iBooks just failed an important test

[NightGeometry]

Aside from DRM (which applies differently to Kindle and iBooks format) iBooks reads epub and pdf files. Both are "open" formats absent some sort of DRM. Sony's readers, for example, also use epub, as do a couple of lesser-known ereaders. Kindle, on the other hand has a proprietary azw format. Even without DRM only Kindle hardware/software reads azw (and pdf).

So unless you employ some DRM-stripping methodology and then use some conversion program, then iBooks content and Kindle content remain locked to their respective platforms.

Azw is actually really just mobibook format (.mobi), which Amazon bought. If you want to read epub and mobi books in one app, then Stanza is really what you need.

Stripping Adept drm from epub's is fairly straightforward. I believe if you have a windows machine stripping drm from azw/mobi is reasonably straightforward too (though I've not tried this). Once cleaned, chuck everything in Stanza and you're good.

 

[ReallyBigFeet]

Directed towards Sam and Nebula:

To be fair, the Random House versus Apple debate got a lot of publicity this past winter/spring in the months leading up to the iPad release. RH is the only publisher out there of the "big 6" who remains off the iBook library shelves.

What is interesting, as I posted earlier, is that they HAVE reached agreements with many (if not all) of the other major eBook distribution clouds; Amazon via Kindle, B&N via the Nook and Borders via the Kobo.

Only the Apple relationship remains for them to establish. I don't think its a difference in philosophies as RH demonstrably is just hunky-dory about the Agency model. Apple isn't doing anything fundamentally different than Amazon in that respect.

What differences do remain is open to debate. I've seen commentary in the press discussing RH's views of Apple's long-term treatment of music and media publishers by forcing reductions in content pricing and obfuscation of reader demographic information (since Apple controls the transaction, they can hide who is buying what from publishers...something publishers really want to know and value highly).

Or it could be Apple "playing hardball" with RH and even though their content is freely available on competitive eReaders, they have told RH "You weren't with us initially...so FU now!" Who knows?

I used to work for B&N years ago at the corporate level (designed many of their superstores). I can tell you this much....unless things have changed dramatically, the profit margins on books sold at the retail level (hardback/paperback) are insane. Amazon, B&N and Borders sell a crapload of physical books. Apple is 100% digital. It is easy to 'squeeze the profit balloon' when you've got multiple channels and multiple products. Sort of like the car dealer who ups your trade in value but then also ups the purchase price of the new vehicle. In the end, you don't win anything but it looks better on paper. When you have one product (digital content) and one sale (digital content), there's no wiggle room. And given that Apple is a new market entrant for eBooks, it is also possible that RH had pre-established relationships with the other players to offer them price protection or "guaranteed most favored trading partner" status as well.

If I were going to play a game of chicken, I'd make sure I could protect my profits as long as possible. That could be one (of many) reasons RH isn't available from Apple, but readily available in every other major eBook format out there. Channel strategy is a huge factor when you are talking about players of this size.

Some sample links to give you some of the history here:

http://www.idealog.com/blog/whats-so-hard-to-understand-about-random-houses-strategy

http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/goodnight-gutenberg/2010/03/24/random-house-dithers?page=full

Regardless, I stand by my original statements. Giving Apple the "good guy" status here is just as wrong as granting it to RH. There's big money at stake and if you follow the money, you'll find your answer. I'm sure there's plenty of blame to go around with both parties.

 

[NebulaClash]

Thank you for posting that. This is clearly a complex issue.

 

[samcraig]

Directed towards Sam and Nebula:

To be fair, the Random House versus Apple debate got a lot of publicity this past winter/spring in the months leading up to the iPad release. RH is the only publisher out there of the "big 6" who remains off the iBook library shelves.

...

Regardless, I stand by my original statements. Giving Apple the "good guy" status here is just as wrong as granting it to RH. There's big money at stake and if you follow the money, you'll find your answer. I'm sure there's plenty of blame to go around with both parties.

And that's what I said earlier - in fewer words (not knocking you - just agreeing). Finger pointing is useless. The bottom line is - they haven't reached an agreement - for WHATEVER reason. Both parties are to blame (or you can say neither is to blame). It's all perspective. But blaming one over the other, in my opinion, is not credible.

 

[Piggie]

Aside from DRM (which applies differently to Kindle and iBooks format) iBooks reads epub and pdf files. Both are "open" formats absent some sort of DRM. Sony's readers, for example, also use epub, as do a couple of lesser-known ereaders. Kindle, on the other hand has a proprietary azw format. Even without DRM only Kindle hardware/software reads azw (and pdf).

So unless you employ some DRM-stripping methodology and then use some conversion program, then iBooks content and Kindle content remain locked to their respective platforms.

Not sure about your last sentence - I don't recall saying you don't have a right to view your purchased e-media in the future.

Great, that's what I wanted to know.

I don't have any personal moral issues about stripping DRM (if it can be done) from some data I have officially purchased with my own hard earned money so I may view that data with the reader of my choice.

It's only for my personal use so I think I should be able to view the data I paid for as I wish and not have it locked to one reader (unless the price is brought down to a tiny amount due to the locking down)

In fact Id go so far as to say locking down data to 1 reading device for something like a book should be made illegal.

 

[NebulaClash]

In fact Id go so far as to say locking down data to 1 reading device for something like a book should be made illegal.

I agree with you that it should be illegal, but just be clear that at the moment the law does not agree with us. It is, in fact, a violation of law to strip DRM from an ebook you buy. Granted, no one will go after you for doing this for personal use in all likelihood, but that's not the same as saying the law is on your side on this issue. I don't like it, but I recognize the reality.

 

[Dodgeroo]

Books being available on one system or another is annoying certainly.

But I don't find it as annoying as when books are available in one territory and not another.

Silly example: the Halo novels. They are published by Tor both in US and UK.

Yet the ebooks are only on the US iBooks. This market fragmentation really makes no sense to me.

 

[Brammy]

Like someone posted earlier, my OCD compels me to have my e-books all in one place. I've got ebooks scattered through Kindle and Nook apps.

I usually break the DRM on my purchased books and put them in iBooks. I do enjoy iBooks reading experience the best, but, I also don't find the Kindle app to be a hardship, either. This way, I'm also covered if something happens to either Amazon or B&N.

I've also just gotten over it, too, and download and start reading the book in its native format while I'm busting the DRM.

 

[JulianL]

Like someone posted earlier, my OCD compels me to have my e-books all in one place. I've got ebooks scattered through Kindle and Nook apps.

I usually break the DRM on my purchased books and put them in iBooks. I do enjoy iBooks reading experience the best, but, I also don't find the Kindle app to be a hardship, either. This way, I'm also covered if something happens to either Amazon or B&N.

I've also just gotten over it, too, and download and start reading the book in its native format while I'm busting the DRM.

That's what I've done. So far I have taken all my previously purchased Fictionwise (B&N) books over to ePub and put them on my iBooks bookshelf. The rest of my iBooks bookshelf comprises titles purchased via the iBook Store but I have to say that, partly as a result of informed comments here, I'm beginning to regret those purchases and wish that I'd purchased those titles from the Kindle store and done the same thing as you, i.e. converted a Kindle version to get an iBooks-readable ePub rather than opening myself up to the possibility of having "lost" titles if iBooks ever dies and I find myself needing to switch everything to Kindle. Right now I think that I have the technology to strip off Kindle DRM and convert it to ePub but I haven't tried it yet. I must buy a cheap "Collins Classic" novel or something similar from the Kindle Store and do some experiments sometime. The only format that I don't have some idea of how to break is protected iBooks.

Do you use Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) to convert to ePub? (Note to moderators and anyone else - Calibre only works with unprotected books, it is a totally legal tool for converting between formats that are not protected by DRM so this is in no way a link to any DRM removal technologies.)

I confess to being a bit OCD as well (in fact I think I was probably the previous poster that you were refering to) so I installed both eReader and Stanza on my iPad in order to compare the formatting of my converted books against the originals and I discovered that once I'd run my unlocked Fictionwise books through Calibre and done a few simple tidyups, usually taking me no more than 10 minutes a book, my resulting ePub as viewed in iBooks had better formatting than the original DRM-protected books viewed in either Stanza or eReader so, not only have I got all my books in one place, I actually have better formatting too.

There is another advantage (apart from price) that I can see for me in purchasing Kindle titles and converting them to ePub for reading in iBooks rather than buying the same title directly from the iBook store. I recently bought a book from the iBooks store that happened to be a sequel of a book that I had purchased from Fictionwise and converted to ePub. The first (Fictionwise) book was formatted beautifully but the sequel that I purchased from the iBook store had a totally broken table of contents so none of the 25 chapters in the book were listed (the table of contents stopped after "Prolog"). Had I used Calibre to do the final conversion to ePub I would have been able to fix this and ended up with a much better end product. As it happened, in fairness to Apple, I filed a support issue on the purchase and they immediately refunded me the purchase price.

Since I'm the thread starter and am really enjoying how this thread has developed, I would like to make one request. Please do not post any links to sites that have any information on how to remove DRM from eBooks or post any other information here that relates to how to strip DRM from eBooks (and please no one ask for such links or information either - Google is your friend here). I'm pretty sure that discussions of DRM stripping is against forum rules and would result in this thread getting closed (at best) and possibly removed which I think would be a shame. I'm assuming that it's OK to confess that one has used DRM removal tools but it is most definitely not OK to post information on finding or using those tools here.

- Julian

P.S. I personally have never, ever used DRM removal on a book that I have not legally purchased.

 

[bcaslis]

Fictionwise books can be converted to epub? I have a bunch of old books for ereader I purchased. I'd love to be able to convert these to epub to use with iBooks.

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

iBook Store, Kindle and Fictionwise

Firstly guys there is a free e-Reader app with a link to your account at Fictionwise, so if a book is still in your bookshelf, you can download them again to your iPad all for free.

I have to say I prefer reading books on the iBooks app, as I think I can set it up to be kinder on the eye than Kindle, where I find the sepia still a bit on the harsh side. e-Reader is more like iBooks. What does annoy me is that iBooks editions are nearly always 15 to 20% more than the same edition in Kindle. Since I would guess the publisher is charging the same, I assume the balance goes into Apple's pocket.

The other beef on iBooks is: Why on earth have they not put an iBook store browser in iTunes? Unless I am missing something, the only way I can browse iBook store is on my iPad. In Kindle I can go either way. Browse and buy either from a laptop etc or browse and buy from an iPad. I can only see an upside for Apple on this. If they had any sense, they would also give away an iBook reader for Mac and Windows and allow their iBooks to be read on a non iOS device, again just like Kindle does.

Wilson

 

[JulianL]

Firstly guys there is a free e-Reader app with a link to your account at Fictionwise, so if a book is still in your bookshelf, you can download them again to your iPad all for free.

...

The other beef on iBooks is: Why on earth have they not put an iBook store browser in iTunes? Unless I am missing something, the only way I can browse iBook store is on my iPad.

...

If they had any sense, they would also give away an iBook reader for Mac and Windows and allow their iBooks to be read on a non iOS device, again just like Kindle does.

Re eReader being available on iPad. Yes. Stanza is also an option since it also reads DRM-protected Fictionwise titles. All my books were originally bought when I did all my reading using eReader for initially PalmOS and then until recently Windows Mobile. I experimented with loading my Fictionwise books into both eReader and Stanza for the iPad and was surprised to find that even eReader on iPad didn't format them properly (eReader on iPad was very bad at failing to centre lots of stuff that should be centred and it just left-justified it all).

Re no browsing of iBooks in iTunes. All I can do is violently agree with you. It's so un-Apple too (they're supposed to be the masters of marketing after all). By not putting iBooks into iTunes they miss all cross-selling opportunites. If I search for a book in iBooks and don't find it then that's the end of my transaction. If it was in iTunes then it's possible that, although there is no hit on an iBook, maybe an audio book, tv, movie or even soundtrack might come up that prompts a purchase.

Re iBook reader for other devices. Again, I agree with you and I'm getting concerned that Steve Jobs just isn't genuinely interested enough in the iBooks market to make this step. Let's face it, Apple doesn't have much of a record with cross-platform software (Safari is probably the one good example; I don't include iTunes here because, and I'm not exaggerating for effect here, iTunes for Windows really is the single worst Windows app that I have ever encountered). I think the situation is even worse than you mention because it's not just Windows and Mac. To get parity with Kindle they need to consider putting the iBook reader onto things like Blackberry and Android (I remain to be convinced whether Windows Mobile will be a significant player in the future).

- Julian

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

Jobs at sell by date

I am afraid since his severe illness, Steve Jobs has become increasingly arrogant and is I suspect, not listening to other folks inside Apple, like many dictators do when they have been in power too long. Now nobody can argue that almost certainly he saved Apple in the 90's and that he has achieved marvellous things. However, reading his replies to various emails, one detects a total lack of awareness of his customers' beefs and desires.

Apple shows signs of ignoring requirements of its core customers, Mac users and selling both hardware and software with serious flaws and evidence of inadequate testing in external environments (all the recent iMacs versions since 2006 have had severe teething troubles and in software, Snow Leopard was horrible until at least 10.6.3). Any company which starts to ignore its core business, will end up in trouble. Now given Apple's huge cash pot, this will take a long time but just look at what happened to GM and IBM. One went bust and the other is a tiny shadow of its former self. Both assumed that their customers would continue to buy inferior product. Windoze is catching up fast and W7 is not at all a bad product, which you can run on hardware half or less the price of Apple stuff.

The poor implementation of the iBook store and distractions such as the useless and Spam laden Ping are symptoms of the above.

I think the best thing that could happen to Apple, is for Jobs to do the same as Bill Gates and step away from the day to day running of the company to a distance, where his valued perspective would be more effective.

Wilson

 

[gnasher729]

I am afraid since his severe illness, Steve Jobs has become increasingly arrogant and is I suspect, not listening to other folks inside Apple, like many dictators do when they have been in power too long.

Now do you have any evidence for that? I think it is more like Steve Jobs being a dictator who doesn't listen to his advisors on MacRumors.

 

[wilsonlaidlaw]

Jobs arrogant?

Now do you have any evidence for that? I think it is more like Steve Jobs being a dictator who doesn't listen to his advisors on MacRumors.

His reply to a left handed guy who complained that his iPhone 4 kept dropping calls, to just hold it in his right hand was crass beyond belief. Now I am right handed but a comment like that immediately raises the hackles of left-handers, who comprise around 15 to 20% of the population. There have been quite a few more of his one word or single sentence replies to emails that exhibit indifference at best to requests/complaints by customers and contempt at worst. Their handling of the prototype iPhone 4 "lost" was very heavy handed and could have been handled in a way which enhanced Apple's reputation instead of making them look like controlling clods, who misused their standing in the local community to leverage an illegal search of the journalist's property. He had offered to bring the phone back to Apple.

Now you can see by the number of Apple products that I have, only some of which are listed in my signature, that I am not against Apple and wish them the best for the future. That is one reason I am concerned by what I see (and I emphasise that this is my and only my opinion) about Apple becoming reliant on products which have a very short fashion shelf life. If iPhones or the iPad become "uncool" like happened to Motorola phones a couple of years ago, then their sales could drop off a cliff. I could change to Android phones or an Android pad in an hour or so. It would be a major upheaval to change family and company over to Windows based computing taking weeks at best. That is why I am concerned about Apple becoming increasingly reliant on what I see as ephemeral products, even if they are the current class leaders.

Wilson

 

[cadujr]

If a book doesn't appear in iBooks it's because the publisher is resisting. It has very little to do with Apple.

But it has a lot to do with apple.
With kindle you can start a book on the ipad, then move to a iphone and keep it going on a mac or pc. They are all in sync.
With ibook you can't even sync it with a mac!!!!
BTW , books on ibook are more expensive than on amazon most of the time
Untill now i only have freebies on ibook and keep using kindle for ipad,iphone and mac.
The plain fact is that kindle is a better solution than ibook.