Trek Books for Kindle

[ST-One]

I have found that the Trek books on the Kindle do have covers, but when you click on the book, it takes you several pages from the front cover. Just backtrack and you'll find it.

Which is another, though minor, annoyance I have with the Kindle.

As for earlier comments to me about having a guilty before proven innocent mentality, I will once again say I do not. In normal things I trust everyone until they do something to lose that trust. When it comes to stripping the DRM off eBooks and hacking the fonts and all the rest of that jazz, including changing the format with Calibre, I think it is blatantly illegal. You may not personally be doing that and then uploading the files to the internet for others to download, but my bet is that the vast majority of people who play around like that are.

I guess you'll have to show us what harm was done, what actual crime was committed by removing the DRM.

The worst you could say I am doing would be to tar you with the same brush as I do them. The fact of the matter is, that if you don't like what you have, then don't get it. If I could get hired by S&S to make sure the books are properly formatted, I would. The mistakes I noticed in the TP series books were annoying, yes, but I think they stem from increasing the font size, which messes up the basic formatting, which itself is not adaptive. On the Kindle, you can increase the font size and make fewer words on a line. I think this might have been put in place to fix that annoying habit of making it look unjustified in some places.

I know that problem you speak of here.
Another lovely quirk of the Kindle, because where the text-line looks unjustified on the Kindle it is justified on the Nook.

I love my Kindle, and I think it's several orders of magnitude better than the Sony Reader, but then I only read books on it. I don't fiddle around with what I buy to make it all neat and perfect because I can live with a few formatting errors. It doesn't make me lie awake at night sweating and wondering what I will do, and it certainly doesn't move me to break the law in spirit if not in letter.

You must be the only person on this planet that hasn't ripped a CD and converted the tracks to mp3s then.
Right?

 

[BrotherBenny]

You must be the only person on this planet that hasn't ripped a CD and converted the tracks to mp3s then.
Right?

Never done it in my life. I bought CDs when I liked the music and now I have iTunes. I had over five hundred CDs before I switched to iTunes and a perfectly good CD player/stereo.

Have also never owned an iPod. I rarely listen to music these days as I prefer reading a book to listening to anything.

 

[ST-One]

You must be the only person on this planet that hasn't ripped a CD and converted the tracks to mp3s then.
Right?

Never done it in my life. I bought CDs when I liked the music and now I have iTunes. I had over five hundred CDs before I switched to iTunes and a perfectly good CD player/stereo.

Have also never owned an iPod. I rarely listen to music these days as I prefer reading a book to listening to anything.

And from iTunes you get files that are (now) DRM-free.
Going by your logic this makes you just an uploader (thief) waiting to happen.

 

[ClayinCA]

So how 'bout those Star Trek books on Kindle, huh? I just got a Kindle for Christmas and am probably going to order my first non-public-domain eBook tomorrow (when Path of Disharmony comes out).

Question, though, for those Kindle veterans among you: if I order an eBook from my Kindle and have it sent there directly via 3G (as opposed to downloading it to my PC first and then moving it over), how do I back up my purchase? It's just drag-and-drop, right?

Sorry if that's a stupid question...I'm old and don't understand modern technology.

 

[Thrawn]

On amazon.com, the "Manage Your Kindle" page keeps a list of everything you've ever bought, and you can send it to your PC or phone or Kindle or whatever from there, as many times as you like. So, your purchase is kept forever, but if you want a hardcopy backup then you can have it send a copy to your computer, or drag and drop from the Kindle, either way.

 

[Lee]

The book I'm reading now, Rihannsu: The Bloodwing Voyages, has no spaces between paragraphs.

I bought this one for my Kindle too and it wasn't too bad. Did you happen to pickup Rihannsu, Book Five: The Empty Charir?

I don't have that one yet. I only just started Bloodwing, so I thought I'd wait until I finished that one before buying The Empty Chair.

 

[Deano2099]

As for earlier comments to me about having a guilty before proven innocent mentality, I will once again say I do not. In normal things I trust everyone until they do something to lose that trust. When it comes to stripping the DRM off eBooks and hacking the fonts and all the rest of that jazz, including changing the format with Calibre, I think it is blatantly illegal..

In your country maybe. We don't all have the DMCA where we live. In fact some of us have consumer legislation that specifically permits us to do what the hell we want with something we've bought. So I assume it's okay for us to do this if we live somewhere that it's blatently legal?

You must be the only person on this planet that hasn't ripped a CD and converted the tracks to mp3s then.
Right?

Never done it in my life. I bought CDs when I liked the music and now I have iTunes. I had over five hundred CDs before I switched to iTunes and a perfectly good CD player/stereo.

Have also never owned an iPod. I rarely listen to music these days as I prefer reading a book to listening to anything.

And none of those CDs or MP3s ever sampled or remixed another song either?

 

[ST-One]

I've just compared prices for the ebook version of Bernard Cornwell's 'Harlequin / The Archer's Tale'

6,99 $ at Barnes&Noble
6,99 $ at Diesel-eBooks
6,99 $ at BooksOnBoard
10,34 $ at Amazon

Guess where I didn't buy that book.

 

[Lee]

I've just compared prices for the ebook version of Bernard Cornwell's 'Harlequin / The Archer's Tale'

6,99 $ at Barnes&Noble
6,99 $ at Diesel-eBooks
6,99 $ at BooksOnBoard
10,34 $ at Amazon

Guess where I didn't buy that book.

That's funny, I just looked up that book at Amazon and it's $6.99.

EDITED TO ADD: are you in England? Maybe your price is different?
http://www.amazon.com/Archers-Tale-...C2&s=digital-text&qid=1295954320&sr=1-1-spell

 

[ST-One]

I've just compared prices for the ebook version of Bernard Cornwell's 'Harlequin / The Archer's Tale'

6,99 $ at Barnes&Noble
6,99 $ at Diesel-eBooks
6,99 $ at BooksOnBoard
10,34 $ at Amazon

Guess where I didn't buy that book.

That's funny, I just looked up that book at Amazon and it's $6.99.

EDITED TO ADD: are you in England? Maybe your price is different?
http://www.amazon.com/Archers-Tale-...C2&s=digital-text&qid=1295954320&sr=1-1-spell

Nope, Germany.
When I open your link, it's still 10,34 $.
I guess it does depend on from where you buy.
Great. Another reason not to buy my eBooks from Amazon.

Kindle Price: $10.34 includes VAT & free international wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet

 

[Lee]

As I'm sure you know, ebook prices are fluid right now. Some books are more expensive from certain retailers, others more expensive from others. I haven't conducted a study personally, but I've seen reports from people who have who state that on the whole Amazon is cheaper. I'm sure if you searched on a bunch of books, you'd find some cheaper at Amazon and others cheaper at other retailers. Anyway, it's the publishers that set the prices, not the retailers.

 

[ST-One]

As I'm sure you know, ebook prices are fluid right now. Some books are more expensive from certain retailers, others more expensive from others. I haven't conducted a study personally, but I've seen reports from people who have who state that on the whole Amazon is cheaper. I'm sure if you searched on a bunch of books, you'd find some cheaper at Amazon and others cheaper at other retailers. Anyway, it's the publishers that set the prices, not the retailers.

Well, that can't be quite right when I have to pay 7,99 at BooksOnBoard and 9,65 at Amazon for Star Trek: Typhon Pact I.

 

[LightningStorm]

It's entirely possible (probable even) that the Agency 5 agreement only applies to the US (or select countries that agreed to it) and not globally. This could explain the price differences in different countries.

I'll also point out, that this also proves my point from a while ago about how Agency is keeping prices lower than retailers might set them just as much as it's keeping them higher.

 

[ST-One]

It's entirely possible (probable even) that the Agency 5 agreement only applies to the US (or select countries that agreed to it) and not globally. This could explain the price differences in different countries.

I'll also point out, that this also proves my point from a while ago about how Agency is keeping prices lower than retailers might set them just as much as it's keeping them higher.

Well, I'd call it a rip-off by Amazon rather than a price difference.
Not that it would bother them them, but Amazon lost a sale on 'Harlequin' and BooksOnBoard got my money instead.

 

[JWolf]

I love my Kindle, and I think it's several orders of magnitude better than the Sony Reader, but then I only read books on it. I don't fiddle around with what I buy to make it all neat and perfect because I can live with a few formatting errors. It doesn't make me lie awake at night sweating and wondering what I will do, and it certainly doesn't move me to break the law in spirit if not in letter.

I can tell you've never really seen a 650 in the wild. The touch interface is quite nice. if you ever had a chance to use one, your opinion might change.

As for fixing eBooks, there was one Trek eBook where the author mentioned an error in the print edition. It had to do with a date. Since I had the ePub with the DRM stripped, I was able to go in and fix the error before I started reading.

For books I may reread someday (like Trek books), I will go in and fix formatting and other errors I find. That way, the reread will be better then the first read.

 

[JWolf]

It's entirely possible (probable even) that the Agency 5 agreement only applies to the US (or select countries that agreed to it) and not globally. This could explain the price differences in different countries.

I'll also point out, that this also proves my point from a while ago about how Agency is keeping prices lower than retailers might set them just as much as it's keeping them higher.

Since the agency model, most agency eBooks have gone UP in price. I used to be able to get new trek novel eBooks for between $5-$6 and sometimes less. Now we are stuck with $7.99 with no hope in hell of any lower price.

So really, why do you think the agency model isn't as bad as it really is? Do you really live with blinders on all the time because it sure seems like it.

 

[ST-One]

I've just bought Christopher L. Bennett's Ex Machina (for 7,99 rather than 9,65 Amazon charges) - and that books formatting is a mess (again): text isn't justified and there are spaces between the paragraphs.

 

[Lee]

Did you happen to pickup Rihannsu, Book Five: The Empty Charir? It is, in my humble opinion, one of the all-time worst looking ebooks I've ever had the displeasure to have purchased. There's no space between the paragraphs. There's no space between paragraphs, there’s no space between scene breaks, there's no indentation. There's no paragraph formatting period. Each chapter looks like one giant paragraph. It basically looks like a dumb text dump of the book.

I just downloaded a sample of this book, and I can see what you mean. There's no indentation or space between paragraphs. I don't think it's unreadable, though, as you can still tell where a new paragraph starts because the preceding paragraph ends at the beginning or middle of a line rather than at the end. But I agree it's not ideal.

Did you contact Amazon for a refund? If you contact them within seven days they'll refund any ebook purchase, and that would also alert them that there is a problem.

 

[bfollowell]

Did you contact Amazon for a refund? If you contact them within seven days they'll refund any ebook purchase, and that would also alert them that there is a problem.

Actually, no. I didn't feel it was right since I knew I could fairly easily "fix" the poor formatting and then have an enjoyable read. It took a couple of hours to fix the formatting and add a cover and create a table of contents and basically get this book in the shape it should've been to begin with. Now, when I'm ready to read this book, I'll be able to enjoy my read much easier and won't seem so much like work.

- Byron

 

[Smitty]

I've just compared prices for the ebook version of Bernard Cornwell's 'Harlequin / The Archer's Tale'

6,99 $ at Barnes&Noble
6,99 $ at Diesel-eBooks
6,99 $ at BooksOnBoard
10,34 $ at Amazon

Guess where I didn't buy that book.

Yeah, here in the States Kindle prices is $6.99 anfd B&N price is $6.99. I have yet to see a situation in States where the prices differ between Amazon and B&N. Hopefully for you B&N stays in business but it does not look promising.