  - approxim8ion 4y ago
    I'm just surprised my 2012 Paperwhite hasn't broken. It's still chugging along like a king. There's a thin line across the screen about 10% off the top bezel, but it's easy to ignore. I don't think the battery life has degraded too much either. Perhaps because it is relatively simple, this has been one of the longest-lasting and best-aging devices I've ever owned.
donatj 4y ago
I've never understood the hubbub. You can easily perfectly convert between the formats with any number of tools. I use Calibre and I've never had a problem with a converted document.
- simongray 4y ago
  I definitely have run into issues once or twice, but you're right that it mostly just works.
- puchatek 4y ago
  I ran into issues with sending the converted files to my Kindle and there were no error messages to debug by. I was probably doing something wrong but still.
  - ge96 4y ago
    I would root/"hack" mine just to get rid of the damn lock screen ad that takes like 10 seconds to go away.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  I had a 15 year old ereader from sony that could open pdf, epub, rtf, txt whatever you wanted and text reflow would work for everything bar pdfs. Kindles are actively walled to force customers into the amazon ecosystem. I could just plug this sony e-reader to my PC and copy whatever I wanted to read. The e-ink panels have gotten substantially better but the experience is now objectively worse with Amazon and more expensive, most customers not don't realize what it could be.
  - CYHSM 4y ago
    So true. I still own a Sony ereader and although the battery is a little worn off, the whole ease of use with epub or pdf is remarkable (its nearly 10 years old now). I really wonder why they stopped producing them
- kX4A8o4mVmX8aW 4y ago
wolverine876 4y ago
> Alexandria on your hard drive That image brings to mind: How much space would you need to store every out-of-copyright book written in English?
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  There are a few estimates of total books ever published. Those range from the 40 million or so within the US Library of Congress collection to a Google estimate from a few years back of 140 million books existing, with about 2--5 million new ones published per year. Bowker, the US issuer of ISBNs, has registered roughly 300k new titles annually, since at least the 1950s, and beginning in the aughts, about 1--2 million "nontraditional" (self-published) titles. In straight text, assuming 250 pages of 250 words at 8 bytes/word, 40 million books works out to about 20 TB. This is a likely close to the lower bound as there are texts with image and other content which bump this value up. It works out to about 0.5 MB/book, which in my experience is too low. At 150 million books, we'd get 75 TB, and at 200 million, 100 TB. Nice round numbers.... A more realistic per-book size is 5 MB. This is typical of a mostly-text, formatted PDF. At 40, 150, and 200 million texts: 250, 750, and 1,000 TB. A data-heavy / graphics-heavy book might weigh in at 20--100 MB, though those tend to be less common. Scanned-in books with both page images and OCR text typically run about 5--10 MB. The largest I've seen (a copy of Lyell's Geography was >300 MB. Apple has offered iPads with > 1 TB onboard storage for at least several years. This seems to be the higher end of available tablet storage. (For some reason, the Cloud-and-Surveillance-oriented Google skimps with many devices still at 16--32 MB. Remarkable, which also went Cloud, tops out at 16 MB.) If fully devoted to texts at 5 MB each, that would offer storage for up to 200,000 documents, roughly the size of a well-stocked municipal public library. As to how many public-domain works might exist, the 1927 Report of the Librarian of Congress notes that the Library had assigned 4,503,164 copyrights over the preceding 57 years (presumably 1869--1926), the time in which such registrations were the work of the Library. Those works should all presently be in the Public Domain, and would total 22.5 TB at 5 MB/work. Annual report of the Librarian of Congress yr.1927, Washington, Library of Congress; for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off., p. 22. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0013520523&view=1up&seq=42 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0013520523&view=... The Library of Congress's total holdings was 3,420,345 million as of end of FY 1926 (p. 23 ibid). Presently, works published prior to 1 January 1927 in the United States are in the public domain. An additional roughly 1 million maps, 1 million volumes and/or pieces of music, and ~500k prints were also in the library's collection as of 1926. A full set of the Librarian's reports, dating to the 1860s, is available at Hathi Trust. From at least the 1950s, annual holdings and aquisitions are broken out by Library of Congress classification, which makes for some interesting data, for those who find that sort of thing interesting. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000072049 http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000072049
hackcasual 4y ago
Topaz was also used for long tail books, as there was a pipeline that could convert the high resolution search inside the book scans with minimal amount of human work. At the time OCR wasn't an option, so it used glyph binning similar to JBIG. The OCR'd text was included for searching. The biggest downside was no font changes
physicsguy 4y ago
So what happens on the day my kindle updates? Do I lose access to anything in Mobi format already on my kindle? That’s a PITA
- LinAGKar 4y ago
  No, why would you?
poglet 4y ago
Take a look at previous hacker News post 'Software Jailbreak for Any Kindle' and installable app 'KOReader' allowing for reading ePub and other formats. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31220553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31220553 I gave it a shot and it works well although instructions wern't obvious at first.
- RachelF 4y ago
  Yes, KOReader is open source and way better on the Kindle. Here's a clear how-to guide on Jailbreaking your Kindle https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=346037&highlight=koreader+pw5 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=346037&hi...
earningtrustlul 4y ago
This article brought back memories of my time working in Kindle. Amazon has a culture of promotion focused “engineering”. This rings true across product management and software development. Rather than solving real customer facing problems, many organizations including Kindle, emphasize “what do I need to do to get promoted?” This is not only SDEs, but L7/Senior engineering managers and L8/directors, who latch onto a sales pitch and put all their eggs in one basket. The template is like this: > I’m going to build a new framework, platform, format, or some other “thing” that everyone should now use to solve {{problem}}. Then, I can claim a larger scope and significant impact, no matter how pointless, costly, or annoying this thing is to customers. They write documents. These are narratives where they spend hours and hours reviewing and nit picking how “crisp” a sentence is, or how there are too many commas, or some other superfluous bullshit. There’s an OP1 document, where an L7 writes a fancy narrative, justify more head count and growing their organization. It’s their ticket to a director promotion. If you’re a developer, you flock to the same project. For L4s and L5s, it’s your ticket to the next level. For an L6, you spend your time selling the absolute hell out of this thing, going on a road show and pitching your idea to get buy in from other teams. You’re careful not to write much of the code and mainly come off as being the architect and consultant. This is your ticket to getting to the Principal level. If this is someone else’s idea, you’ll do whatever it takes to take credit when this succeeds but blame everyone else when it fails. Best case, the thing you deliver gets you promoted. Then, you simply just move onto to another organization. You were in Kindle and this new piece of shit has made on call hell? Oh well, you already got your promotion. Now you can just move on to AWS (or find another team in any of Amazons legacy businesses where you can coast). Kindle was an army of H1Bs with an extremely toxic culture. They refuse to hire or even interview white, black, or Hispanic candidates. You can pay H1Bs less, and they’re happy with it because they get to live in Redmond, WA instead of India. I could go on and on, but I feel anxiety right now even thinking about my time working there. Absolute shithole.
- xvector 4y ago
  There are some really cool openings at Amazon I was considering moving into but this makes me rethink. Thanks for the write up.
ashton314 4y ago
Where does one go to buy ePUBs of popular books like, say, Brandon Sanderson’s works or Dune or older nonfiction like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?
- harshreality 4y ago
  kobo, google, and some smaller ebook sites (which might just serve as an interface to kobo's catalog like walmart did). They almost always use adobe digital editions drm, but that's removable by the buyer with effort. For free epub ebooks, there's overdrive and the library ecosystem; legal libraries also DRM-wrap their epubs.
  - ascagnel_ 4y ago
    > legal libraries also DRM-wrap their epubs This is the one case where I'm OK with DRM -- you're receiving the library's book on loan (it's never your book), and they need a way to enforce the length of the loan.
- 83457 4y ago
  Doesn't happen often anymore but (something).com actually provides a useful result. ebooks.com edit: actually, every something I .com is pretty good. Haven't done that since the early days.
- InvertedRhodium 4y ago
  100000_scifi_epubs_a-e.torrent usually has what I'm looking for.
- drowsycorbie 4y ago
  ebooks.com has DRM as a search filter so it is easier to find DRM-free ePUBs. Since you mentioned Sanderson, I believe Tor books (or is it Tom Doherty Associates?) actually publishes all of their books as DRM-free so there is a large selection of sci-fi and fantasy books to choose from. That being said, most mainstream stuff is just published with DRM enabled. Now for really older books that are public domain I like standard ebooks and project Gutenberg.
zwilliamson 4y ago
Anyone else enjoy kindle book <-> audible narration feature? Curious if the Kindle platform is the only solid option for this style of reading/listening.
- 8fingerlouie 4y ago
  I use this almost every day. Listen to Audible books when commuting, reading when i'm at home. It's probably the one "killer" feature for me.
throwaway7865 4y ago
Comments mention Pocketbook. How good is it? I’m tempted by 10.3” screen since I read technical pdf’s (think O’Reilly or Packt) a lot and no Kindle is good for that.
- girvo 4y ago
  While its not the same product, my 10" e-ink reader (an Onyx Boox Note 2) is the single best note-taking, annotation and technical document reader I've ever used. Its genuinely fantastic for those purposes. I read all my Kindle books on it, it's entirely replaced my paper notebooks for note taking, and all my technical books, manuals and so on have been excellent on it. Your intuition that this form factor is better for technical PDFs is correct, I think.
- narf33 4y ago
  I have an 8" Pocketbook Inkpad 3 which is already decent size for reading PDFs. They now also have a 10" version which should be perfect for it. Although if you are also annotating a lot, I would not recommend it, as it can be slow. (but i guess this is true for any E-Ink Reader)
MengerSponge 4y ago
Libby + Calibre + Apprentice Alf is how I handle my books these days. I really like my Forma.
DeathArrow 4y ago
I mainly use Kindle for technical books in English which would cost more and take more time to get in my country compared to e-books. Otherwise, I much prefer real books. I find them more comfortable to read, more pleasant to read (I get a better feeling turning pages and looking at paper than pressing buttons and looking at a screen) and I can pass them to my sons. Also, for children interacting with a real book is a better experience.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
robertwt7 4y ago
I have kindle, but it's so hard for me to read programming books that I have in PDF (because it's too small). I end up having to read them on the laptop / PC. I'm even thinking to get an iPad because of the amount of programming books I have in pdf and want to read. Anyone is having the same issue?
- ChrisRR 4y ago
  I do too, but that's simply an issue of reading books that simply aren't designed to be read at A5 size
- tapia 4y ago
  I have the Fujitsu Quaderno A4 (13,3" screen). Great for reading scientific publications it whatever pdf. Also had a great Wacom stylus to take notes. I am great fan of these devices. Before the Quaderno I had the Sony DPT-RP1, which is very similar except the stylus is not so great.
  - criddell 4y ago
    Is it a custom operating system? Some of their competitors use Android which is the last thing I want. Is the screen on the Fujitsu lit? Does the note taking application index your text so you can search? Is it easy to get the notes off? Can you highlight and annotate books and then easily export your annotations and highlights?
- jb1991 4y ago
  The kindle format, really any kind of text-based format, is not great for programming books in general. Code snippets end up having all kinds of hard to read wrapping, and also images and other things don’t really have a nice user experience on a Kindle. It’s really best when you’re just reading straight text, prose.
  - mark_l_watson 4y ago
    I agree. I write programming books for various languages and having to reformat text in sometimes funky ways to fit page width is a challenge.
innocenat 4y ago
I always see people saying these kind of thing about Amazon, but personally, I don't think this is the case. I think there is actual technical reason why Amazon don't adapt EPUB natively (the Kindle Direct Publishing accept EPUB as input for ages). EPUB has a lot of features. A lot. I don't think anything (except maybe Adobe Digital Edition) support everything. I actually just realised yesterday that Moon Reader+, one of the best epub reader for Android, doesn't support vertical-rl layout (mostly used in Japanese book). Even Kobo doesn't use EPUB as-is. Its native format is KEPUB, which has tons of id-tagged <span> inside the content. Moreover, KEPUB and EPUB on Kobo use different renderer (EPUB use RMSDK, KEPUB use Kobo's own) with different supported features. Isn't this a mess? The new KFX format has one major advantage over EPUB. The images can be stored out-of-band. This allows you to start reading image-heavy book quickly, while images continue to load in the background. For fixed layout magazine/comic/manga where the entire file can be 100MB or more, this helps a lot.
- Timshel 4y ago
  Never had an issue with a EPUB on a kobo or a Nook reader, I clearly never tried any edge case. Not saying there might not be any issues with EPUB but the fact that in 10 years they can't be bothered to add at least a basic reader for me just mean they want to keep this incompatibility and keep people in this separated ecosystem with amazon/Kindle. I believe this choice is anything but a technical one. Since I never had much trouble using Calibre it means I'll probably never buy a Kindle just because of it but many people can't be hassled to do that.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    EPUB is like PDF. If you're going with just the very basic stuff: text, maybe a few images - it really doesn't matter what kind of bare-bones reader you use. BUT when you're opening a PDF that actually uses the features it's a different story. You've got a file with umpteen layers of information that needs to be displayed in a very specific way (I've seen blueprints do this for example). Most bare-bones PDF viewers either choke completely or display everything wrong.
rkachowski 4y ago
The fact that epub is going to be dropped from the send to kindle feature is finally going to get me out of the Kindle ecosystem. I really liked the wireless mechanism of pushing books to my kindle, is there a similar feature for koreader / remarkable / Kobo / anything else?
- heurisko 4y ago
  Am I missing something or is this the opposite of what is happening? > Beginning in late 2022, you will be able to send EPUB (.EPUB) documents to your Kindle library from the Kindle app. Before this point, it was never possible to send e-pub documents via Send to Kindle.
- Fritsdehacker 4y ago
  In the Netherlands, anything you buy from Bol.com is automatically synced to your Kobo device. Not sure about other retailers.
  - TuxSH 4y ago
    It's because they're affiliates. Same goes for FNAC
MrOxiMoron 4y ago
in what world is kindle the defacto Ereader? here in the Netherlands the book market is dominated by bol.com, which has a deal with Kobo, so here it's all epub and Kobo e-readers.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  Well, the US, obviously. I imported a kindle myself about ten years ago because they were both cheaper and better than the competitors at the time.
- Tepix 4y ago
  Worldwide they have a 80% market share, apparently. I'm staying away from Kindles because of their spying and their lack of EPUB support.
  - fullstop 4y ago
    When I looked into this before, a lot of the "spying" was sending information back to Amazon in order to synchronize state between devices. With that being said, I have an Oasis and keep it in airplane mode 99% of the time.
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Amazon popularised e-readers and they pretty much own digital publishing. For normal users it doesn't matter that the books they buy from Amazon aren't epub- seriously do you think they even know what that means lol? And for the rest of us Calibre converts anything in 30 seconds.
- chrisco255 4y ago
  Wasn't that long ago that "Microsoft owned desktop computing". You couldn't do anything without Windows. Barely anything worked with Mac. Linux was just a baby. The reason you fight monopolies, is because monopolies cannot last forever. There are all sorts of bad consequences with having digital publishing owned by a trillion dollar monopoly. In order to have a free press at all, which is important in democracy, which is important for society to stay resilient, we need a diverse ecosystem of digital publishing options.
- criddell 4y ago
  > Calibre converts anything in 30 seconds Calibre, with the DeDRM tools installed, is unreliable for Amazon's newest books. There are workarounds that involve getting the file in an older format, but then you lose the typography improvements that are only offered in KFX files. It feels like Amazon is finally starting to close the DeDRM hole.
chetanbhasin 4y ago
I'm currently using reMarkable 2 tablet and I love that it can render pretty much everything I need from it, except Kindle books.
knowmad 4y ago
I still can't get over the fact that the Kindle Oasis their flagship device is still Micro USB.

193 points by lxm 4y ago

As is often the case, it's the perfect intersection of corporate greed, bored engineers with a NIH syndrome and device limitations

sien 4y ago
It would be very interesting to find out how much data Amazon has on pirated books being uploaded onto the Kindle. The article ends with a discussion of Calibre. It would also be very interesting to know how much Calibre is used with pirated books. Amazon must be following an interesting dance with copyright, piracy and the Kindle. They know if it gets too out of hand that's the end. But if they were to entirely lock down the Kindle to anything without DRM they would also know that many people would shift devices.
- lkois 4y ago
  Calibre is good for library management, but for simply adding the odd book I've found it surprisingly easy to simply direct download a .mobi from any easily googled website and email the file to my kindle email address. This obviously feels very sketchy, not only because you might be including Amazon in some very transparent piracy, but because it works TOO well. By which I mean, these files aren't simply added to your device, but to your Amazon library; these are then readily available OTA to all devices you own and any you add later.
  - lstamour 4y ago
    It's a little weird that we're impressed when a relatively tiny book can be stored in the cloud and synced to every device. I get the same feeling from Google Play Books or iBooks. Yet this is a standard feature of [insert name of every cloud storage service ever] and I don't think that much of it at all in those contexts, except maybe when iCloud or OneDrive or Dropbox seems to magically put files on my desktop. I wonder if the difference is that with the exception of comic books (sigh), most ebooks are small enough that they download quickly, yet have good metadata and often excellent cover art, so they replicate quickly. And they rarely get buried inside of unnecessary folders the way other files do. It'd be pretty awesome if say, you could visit Humble Bundle and after buying a DRM-free collection of ebooks, just hit a button to transfer the entire bundle to a Google Drive folder or iCloud Drive folder without having to download and upload things. That's still maybe a missing thing. But it's not terrible to have to send files manually. It's just extra work. (How lazy can I get, apparently?)
- urthor 4y ago
  It's a very intelligent dance on Amazon's part I find. The objective of antipiracy restrictions shouldn't be to restrict the top 5% of most technical power users. That takes far too much time and effort, and frankly power users provide word of mouth recommendations. The objective of antipiracy restrictions is to stop 95% of users going to the trouble of piracy.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  They aren't helping by charging $15 for fiction ebooks with near zero distribution costs and marking up paperbacks even higher to make the ebook look like a "deal".
  - fullstop 4y ago
    I asked the authors of The Expanse series which format put the most money in their pockets, per sale. They said that it was even between all formats, even though the cost to distribute the ebook version was significantly less. I don't mind paying $15 for a book if the author(s) are paid well.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >It would be very interesting to find out how much data Amazon has on pirated books being uploaded onto the Kindle. I don't see how Amazon could know for sure. I have never uploaded a pirated book to my Kindles, but have uploaded dozens of books via Calibre, either public library books that aren't available in native Kindle format for some reason, or obtained elsewhere (notably Tor.com's regular offers of free ebooks).

goodguyamerikan 4y ago

Truth is every last company on earth wants to monopolize and lock its customers. There's a reason why king of pretend-openness Google doesn't support carddav and caldav

LinAGKar 4y ago
Yes, they do. They've got CalDAV at https://apidata.googleusercontent.com/caldav/v2/calid/events https://apidata.googleusercontent.com/caldav/v2/calid/events and https://apidata.googleusercontent.com/caldav/v2/calid/user https://apidata.googleusercontent.com/caldav/v2/calid/user, and CardDAV discoverable through https://www.googleapis.com/.well-known/carddav https://www.googleapis.com/.well-known/carddav.
- goodguyamerikan 4y ago
  In Android I meant (sorry I wasn't clear) Your comment further shows how disingenuous their stance is
  - fredoliveira 4y ago
    > Your comment further shows how disingenuous their stance is Does it really? I think it just shows that you didn't know about something they offer, and decided to attribute that to them being malicious.
criddell 4y ago
It's the publishers that have handed Amazon their (near) monopoly on ebooks. If they wouldn't have insisted on DRM or at least had insisted on non-proprietary DRM, you would be able to buy books anywhere and read them anywhere. I prefer reading on my Kindle to paper books but I also love browsing and supporting book stores and the people who work there. I've always wished that I could browse a bookstore, take a stack of books to the front and have them scan a QR code (or something like that) on my ereader and sell me digital copies of books rather than the paper copies.

chrisfosterelli 4y ago

Part of the reason I went with a kobo over the kindle is that they support ePubs. The kindle honestly seemed a bit nicer hardware wise but I like the ability to build and read my library of DRM free books well into the future. No complaints about the kobo so far and it's lasted me nearly a decade by this point. Once it finally kicks the bucket I'll definitely stick with them.

robinsoh 4y ago
I've also heard (but not verified) that kobo's firmware isn't locked down the way amazon's is, so you can compile and install your own apps and modify system scripts. In other words it's your device, not Amazon's.
- mkozlows 4y ago
  It's true, and the open source koreader software is great.
  - BbzzbB 4y ago
    Made my Aura much more responsive, with better UI. Easy install too.
- llui85 4y ago
  Kobo's firmware is very open, although it's technical enough that your average (non-developer) end-user would have trouble modifying. You upload a `KoboRoot.tgz` file to a hidden folder when it's plugged into USB, which is extracted to the root directory of the device (which is linux + busybox, with a QT gui 'nickel'). Newer FW versions also have a development telnet server which can be enabled in settings. The MobileRead forums are where most of the unofficial discussion/development happens: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=223 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=223 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

fassssst 4y ago

The DRM bothered me until I discovered the Libby app’s excellent Kindle integration, now I don’t pay for anything since I have a great local library.

dredmorbius 4y ago
Wait until you discover LibGen and ZLib. There's also Gutenberg, Archive.org, and numerous other public-domain e-book collections such as StandardEbooks (https://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/)

beninsydney 4y ago

The lack of support for ePub is very annoying, when my 2013 Paperwhite finally breaks I'll definitely replace it with a non-Amazon ebook reader with better file support. Probably one with Android so it has proper browser support since there is a web frontend for Caliber and it might be nice to access Readarr directly too.

jay_kyburz 4y ago
I've been waiting for my paper white to break, but it just keeps on going. I might just have to upgrade anyhow.
- approxim8ion 4y ago
  I'm just surprised my 2012 Paperwhite hasn't broken. It's still chugging along like a king. There's a thin line across the screen about 10% off the top bezel, but it's easy to ignore. I don't think the battery life has degraded too much either. Perhaps because it is relatively simple, this has been one of the longest-lasting and best-aging devices I've ever owned.

donatj 4y ago

I've never understood the hubbub. You can easily perfectly convert between the formats with any number of tools. I use Calibre and I've never had a problem with a converted document.

simongray 4y ago
I definitely have run into issues once or twice, but you're right that it mostly just works.
puchatek 4y ago
I ran into issues with sending the converted files to my Kindle and there were no error messages to debug by. I was probably doing something wrong but still.
- ge96 4y ago
  I would root/"hack" mine just to get rid of the damn lock screen ad that takes like 10 seconds to go away.
DoingIsLearning 4y ago
I had a 15 year old ereader from sony that could open pdf, epub, rtf, txt whatever you wanted and text reflow would work for everything bar pdfs. Kindles are actively walled to force customers into the amazon ecosystem. I could just plug this sony e-reader to my PC and copy whatever I wanted to read. The e-ink panels have gotten substantially better but the experience is now objectively worse with Amazon and more expensive, most customers not don't realize what it could be.
- CYHSM 4y ago
  So true. I still own a Sony ereader and although the battery is a little worn off, the whole ease of use with epub or pdf is remarkable (its nearly 10 years old now). I really wonder why they stopped producing them
kX4A8o4mVmX8aW 4y ago

wolverine876 4y ago

> Alexandria on your hard drive That image brings to mind: How much space would you need to store every out-of-copyright book written in English?

dredmorbius 4y ago
There are a few estimates of total books ever published. Those range from the 40 million or so within the US Library of Congress collection to a Google estimate from a few years back of 140 million books existing, with about 2--5 million new ones published per year. Bowker, the US issuer of ISBNs, has registered roughly 300k new titles annually, since at least the 1950s, and beginning in the aughts, about 1--2 million "nontraditional" (self-published) titles. In straight text, assuming 250 pages of 250 words at 8 bytes/word, 40 million books works out to about 20 TB. This is a likely close to the lower bound as there are texts with image and other content which bump this value up. It works out to about 0.5 MB/book, which in my experience is too low. At 150 million books, we'd get 75 TB, and at 200 million, 100 TB. Nice round numbers.... A more realistic per-book size is 5 MB. This is typical of a mostly-text, formatted PDF. At 40, 150, and 200 million texts: 250, 750, and 1,000 TB. A data-heavy / graphics-heavy book might weigh in at 20--100 MB, though those tend to be less common. Scanned-in books with both page images and OCR text typically run about 5--10 MB. The largest I've seen (a copy of Lyell's Geography was >300 MB. Apple has offered iPads with > 1 TB onboard storage for at least several years. This seems to be the higher end of available tablet storage. (For some reason, the Cloud-and-Surveillance-oriented Google skimps with many devices still at 16--32 MB. Remarkable, which also went Cloud, tops out at 16 MB.) If fully devoted to texts at 5 MB each, that would offer storage for up to 200,000 documents, roughly the size of a well-stocked municipal public library. As to how many public-domain works might exist, the 1927 Report of the Librarian of Congress notes that the Library had assigned 4,503,164 copyrights over the preceding 57 years (presumably 1869--1926), the time in which such registrations were the work of the Library. Those works should all presently be in the Public Domain, and would total 22.5 TB at 5 MB/work. Annual report of the Librarian of Congress yr.1927, Washington, Library of Congress; for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off., p. 22. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0013520523&view=1up&seq=42 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0013520523&view=... The Library of Congress's total holdings was 3,420,345 million as of end of FY 1926 (p. 23 ibid). Presently, works published prior to 1 January 1927 in the United States are in the public domain. An additional roughly 1 million maps, 1 million volumes and/or pieces of music, and ~500k prints were also in the library's collection as of 1926. A full set of the Librarian's reports, dating to the 1860s, is available at Hathi Trust. From at least the 1950s, annual holdings and aquisitions are broken out by Library of Congress classification, which makes for some interesting data, for those who find that sort of thing interesting. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000072049 http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000072049

hackcasual 4y ago

Topaz was also used for long tail books, as there was a pipeline that could convert the high resolution search inside the book scans with minimal amount of human work. At the time OCR wasn't an option, so it used glyph binning similar to JBIG. The OCR'd text was included for searching. The biggest downside was no font changes

physicsguy 4y ago

So what happens on the day my kindle updates? Do I lose access to anything in Mobi format already on my kindle? That’s a PITA

LinAGKar 4y ago
No, why would you?

poglet 4y ago

Take a look at previous hacker News post 'Software Jailbreak for Any Kindle' and installable app 'KOReader' allowing for reading ePub and other formats. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31220553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31220553 I gave it a shot and it works well although instructions wern't obvious at first.

RachelF 4y ago
Yes, KOReader is open source and way better on the Kindle. Here's a clear how-to guide on Jailbreaking your Kindle https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=346037&highlight=koreader+pw5 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=346037&hi...

earningtrustlul 4y ago

This article brought back memories of my time working in Kindle. Amazon has a culture of promotion focused “engineering”. This rings true across product management and software development. Rather than solving real customer facing problems, many organizations including Kindle, emphasize “what do I need to do to get promoted?” This is not only SDEs, but L7/Senior engineering managers and L8/directors, who latch onto a sales pitch and put all their eggs in one basket. The template is like this: > I’m going to build a new framework, platform, format, or some other “thing” that everyone should now use to solve {{problem}}. Then, I can claim a larger scope and significant impact, no matter how pointless, costly, or annoying this thing is to customers. They write documents. These are narratives where they spend hours and hours reviewing and nit picking how “crisp” a sentence is, or how there are too many commas, or some other superfluous bullshit. There’s an OP1 document, where an L7 writes a fancy narrative, justify more head count and growing their organization. It’s their ticket to a director promotion. If you’re a developer, you flock to the same project. For L4s and L5s, it’s your ticket to the next level. For an L6, you spend your time selling the absolute hell out of this thing, going on a road show and pitching your idea to get buy in from other teams. You’re careful not to write much of the code and mainly come off as being the architect and consultant. This is your ticket to getting to the Principal level. If this is someone else’s idea, you’ll do whatever it takes to take credit when this succeeds but blame everyone else when it fails. Best case, the thing you deliver gets you promoted. Then, you simply just move onto to another organization. You were in Kindle and this new piece of shit has made on call hell? Oh well, you already got your promotion. Now you can just move on to AWS (or find another team in any of Amazons legacy businesses where you can coast). Kindle was an army of H1Bs with an extremely toxic culture. They refuse to hire or even interview white, black, or Hispanic candidates. You can pay H1Bs less, and they’re happy with it because they get to live in Redmond, WA instead of India. I could go on and on, but I feel anxiety right now even thinking about my time working there. Absolute shithole.

xvector 4y ago
There are some really cool openings at Amazon I was considering moving into but this makes me rethink. Thanks for the write up.

ashton314 4y ago

Where does one go to buy ePUBs of popular books like, say, Brandon Sanderson’s works or Dune or older nonfiction like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?

harshreality 4y ago
kobo, google, and some smaller ebook sites (which might just serve as an interface to kobo's catalog like walmart did). They almost always use adobe digital editions drm, but that's removable by the buyer with effort. For free epub ebooks, there's overdrive and the library ecosystem; legal libraries also DRM-wrap their epubs.
- ascagnel_ 4y ago
  > legal libraries also DRM-wrap their epubs This is the one case where I'm OK with DRM -- you're receiving the library's book on loan (it's never your book), and they need a way to enforce the length of the loan.
83457 4y ago
Doesn't happen often anymore but (something).com actually provides a useful result. ebooks.com edit: actually, every something I .com is pretty good. Haven't done that since the early days.
InvertedRhodium 4y ago
100000_scifi_epubs_a-e.torrent usually has what I'm looking for.
drowsycorbie 4y ago
ebooks.com has DRM as a search filter so it is easier to find DRM-free ePUBs. Since you mentioned Sanderson, I believe Tor books (or is it Tom Doherty Associates?) actually publishes all of their books as DRM-free so there is a large selection of sci-fi and fantasy books to choose from. That being said, most mainstream stuff is just published with DRM enabled. Now for really older books that are public domain I like standard ebooks and project Gutenberg.

zwilliamson 4y ago

Anyone else enjoy kindle book <-> audible narration feature? Curious if the Kindle platform is the only solid option for this style of reading/listening.

8fingerlouie 4y ago
I use this almost every day. Listen to Audible books when commuting, reading when i'm at home. It's probably the one "killer" feature for me.

throwaway7865 4y ago

Comments mention Pocketbook. How good is it? I’m tempted by 10.3” screen since I read technical pdf’s (think O’Reilly or Packt) a lot and no Kindle is good for that.

girvo 4y ago
While its not the same product, my 10" e-ink reader (an Onyx Boox Note 2) is the single best note-taking, annotation and technical document reader I've ever used. Its genuinely fantastic for those purposes. I read all my Kindle books on it, it's entirely replaced my paper notebooks for note taking, and all my technical books, manuals and so on have been excellent on it. Your intuition that this form factor is better for technical PDFs is correct, I think.
narf33 4y ago
I have an 8" Pocketbook Inkpad 3 which is already decent size for reading PDFs. They now also have a 10" version which should be perfect for it. Although if you are also annotating a lot, I would not recommend it, as it can be slow. (but i guess this is true for any E-Ink Reader)

MengerSponge 4y ago

Libby + Calibre + Apprentice Alf is how I handle my books these days. I really like my Forma.

DeathArrow 4y ago

I mainly use Kindle for technical books in English which would cost more and take more time to get in my country compared to e-books. Otherwise, I much prefer real books. I find them more comfortable to read, more pleasant to read (I get a better feeling turning pages and looking at paper than pressing buttons and looking at a screen) and I can pass them to my sons. Also, for children interacting with a real book is a better experience.

deleted 4y ago
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robertwt7 4y ago

I have kindle, but it's so hard for me to read programming books that I have in PDF (because it's too small). I end up having to read them on the laptop / PC. I'm even thinking to get an iPad because of the amount of programming books I have in pdf and want to read. Anyone is having the same issue?

ChrisRR 4y ago
I do too, but that's simply an issue of reading books that simply aren't designed to be read at A5 size
tapia 4y ago
I have the Fujitsu Quaderno A4 (13,3" screen). Great for reading scientific publications it whatever pdf. Also had a great Wacom stylus to take notes. I am great fan of these devices. Before the Quaderno I had the Sony DPT-RP1, which is very similar except the stylus is not so great.
- criddell 4y ago
  Is it a custom operating system? Some of their competitors use Android which is the last thing I want. Is the screen on the Fujitsu lit? Does the note taking application index your text so you can search? Is it easy to get the notes off? Can you highlight and annotate books and then easily export your annotations and highlights?
jb1991 4y ago
The kindle format, really any kind of text-based format, is not great for programming books in general. Code snippets end up having all kinds of hard to read wrapping, and also images and other things don’t really have a nice user experience on a Kindle. It’s really best when you’re just reading straight text, prose.
- mark_l_watson 4y ago
  I agree. I write programming books for various languages and having to reformat text in sometimes funky ways to fit page width is a challenge.

innocenat 4y ago

I always see people saying these kind of thing about Amazon, but personally, I don't think this is the case. I think there is actual technical reason why Amazon don't adapt EPUB natively (the Kindle Direct Publishing accept EPUB as input for ages). EPUB has a lot of features. A lot. I don't think anything (except maybe Adobe Digital Edition) support everything. I actually just realised yesterday that Moon Reader+, one of the best epub reader for Android, doesn't support vertical-rl layout (mostly used in Japanese book). Even Kobo doesn't use EPUB as-is. Its native format is KEPUB, which has tons of id-tagged <span> inside the content. Moreover, KEPUB and EPUB on Kobo use different renderer (EPUB use RMSDK, KEPUB use Kobo's own) with different supported features. Isn't this a mess? The new KFX format has one major advantage over EPUB. The images can be stored out-of-band. This allows you to start reading image-heavy book quickly, while images continue to load in the background. For fixed layout magazine/comic/manga where the entire file can be 100MB or more, this helps a lot.

Timshel 4y ago
Never had an issue with a EPUB on a kobo or a Nook reader, I clearly never tried any edge case. Not saying there might not be any issues with EPUB but the fact that in 10 years they can't be bothered to add at least a basic reader for me just mean they want to keep this incompatibility and keep people in this separated ecosystem with amazon/Kindle. I believe this choice is anything but a technical one. Since I never had much trouble using Calibre it means I'll probably never buy a Kindle just because of it but many people can't be hassled to do that.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  EPUB is like PDF. If you're going with just the very basic stuff: text, maybe a few images - it really doesn't matter what kind of bare-bones reader you use. BUT when you're opening a PDF that actually uses the features it's a different story. You've got a file with umpteen layers of information that needs to be displayed in a very specific way (I've seen blueprints do this for example). Most bare-bones PDF viewers either choke completely or display everything wrong.

rkachowski 4y ago

The fact that epub is going to be dropped from the send to kindle feature is finally going to get me out of the Kindle ecosystem. I really liked the wireless mechanism of pushing books to my kindle, is there a similar feature for koreader / remarkable / Kobo / anything else?

heurisko 4y ago
Am I missing something or is this the opposite of what is happening? > Beginning in late 2022, you will be able to send EPUB (.EPUB) documents to your Kindle library from the Kindle app. Before this point, it was never possible to send e-pub documents via Send to Kindle.
Fritsdehacker 4y ago
In the Netherlands, anything you buy from Bol.com is automatically synced to your Kobo device. Not sure about other retailers.
- TuxSH 4y ago
  It's because they're affiliates. Same goes for FNAC

MrOxiMoron 4y ago

in what world is kindle the defacto Ereader? here in the Netherlands the book market is dominated by bol.com, which has a deal with Kobo, so here it's all epub and Kobo e-readers.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Well, the US, obviously. I imported a kindle myself about ten years ago because they were both cheaper and better than the competitors at the time.
Tepix 4y ago
Worldwide they have a 80% market share, apparently. I'm staying away from Kindles because of their spying and their lack of EPUB support.
- fullstop 4y ago
  When I looked into this before, a lot of the "spying" was sending information back to Amazon in order to synchronize state between devices. With that being said, I have an Oasis and keep it in airplane mode 99% of the time.

MomoXenosaga 4y ago

Amazon popularised e-readers and they pretty much own digital publishing. For normal users it doesn't matter that the books they buy from Amazon aren't epub- seriously do you think they even know what that means lol? And for the rest of us Calibre converts anything in 30 seconds.

chrisco255 4y ago
Wasn't that long ago that "Microsoft owned desktop computing". You couldn't do anything without Windows. Barely anything worked with Mac. Linux was just a baby. The reason you fight monopolies, is because monopolies cannot last forever. There are all sorts of bad consequences with having digital publishing owned by a trillion dollar monopoly. In order to have a free press at all, which is important in democracy, which is important for society to stay resilient, we need a diverse ecosystem of digital publishing options.
criddell 4y ago
> Calibre converts anything in 30 seconds Calibre, with the DeDRM tools installed, is unreliable for Amazon's newest books. There are workarounds that involve getting the file in an older format, but then you lose the typography improvements that are only offered in KFX files. It feels like Amazon is finally starting to close the DeDRM hole.

chetanbhasin 4y ago

I'm currently using reMarkable 2 tablet and I love that it can render pretty much everything I need from it, except Kindle books.

knowmad 4y ago

I still can't get over the fact that the Kindle Oasis their flagship device is still Micro USB.