Trek Books for Kindle

[Defcon]

To bring this to an end:

After eliminating one last possible hurdle by making a test-order of a cheap, older ST Kindlebook (just in case there are geo-restrictions in place that don't show up before you actually order a book) I just placed my order for a Kindle.

 

[JWolf]

If you fix the embedded fonts, download Bluefire Reader and use that to read instead of iBooks as it will look so much better.

Thanks for the recommendation. I stopped looking for a better reader shortly after iBooks came out for iPhone. What I want from an iPhone reader is everything that the old eReader app was, and I'm constantly frustrated by everything else. But iBooks is the next best that I've tried, including the now important feature of syncing between devices, since I read on both my iPhone and iPad. I can't find anything online about Bluefire doing that, which would be a deal breaker for me. But I'll try it out, because I hate iBooks assuming that I really want my ebook to look and act like a paper book, without any options for changing that.

Bluefire does not have syncing across devices. But it does support embedded fonts as it uses ADE. So the look in Bluefire will be a lot better then it would be in iBooks.

 

[Defcon]

O.K., I just browsed a bit through the Kindle books scouting the prices of the ST books I'm interested in, and either I'm blind or Book Two of CoE: Remembrance of Things Past isn't available at Amazon (neither .de, nor .com).

I understand if they don't have a Kindle version of some of the older titles, but an eBook exclusive story and the concluding part of a two parter (and the series finale to boot)?

 

[JD]

Hmm, that's really weird. They also don't have the last couple collections for Ebook either, so maybe there's something going on with the series.

 

[Defcon]

They also don't have the last couple collections for Ebook either, so maybe there's something going on with the series.

Oh, they have those listed on amazon.de , just dated for 2030 (just like three of the pulled New Timeline novels by the way).

 

[Lee]

Not only that, but Amazon has been known to permanently ban people from its site for fairly trivial reasons, such as asking for what they consider to be too many returns. When they do this, all of your Kindle content becomes inaccessible...

Personally, I don't believe that Amazon cancels accounts because someone returns some items. I don't think Amazon will cancel the account of anyone who deals with Amazon in good faith. What will get you banned is if you order items, try to sell them on eBay, then return the items if no one buys them from you on eBay. I believe this is the scenario which causes the account cancellations that one can read about in some forums on the Internet.

 

[JWolf]

Hmm, that's really weird. They also don't have the last couple collections for Ebook either, so maybe there's something going on with the series.

The last two SCE/CoE collections have not been released as eBooks.

 

[JWolf]

O.K., I just browsed a bit through the Kindle books scouting the prices of the ST books I'm interested in, and either I'm blind or Book Two of CoE: Remembrance of Things Past isn't available at Amazon (neither .de, nor .com).

I understand if they don't have a Kindle version of some of the older titles, but an eBook exclusive story and the concluding part of a two parter (and the series finale to boot)?

I just look on Amazon.com and did not find it. I looked by name and also by author. That is an odd one. But if you can strip the DRM from ePub, you can convert it using Calibre.

 

[Ktrek]

I don't own a Kindle but I do own a nook color and a classic nook. My nook color is softrooted and I have the Kindle app on it. I can only speak from my own experience but every single Simon and Schuster book I have purchased (several Star Trek books included) all have format and typo issues. So much so that I have made a resolution to never buy another ebook from the publisher. I would rather spend my $7.99 on the paperback and know I have a decent copy of the book than waste my money on the poor quality epubs that S&S have been providing. I hate to boycott or blacklist any publisher but it really peeves me off that I spend hard earned dollars and get a waaay inferior product from a publisher who should be leading the industry. In fact I came very close to not ever buying another Star Trek book again in ANY format because of their lack of quality control.

Kevin

 

[JWolf]

I don't own a Kindle but I do own a nook color and a classic nook. My nook color is softrooted and I have the Kindle app on it. I can only speak from my own experience but every single Simon and Schuster book I have purchased (several Star Trek books included) all have format and typo issues. So much so that I have made a resolution to never buy another ebook from the publisher. I would rather spend my $7.99 on the paperback and know I have a decent copy of the book than waste my money on the poor quality epubs that S&S have been providing. I hate to boycott or blacklist any publisher but it really peeves me off that I spend hard earned dollars and get a waaay inferior product from a publisher who should be leading the industry. In fact I came very close to not ever buying another Star Trek book again in ANY format because of their lack of quality control.

Kevin

The issues with text mistakes have been differing from really bad to not that bad. But given the nature of some of the mistakes, there is no way they should be there if they had not used a PDF source for the eBooks. As to the formatting, that is really unforgivable. There is no way they should be embedding fonts into the ePub and then not have them work. In fact, it's even more of a mess in Watching the Clock. They don't even embed a bold italic font nor do they even have a style in the CSS for italics and the font embedding makes it such that even if the italic style was in the CSS, it wouldn't have worked. It seems S&S doesn't give a damn about Star Trek eBooks. If it wasn't for the fact that I can strip the DRM from ePub and it's not too difficult to fix the botches, I'd stop getting them.

I still say the authors need to have a read of their eBooks to fix errors and to make sure it's formatted properly. This also means that the authors may have to lean the technical details of ePub in order to be able to actually see what's wrong with them. If the authors get involved, maybe they can get S&S to get off their asses and release a eBooks that don't need some sort of fixing every time. And I hate to say this, but the read through would need to be done on the ePub AND Kindle versions. I'm sorry to be suggesting a lot more work for the authors, but since S&S cannot be assed to do it, then someone has to.

 

[Kinggodzillak]

Do the prices of Amazon e-books change a lot? From what I'd read I'd assumed they were permanent, no special offers or price reductions, but I just spotted that 5 Trek e-books on Amazon.co.uk have gone down in price by 20p - Triangle, A Rock and a Hard Place, Fortune's Light, The Valiant and Antimatter are all now the cheapest Trek e-books at £3.79 each.

Yeah, I know it's not much, but I didn't think this happened at all with e-books - I only know it's happened cos I was sad enough to go through all the TOS/TNG/DS9 numbered novels to make a list of the prices earlier in the week - so is it possible there could be further reductions at some point?

 

[JWolf]

If Star Trek eBook prices change, it's S&S who are the ones changing the price, not Amazon.

 

[UncleRogi]

Ya know, I can't say enough about the Kindle.

Yes, they can be fragile, but I have to say the service is remarkably excellent.

 

[JWolf]

Ya know, I can't say enough about the Kindle.

Yes, they can be fragile, but I have to say the service is remarkably excellent.

But when you get eBooks like the recent batch of Trek eBooks, you don't get a wonderful reading experience.

I'm currently reading Paths of Disharmony and at first, I had to fix it up as S&S did a poor job with it. Now I am finding some places where there are broken sentences. I am surprised though that there aren't any noticeable (if any) word errors so far.

When I finish reading it, I'll post the errors so people with the ePub and have the DRM stripped can fix them.

 

[MarciaCat]

Ya know, I can't say enough about the Kindle.

Yes, they can be fragile, but I have to say the service is remarkably excellent.

But when you get eBooks like the recent batch of Trek eBooks, you don't get a wonderful reading experience.

I'm currently reading Paths of Disharmony and at first, I had to fix it up as S&S did a poor job with it. Now I am finding some places where there are broken sentences. I am surprised though that there aren't any noticeable (if any) word errors so far.

When I finish reading it, I'll post the errors so people with the ePub and have the DRM stripped can fix them.

They keep this up and I may just go back to dead tree versions.

 

[JWolf]

Ya know, I can't say enough about the Kindle.

Yes, they can be fragile, but I have to say the service is remarkably excellent.

But when you get eBooks like the recent batch of Trek eBooks, you don't get a wonderful reading experience.

I'm currently reading Paths of Disharmony and at first, I had to fix it up as S&S did a poor job with it. Now I am finding some places where there are broken sentences. I am surprised though that there aren't any noticeable (if any) word errors so far.

When I finish reading it, I'll post the errors so people with the ePub and have the DRM stripped can fix them.

They keep this up and I may just go back to dead tree versions.

I have yet to look at the new NF eBook. I'll give that a look later today maybe. I wonder what they did to this one.

 

[Ood Sigma]

^ For what it's worth, I found Blind Man's Bluff to be the cleanest Trek Kindle reading experience I've had so far. I didn't notice any major problems.

 

[Thrawn]

^ For what it's worth, I found Blind Man's Bluff to be the cleanest Trek Kindle reading experience I've had so far. I didn't notice any major problems.

I agree, but then, I totally missed the lack of italics in WTC until JWolf pointed it out, so what do I know.

 

[JWolf]

^ For what it's worth, I found Blind Man's Bluff to be the cleanest Trek Kindle reading experience I've had so far. I didn't notice any major problems.

I've had a look at Blind Man's Bluff and other then extra fonts embedded that have no use and some wide margins, it seems OK overall. I'm impressed for once. It took almost no time to fix up to how I like it.

 

[MarciaCat]

^ For what it's worth, I found Blind Man's Bluff to be the cleanest Trek Kindle reading experience I've had so far. I didn't notice any major problems.

I've had a look at Blind Man's Bluff and other then extra fonts embedded that have no use and some wide margins, it seems OK overall. I'm impressed for once. It took almost no time to fix up to how I like it.

That's good news! Wide margins is one of the few things I know how to fix.

My to be read list is growing faster than I knew: I just realized I still haven't read the last Mirror Universe Book from January!