Tools of Change for Publishing: Search Results

Over 160 O'Reilly Books Now in Kindle Store (without DRM), More on the Way

Andrew Savikas
April 17, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (24) | Listen

I'm happy to announce that more than 160 O'Reilly books are now available on Kindle (both Kindle 1 and Kindle 2), and are being sold without any DRM (Digital Rights Management). Though we do offer more than 400 ebooks direct from our website, the number for sale on Kindle will be limited until Amazon updates Kindle 1 to support table rendering ("maybe this summer" is the most specific they would get). The text-to-speech feature of Kindle 2 does work with these books. A list of currently available titles is below.

There's a lot of overlap between the kind of early-adopter crowd likely to buy a Kindle and the audience for our books. So it's no surprise that we received a lot of requests to add O'Reilly books to the Kindle store, and it's great to finally be able to get those readers the books they want. We expect to add another 100 or so titles in the coming weeks; those have needed a more detailed analysis of the table content to identify good candidates.

There were two main reasons we held our books back from sale on Kindle:

Poor rendering of complex content. Kindle 1 was optimized for the simple text of mainstream trade books (think airport-bookstore fiction and non-fiction), and lacked support for properly displaying tables or computer code, two very common elements in O'Reilly books. We knew customers would be disappointed to find much of the content of our books unusable (and likely to complain to us about it, rather than to Amazon). In this case, Amazon actually agreed with us, and after they saw how those tables looked on a Kindle 1, told us they weren't comfortable selling many of our books until they've updated Kindle 1. (More details below the fold).
Compulsory DRM. We strongly believe DRM (Digital Rights Management) encryption adds unwelcome cost and complexity to any digital system, frustrates legitimate customers who respect copyright and want to pay for their content, and is demonstrably ineffective at preventing unauthorized copying -- much of it done by people who either (a.) wouldn't otherwise pay, or (b.) resort to piracy when there's no legitimate sales channel. Other publishers are free to make their own decisions on DRM, but Kindle's compulsory DRM was inconsistent with our views on digital distribution.

Although we've been working for some time with Amazon to resolve these issues, as a stop-gap we'd been directing Kindle owners to oreilly.com, where all of our "ebook bundles" include a Kindle-compatible .mobi version that can be uploaded or emailed to your Kindle. While the table and code issues remained, readers at least had the other, richer formats (EPUB and PDF) for reference. We've now updated all of the .mobi files for sale at oreilly.com to display properly on Kindle 2 (basically undoing many of the hacks we'd done to get something passable the first time around). If you own a Kindle and have purchased ebooks from oreilly.com, visit oreilly.com/e from the Kindle browser to download the updated .mobi files directly to your Kindle. While we will also update our ebooks with Amazon as changes are made and errors fixed, they currently have no way of updating that content for customers who already purchased it.

While the rendering in Kindle 2 still leaves a bit to be desired, we felt it was an acceptable baseline, and look forward to continuing to work with them to improve the display of technical content on Kindle. (Ironically, the Kindle 2 web browser displays complex content like tables and code quite well -- check out the Bookworm mobile version if you have a Kindle.)

Our thanks do go to Amazon for working with us on this. They're a favorite target of criticism (often right here, and often for good reason), but this is a good step and they do deserve some kudos. While we'd prefer that Amazon directly supported the open EPUB standard, this is real progress in giving readers easy access to digital books without locking them in to a single vendor.

If you want to tell Amazon to hurry up and update your Kindle 1, or to improve their rendering of technical content to match Sony Reader, Stanza, Bookworm, Calibre, and others, you can drop them a line at kindle-feedback@amazon.com.

Current Available Titles

(As of April 16, 2009)

The Tables problem

Here's some screenshots showing the table problem:

How Kindle 1 (mis)handles tables:

The same table on Kindle 2:

Amazon Dropping Non-Amazon Ebook Formats (Sort of)

Andrew Savikas
January 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (12) | Listen

Via Publishers Weekly, Amazon announced Monday it will stop offering ebooks in formats other than Kindle and Mobipocket:

In the future, the online retailer says it plans to offer only e-books in the Kindle format (for wireless download to its Kindle reading device) and the Mobipocket format, both of which are owned by Amazon.

A contact at Amazon has clarified that apparently this change only applies to the Kindle:

This does not apply to eDocs because they are not DRM-protected. This only applies to DRM-protected eBooks.

A follow-up question about Kindle support of EPUB resulted in a polite but firm redirect to "the Kindle team."

I know Amazon is a big company, and I know all too well how difficult intra-office communication can be even at a much smaller company like O'Reilly, but with Amazon in particular it's really easy to get the sense that the left hand has very little idea what the right hand is doing (or perhaps "third left tentacle doesn't know what the right tentacle is doing" is more appropriate).

Tags: amazon drm ebooks edocs epub formats kindle mobi pdf

Format Comparison: PDF, EPUB, and Mobi Downloads from Ebook Bundles

Andrew Savikas
January 12, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (5) | Listen

We've been selling PDFs of our books on oreilly.com for several years, but this summer began selling "ebook bundles" of many titles, which include PDF, EPUB, and Mobipocket versions. Here's some weekly data (I can't share the vertical scale) on the relative breakdown of actual downloads from those bundles (PDF, Mobi, and EPUB are Light, Medium, and Dark respectively). PDF is still the format of choice for most people, though EPUB is getting respectable usage, with Mobi in third:

Click to enlarge

The numbers at the bottom are weeks (200901 is the first week of 2009). This is only among titles offered in all three formats -- the majority of our ebooks are currently still only available as PDF, though we expect to release several hundred more in bundle form over the next few months (not that you should wait to buy of course -- you'll get all the formats as they come available ...).

An important point to note, via Allen Noren, our VP who runs oreilly.com, is that a substantial portion of our electronic sales come from overseas, where getting a print version is often difficult or cost-prohibitive:

I know you've heard me say it before, but we became an international publisher, in a way we were not previously, when we started selling books in digital format. We're in a unique position vs most publishers, who only have US or NA rights, but it's worth nothing.

Duly noted.

Tags: ebook formats ebooks epub formats mobi pdf sales

First Frontlist O'Reilly Ebook Bundle (Including EPUB) Now Available

Andrew Savikas
October 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4) | Listen

With today's release of iPod: The Missing Manual, Seventh Edition, by J.D. Biersdorfer and David Pogue, we're beginning the release of nearly all new (frontlist) titles as ebook bundles. SharePoint for Project Management, by Dux Raymond Sy, will be available tomorrow, and Web Security Testing Cookbook, by Paco Hope and Ben Walther, will be available next Tuesday (Oct. 14)

As with our pilot program, each bundle will include Web-optimized PDF, EPUB (for your Sony Reader or iPhone), and .mobi (for your Kindle) files. These ebook bundles will generally be available up to two weeks before the printed book is on store shelves (most of our books are also available on Safari Books Online before they're in stores).

As always, these files are DRM-free, and customers receive free updates to reflect any published changes in the book (more info on the bundles here). There are several other ebook projects and experiments in the works that I can't talk about just yet, but stay tuned between now and February's TOC Conference for updates (I can say that we'll be rolling out bundles for most of our backlist titles during that time frame).

Tags: ebook bundles ebooks epub frontlist mobi oreilly oreilly ebooks pdf

Digging Around Amazon's Topaz File Format

Mac Slocum
September 4, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Late Night Code is popping the hood on Topaz, that mysterious "other" file format used on the Kindle:

Mobipocket files purchased from Amazon have an AZW extension (which presumably stands for Amazon Whispernet - the name of the Kindle wireless download service). Mobipocket files from other sources will have a MOBI or PRC extension. Topaz files will have an AZW1 extension if downloaded directly to the Kindle, and a TPZ extension if downloaded from Your Media Library on Amazon.com.

Tags: amazon azw ebook formats ebooks kindle mobi topaz

How to Read any Type of Document on the Kindle (Almost)

Liza Daly
August 26, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (7) | Listen

There are a few options for readers who want to convert PDFs or other non-supported files to the Kindle's AZW format. Amazon's recommended method is to email the file to your personal Kindle email address. It's also possible for users to convert PDFs and other document types themselves using Mobipocket Creator or Stanza.

All of the above methods have the same flaw: AZW does not support the kind of advanced layout available in formats like PDF, and non-Latin fonts aren't easy to convert. What if you need to review a complex legal form, or read a graphic novel, or one in Chinese? A hidden feature can help.

The Kindle has an undocumented picture-viewing mode that was first uncovered by Igor Skochinsky. Although the black and white E Ink screen is not especially good at displaying actual photographs, it is quite good at rendering line art and text.

Here's how to do it, using PDF as an example. Note that unofficial features may be buggy and could damage your Kindle; proceed at your own risk.

Convert the PDF to a series of images. Commercial versions of Acrobat should be able to do this in batch, but users of free readers may have to convert a page at a time. The Kindle can read JPEG, PNG and GIF; the latter two will work best. Because the picture-viewing application doesn't support a table of contents, you'll need to name the image files in ascending alphabetical or numeric order (e.g. "0001.jpg," "0002.jpg," etc.) For best results, resize the image to 600 x 800, the resolution of the Kindle screen.
Connect the Kindle to your computer using the USB cable. Once connected, browse to the Kindle's drive. If you have an SD card installed that will appear on your computer as well. The following procedure works on either the Kindle or the SD card. I prefer to do everything on the SD card -- it feels safer.
Create a folder called "pictures," and a folder inside of that with the name of your "document." Put the images in the document folder. Disconnect the Kindle from the PC. When you go to the Kindle's home screen, nothing will have changed. This is where the secret feature comes in:
Press Alt-Z from the home screen. Your book title should appear in the list.
Click on the book title. It will open the first image. Use the normal Kindle next/previous buttons to page through the "book." The picture viewer has menu options of its own to control the size of the image and how it's rendered.

Credit: octopus pie

Of course because the "PDF" is really an image it's not possible to search the document or rescale the fonts. Text-heavy PDFs should be converted in one of the recommended ways.

This same technique can be used to load image-based documents directly, such as comics. (Peeking inside the "pictures" folder after it's been read by the Kindle reveals a file with the extension manga, suggesting that the picture viewer was intended to be used for this purpose).

It's also possible to convert documents in Russian, Chinese or other non-Latin scripts this way. The Kindle does have support for embedded non-Latin fonts as part of its "Topaz" file format, but there are no tools for end-users that output Topaz.

(Screenshots courtesy the undocumented Alt-Shift-G feature, which saves to the root of the SD card.)

Tags: amazon comics ebook readers ebooks kindle manga mobi pdf

Tech Publisher Asks "Are Ebooks Ready for Technical Content?"

Andrew Savikas
July 29, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (4) | Listen

Dave Thomas from the Pragmatic Programmers is mulling whether to make their books available on the Kindle, and encountering many of the same issues we faced here at O'Reilly regarding technical content and the limitations of current ebook devices:

In fact, we've had a prototype form of that capability for a while now, but we've always held back. Frankly, we didn't think the devices worked well with our kind of content. Basically, the .mobi format used by the Kindle is optimized for books that contain just galleys of text with the occasional heading. Throw in tables, monospaced code listings, sidebars and the like, and things start to get messy.

Dave's post has sparked a great conversation within the comments, including one from Shelly Powers, whose book Painting the Web was among those included in our pilot program:

I think that providing the package deal that O'Reilly does (with PDF, epub, and mobi), in addition to downloadable code is the way to go. If you sell Kindle books, you definitely need to make both your figures and your source available, separately. For instance, I have my Painting the Web figures in an online gallery and the examples are available at O'Reilly--takes care of a lot of issues related to Kindle. Another approach could be to make available (for no additional cost) a PDF of just the figures, or the figures and code.

Preparing a book for the ebook market may seem like a lot of work, but you have the potential to reach a new audience of book buyers. Buyers used to the internet and having access to immediate information; who may not want to order a book and wait a week for it to arrive, but who will buy a book if it means they can have access to it now. I wouldn't have considered myself an "impulse buyer" when it comes to books, but I have probably at least a dozen books I bought because the ebook format was cheaper (that's a key element), and I could get the book _right now_.

On one hand, merely working to replicate a print experience isn't the right way to exploit the benefits of the new platform; on the other hand, publishers (and as usual, I use that term quite loosely) should be able to expect at least minimal rendering of common elements like tables, along with support for at least the same core 14 fonts available in Acrobat (speaking of fonts, if you're looking for a laugh check out this mock "font conference").

Tags: ebook formatting ebook readers ebooks epub kindle mobi pdf sony reader

	TOC RSS Feeds News Posts Commentary Posts Combined Feed New to RSS?
	Subscribe to the TOC newsletter.
	Follow TOC on Twitter.
	Join the TOC Facebook group.
	Join the TOC LinkedIn group.
	Get the TOC Headline Widget.

Entries tagged with “mobi” from Tools of Change for Publishing