Star Trek, Amazon, & KFX eBooks
- Thread starter JWolf
- Start date
By your definition, Amazon shouldn't be allowed to sell these books at all since there's no public spec. Frankly, your definition is wrong.
If you don't like it, you're welcome to reverse-engineer it and create a way to convert from KFX to another format. (Just like someone had to do for Mobipocket and AZW3.)
So what you are saying is Amazon was not a walled garden, but now is, a tiny bit, because one of the multiple formats they make their ebooks available in hasn’t been cracked yet?
Huh.
It’s just downloaded as that. You can also download other formats, as has been said.
You download using latest Kindle for PC/MAC and you get mostly KFX eBooks. If you don't have a Kindle that can handle KFX, then these KFX eBooks could very well be useless. Also, if you do not have a physical Kindle, then you cannot download other than K4PC/MAC. So for those users, Amazon's walled garden has gotten a lot bigger.
You can download the older format from your Amazon account, like I said earlier. I think your arguing a problem that doesn't exist.
If you do not have a physical Kindle, you can't. The USB download only works if you have a physical Kindle registered to your account. So please tell me how to download KF8 when KFX is offered if all I have is the latest version of Kindle for PC.
If someone who was using some version 1.17 Kindle for PC and placed a pre-order for an eBook and then 1.17 updated to the current version, that pre-order could be screwed.
So these things could happen? not that they will definitely happen. You seem to be tilting at windmills again @JWolf
I have multiple dedicated e-readers, including a couple old Nook Glowlights and a Kobo I really like (these are great for outdoor use, which my Kindle Fire tablet and iPad aren't). So, I put all my e-books into Calibre and convert them to epub to make them portable across all my devices. This is for books I get from Amazon, my older Nook books, Apple iBooks purchases, and epubs from archive.org and gutenberg.org.
In no way could this be construed as stealing; I bought 'em, I'm entitled to read 'em. (Some of the earliest ebooks I ever bought were Star Trek: SCE e-books back in 2000-ish in a couple of different formats, including the Adobe e-book format. When Adobe killed the format and shut down their validation servers, those books became unreadable piles of bits taking up space on my hard drive. This, understandably, pissed me off royally. I provide this as background information as to why I convert EVERYTHING I buy into a portable, universal format. I consider that the e-books I buy are my property, just as physical books I buy are my property. I'm not renting them or licensing them; I'm BUYING them. I get to read them FOREVER.)
When the KFX format was rolled out some months ago (earlier this year, I think, but it might have been earlier) my Kindle for PC auto-updated to the newer version. That newer version of Kindle for PC downloaded my purchases in the KFX format, which Calibre can't convert to epub. Uh oh.
A quick googling taught me how to go back to Kindle for PC version 1.17.0, and how to disable auto-updating the app. I re-downloaded the new books, and they downloaded in the older Amazon .azw format. Everything worked as before.
So, if you maintain an older version of the Kindle for PC app on your PC, Amazon will still download the older format of e-books -- even brand-new e-books. This may change at some point -- I fully expect Amazon to stop supporting the older versions of Kindle for PC at some point. Hopefully someone will have designed a Calibre conversion for the newer format by then. Otherwise, I stop buying e-books from Amazon/Kindle.
I have a similar backstory, but mine's with MS-Reader LIT files. I really liked the MS-Reader software, and I use the fonts it came packaged with (Berling Antiqua, Frutiger Linotype) for documents.
Yeah, I think there will be, at some point, an "Upgrade Kindle PC or else" moment. I had one of those a year ago because I hadn't upgraded the software in a really long time. Hopefully, it won't be for a while.
How is it you're wanting to read these books that you can't?
As has already been said, the latest K4PC downloads in KFX when possible and those eBooks cannot be moved to a different platform.
I got into reading eBooks because I could buy in MS Reader (LIT) format and remove the DRM and I was able to read those books as is or convert them to read on my Sony Reader. I cannot do a thing with KFX eBooks to be able to read them where I want. Yes, I can download KF8 versions. But for a lot of people, they cannot. So even if they are set to be able to remove DRM/convert as needed, KFX prevents this. Let's say you buy an eBook from Amazon in KF8. Befoe you get to reading it, your K4PC is updated and Amazon tells you there is an update of that eBook. You download it and it's KFX. There's no way you can convert it to be able to read on your Kobo Reader. You don't own a hardware Kindle Reader so you cannot download KF8. There are plenty of people who have had eBooks no longer be readable because of the DRM. Remember Mobipocket where the PID for the DRM was tied to the computer. Change the computer and/or the book hard drive and you get a new PID and all the previous eBooks no longer can be read.
KFX was created because of Mobi and KF8 already being cracked. KFX has no other function. There's nothing KFX can do that you cannot do with modifying the KF8 renderer to do it with KF8. If you have K4PC and Amazon does a force update, you then will be downloading mostly KFX.
Also, KFX invalidates the reason to go DRM free.
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