kindle2 - some thoughts on ebook reading

[Cyrrex]

Question:  Does it let you register to five devices concurrently, or is that 5 devices that over the lifetime of the account (i.e. devices no longer in use still counting against the total).  I sure hope it is the former.

[Numtini]

It's concurrent. You can go into manage your kindle and remove devices from your account.

[Cyrrex]

It's concurrent. You can go into manage your kindle and remove devices from your account.

Okay, that seems relatively fair, then.  I dislike DRM as much as the next guy, but it isn't hard to see why they would have such a limitation.  Or rather, in theory I understand it...it would all be so much easier to swallow if an ebook didn't costs roughly the same as a physical book, despite the lack of materials, production process, logistics, storage and waste involved.  That is what really pisses me off.

[Numtini]

I honestly just gave up. I run everything through Calibre and the plugins just strip it all. Among other things, the number of books I've found that have problems with the PaperWhite are pretty surprising. They really need to figure that out.

[Viin]

It's concurrent. You can go into manage your kindle and remove devices from your account.

Okay, that seems relatively fair, then.  I dislike DRM as much as the next guy, but it isn't hard to see why they would have such a limitation.  Or rather, in theory I understand it...it would all be so much easier to swallow if an ebook didn't costs roughly the same as a physical book, despite the lack of materials, production process, logistics, storage and waste involved.  That is what really pisses me off.

This is right - I have two Kindles, an iPad, and two iPhones registered to my Amazon account. All devices get access to the same books.
The problem, as mentioned a few posts ago, is that it assumes the same person is reading the book on all of the devices. So if you open a book on your iPhone and your wife opens the same book on her Kindle, she is pushed to the last page you read. (You can cancel that, but it is nice to sync between devices as I switch between iPad and Kindle a lot - I can't do that if my wife is reading the book at the same time).

[Engels]

Do you guys read at such a breakneck pace that you have to have sync turned on all the time? My GF has two kindles, the original and the 3rd one, and I just download her books I haven't read yet, then turn off wireless/3g and select 'go to start' and the thing remembers where I am. Maybe there's some scenario where you absolutely need to sync all the time, but I can't think of it.

[Baldrake]

Not the same thing. E.g. if I let my non-existent wife borrow my Kindle and she reads one of the books I was reading when I get the device back the book will be on the page she last left off on not the page I last was reading. Yes I could go through and add a manual bookmark to every single book on the device but that would be a fricking pain in the ass.

Stop being such a cheap bastard and buy your non-existent wife her own Kindle!!

[Trippy]

Stop being such a cheap bastard and buy your non-existent wife her own Kindle!!

I let her use my hand-me-downs (My PW is my 3rd Kindle).

[Ingmar]

I just never sync. Wireless is never turned on except to buy/download a new book.

[Viin]

Do you guys read at such a breakneck pace that you have to have sync turned on all the time? My GF has two kindles, the original and the 3rd one, and I just download her books I haven't read yet, then turn off wireless/3g and select 'go to start' and the thing remembers where I am. Maybe there's some scenario where you absolutely need to sync all the time, but I can't think of it.

I read on the Kindle at night and on my iPad during the day at lunch or while traveling. I leave wifi on all the time, so it syncs when I go to read the Kindle before bed, and then my iPad can catch up at lunch time. I read 20-50 pages each night and maybe 10-15 at lunch time.

[Numtini]

I leave wireless off because it kills the battery, but running them through calibre kills the sync thing anyway. I guess that's technically a bug, not a feature.

[Quinton]

Amazon finally added a feature for reporting content errors, and you can see the status of your reports on kindle.amazon.com... I'm curious to see how rapidly they handle these... I get really annoyed finding errors in ebooks, especially ones that weren't present in the print version...

[Numtini]

Where do you submit corrections though? I can't find a button anywhere?

[Hammond]

Also does it tie it to a specific location in the book? Or do you add the comments through the amazon site?

[Quinton]

It seems like this feature is only available on the newest hardware (like the Paperwhite) and is not available in either the Android or iOS Kindle app (obnoxious).

You highlight a word or passage (longpress and drag) and the dialog that pops up and offers you "lookup in dictionary" or "highlight" or "share" has a "more" button which pops up a menu that includes a "Report Content Error" button.  Selecting that pops up another dialog where you can enter descriptive text if you want.  Presumably it sends the exact location in the text to Amazon as well as the highlighted text and anything you wrote describing the issue (but only the latter two are shown along with the time/status in the webpage).

[Numtini]

Well, the paperwhite is the one where you need it, I'll check when I get home. I have a bunch of books with the unchangeable font/tiny font size issue.

[Trippy]

I gave up on my Paperwhite. I was having a problem with "full page" images/graphics messing up which page it would go to next. It would often jump to some seemingly random page well past where I was currently reading, forcing me to backtrack and figure out where I was before the image appeared.

[Numtini]

Images and e-ink really don't mix.

[naum]

Images and e-ink really don't mix.

Which is a big reason why my Kindle Paperwhite is collecting dust and Nexus 7 is being used more (despite its Kindle app being an ugly sibling of even the iOS version). Being able to zoom in is nice (some Paperwhite books enable this with images, but even then, it is not very responsive). Also, love being able to highlight a word or phrase (again, silly DRM restrictions prevent doing this with more than a word or two) and do a Wikipedia / web search. It makes grokking a book a good experience. (I realize this is moot for most works of fiction).

And Amazon can crow on about how their "backlight" isn't a "backlight" but in a dark room, it is a worse UX experience than a tablet. Even in a well-lit room the contrast is such on the device that I find I have the backlight on (even Amazon recommends full light setting for well-lit room).

[Quinton]

I still prefer the paperwhite for novels, but yeah, anything with illustrations, color, or requiring random access (textbook, manuals, etc) goes on a PC or tablet.

I want somebody to build a really good PDF reader for Android -- the Adobe reader is maybe the most accurate rendering but is clunky and slow, and the existing third party readers all have various warts.

[Viin]

If only we knew someone who worked on Android at Google ..

[Quinton]

He'd probably already be bitching at people on the inside about the sorry state of pdf reading on the platform, I bet...

[Viin]

The iOS version of Kindle does PDFs pretty well - not so on Android?

I don't use it much, as I typically use Goodreader for my PDF browsing and marking-up.

[Tale]

The iOS version of Kindle does PDFs pretty well - not so on Android?

I don't use it much, as I typically use Goodreader for my PDF browsing and marking-up.

I use Kindle app for PDFs on Android (Galaxy S II) and it's great.

[JWIV]

RepliGo PDF Reader doesn't offend me too terribly for basic PDF reading, but could use some love for larger magazine style PDF's.

[Soln]

Does anyone have a way to turn off the auto-correct on the Kindle 2?  I know you could through settings in the Kindle 1 but I can't find out what to do on the 2.  It's incredibly annoying.   I stops you from basic web searching and wikipedia.

[Soln]

Words -- they fail me.  Someone page WUA.

Amazon to start publishing Fan Fiction

[HaemishM]

Words -- they fail me.  Someone page WUA.

Amazon to start publishing Fan Fiction

It's even worse than you imagine. The terms of the agreement with the writers are that the owners of the brand (it's a specific CW - the TV network - show marketing imprint I think) own all the rights to anything a writer publishes through there. So if the creators like something you did and bring it from fanfic into the show, not only do they own the rights to it, THEY DON'T HAVE TO PAY YOU. EVER.

Fuck that.

[Baldrake]

It can be no other way, Haemish. Otherwise people could bombard Amazon with every plot idea they can think of, and hamstring the owners of the IP. Fan-fic writers of course should retain their own expression of their ideas, but no owner of the IP could possibly allow them to own the ideas themselves.

And hell, most fan-fic authors would be delighted to see their stuff picked up and moved into canon.

Off to write my story about Spock's lost half-Klingon brother now...

[HaemishM]

Oh I have no problem with the IP holders retaining the rights to the characters. That's not the issue I have. The issue is that the rights holders can exploit that IP for eternity and not have to pay the creators one goddamn cent more even if that new character creates an entirely new franchise.

I smell spinoffs!

[KallDrexx]

Oh I have no problem with the IP holders retaining the rights to the characters. That's not the issue I have. The issue is that the rights holders can exploit that IP for eternity and not have to pay the creators one goddamn cent more even if that new character creates an entirely new franchise.

I smell spinoffs!

Sure, it's bad if they exploit the IP for eternity, but it's also bad if they create a story that is similar to someone's "published" fan-fiction, and that author tries to sue them for basing the exploited IP on their work, whether it's legitimate or not.  No publisher would agree  to allow Amazon to publish fan-fiction in that scenario.

So at least fan-fiction writers do get some royalty money by publishing their work.

[HaemishM]

I realize there are some risks to this sort of venture for the IP holders. That doesn't mean they essentially have to codify such blatant exploitation into the TOS.

[Morat20]

I realize there are some risks to this sort of venture for the IP holders. That doesn't mean they essentially have to codify such blatant exploitation into the TOS.

I think Kall is probably right here. It's not like big named authors and publishers haven't been sued (with and without merit) on "You stole my story/character" grounds before.

Sure, it's over the top. Any copyright holder's is gonna be. And in the end, fanfic writers are playing in someone else's sandbox. If they wanna make money of it, the strings are gonna be a hell of a lot tighter than normal.

[Venkman]

Exactly. This is why there's licensing deals. Normally when an author tires of a series they just let someone else do the writing while retaining the requirement their own name appears on the novel.

Fanfic writers getting exposure at all is actually pretty interesting, and pretty risky on its own merit. Here Amazon is giving the opportunity for independents to build out their own portfolio of recognizable works and have some exposure.

It all works in Amazon's favor of course (which is the point of it all).

Edit: I actually meant to ask this question first and then rant

I honestly just gave up. I run everything through Calibre and the plugins just strip it all. Among other things, the number of books I've found that have problems with the PaperWhite are pretty surprising. They really need to figure that out.

The PW is my first Kindle. I always read on my iPad 1 and then Retina, and that's fine except for battery life. So I picked up the PW and the thing lasts like a month easy, and I barely use the backlight. I mostly just wanted the touchscreen because I am always looking stuff up in books. I am a sporadic reader with a bad memory for characters and locations.

I've found some books are more poorly edited than others. But is that because of the PW or do the edit issues appear on all Kindle devices? I find the sync thing really annoying, but I stopped reading on my iPhone or iPads anyway after I got this thing.

[Numtini]

Oh yeah the PaperWhite bug. The deal is that the PW lets you select font and size, but it also uses the new KF8 format that lets formatters do all sorts of neat stuff, including forcing a particular font or size on people. It's intended for things like if there's an email in the text, you can force it to be a sans serif font so it stands out. Unfortunately, all sorts of old books had extra code in them that kindles up to the PW weren't bothered by, but drove the PW crazy. The two particulars are that if you defined a font size in points rather than percentage, it ended up tiny. The "base" normal size font is defined in the PW as about 60 points. Also, if the formatter tried to force a font into a file that the PW didn't have built in, it reverted that text to Helvetica.

A huge number of books, particularly indies, but also books from big five publishers were little more than HTML dumps out of word and defined the font as Times or Calibri 12 point. Times/Calibri don't exist on the PW and 12 points is rendered tiny, so the actual rendering was like 6 point Helvetica. I think most publishers have caught up, but it took Amazon months to fix their own conversion programs.

I think the fanfic thing is going to be a train wreck. The deal sucks, but I think what will kill it is book royalties aren't treated as employee income in tax terms. They're payments to an independent contractor. I suspect the shit will hit the fan when these teenagers are uploading stuff and their parents get 1099s and have to file self-employment tax and all that stuff.