Sony ADE Still Doesn’t Justify Text!
In 2009.
Some meh pictures of epub files from me and Hadrien. Sorry for camera quality, my hands were shaking with wrath.
If you haven’t followed my every move on Twitter, I took advantage of the trade-in offer on a Sony Reader mentioned on MobileRead today. Dumped my old, non-working 500, got a Pocket edition–it’s burgundy, like the generic Munsey print covers. No, not a chick color. Shut up, or I’ll prove my manhood by telling you how many phone numbers I got each night when I tended bar in Japan.
Things I like: the device is small… it actually fits in the pockets of all my leather jackets, not just the really big one, so I can take it with me to, say, NY, go drinking in bars, and have the Reader on the subway for treks back home (I will figure out Brooklyn this time.) Self-created .lrf files look better than ever on the newer model E-ink screen. The staffers were quick and friendly at the Sony store… knew what I was asking for and got it quick.
Things I don’t like.
Got a minute?
- Activation: I have to activate the device with Sony, but their page is down. Actually, I have a couple of purchased books that I never got around to reading, some Pelecanos and Walter Moseley, that were left behind when my 500 bit it. Admittedly, by “purchased,” I mean, “used a $50 gift card Sony gave me to get me to sign up for an account,” but, grr. I think I spent $4-5 of my own money for The Night Gardener.
- Epub: I have to activate a second time, with Adobe, to purchase new crap. Two activations. One for the device, one for the assclown third party.
- Library software has actually gotten slower and clunkier. Really tough to figure out tranfers if a file’s missing. Eventually made things work, but would be hard for, my wife, say (given that these things are aiming for the romance market). Since I skipped Adobe activation, was even tougher to use (but still possible.)
- The EPUB files don’t justify. I mean, supposedly everything from Sony is going to go over to Epub mid-December (wasn’t it November before? Of 2008?). So while I could get Daniel Silva’s Allon series for just $1 or so more from the Sony store than Kindle charges me, I’d have to read him restoring artworks and killing Nazis in unjustified format. Screw that, and bite me for even thinking such text-aligns would ever be acceptable at this late date.
I’m glad to know Adobe, having laid off dear leader, will now be putting resources into ADE+InDesign+ContentServer4. I just hope they discover a certain urgency. Because I tend to think they believe manipulating a standards body and putting out a clearly inferior product, albeit with buzzwords, is somehow equivalent to Amazon’s pattern of, you know, execution and, generally speaking, attainment of product goals.*
Sheesh.
*No, not the DX, and, given marketing issues not, apparently, the International Kindle. But this was Kindle’s annus horribilis. One thing after another went wrong for the dominant ebook player. Sony’s big response is… quiet discounting, mixed signals to content partners, and text that still doesn’t justify.
Share ThisTags: Amazon, Devices, DigitalEditions, Ebooks, Kindle, Pocket Editions, Reader, Sony, Urgency
November 16th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Sony is still using a year-old version of mobile Adobe Digital Editions. ADE on all other EInk devices (Hanlin, Bookeen, presumably the Nook, etcetera) does support left and full justification, with full being the default.
November 16th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
I know Bookeen “announced” a firmware upgrade that would support ADE and Epub, but nobody’s actually seen it yet, let alone determined if it would support justified text…
November 16th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
I agree that the lack of an upgrade for the Gen3 is a scandal, but ADE is already on the Bookeen Opus.
November 20th, 2009 at 10:23 am
“I know Bookeen “announced” a firmware upgrade that would support ADE and Epub, but nobody’s actually seen it yet, let alone determined if it would support justified text…”
There is a Gen3 currently sold in Germany featuring the ADE-engine, as well (sold by Weltbild.de) It seems to work quite nicely indeed. As far as i am informed, the problem lies with the flashing of the firmware right now. According to our (MRs) latest infos, Bookeen will “update” your Gen3 if you send it in (postage paid)
All the other Reader brands having ePub-DRM except Sony support justification right now as does the ADE desktop app!
November 20th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
OK, here’s the problem. Speaking from personal experience.
I’ve got around 40% of Olympia’s list in the Kindle store. Many of the titles I do have there, don’t yet have print counterparts. For various reasons, mostly related to negotiations (during which I’d love to mention actual market “successes” of an Amazon competitor, repeatedly), I’ve in fact got more printed Olympia books sold through Amazon (not counting the Black Mask or Munsey’s imprints, where I don’t seriously try to sell digital versions. Silk’s… OK, but hasn’t grown much.)
At any given moment, I’ll have at least 10 of the top 100-selling smutty books, usually more like 15, and generally five in the top 25. (Varies according to time of day and whether or not it’s a payday Friday. If it’s a payday Fri., Siren or Cleis’ll sell more. Otherwise, often as not c’est moi, and this without much of my best pr0n.)
http://u.nu/2jpv3
My sales through the Kindle store have been growing 25% a month, doubling every three months. There are even some originals in the top 100 now. Based on just those stats (and excluding direct, ahem), I am currently outselling the entire German ebook market. Further, my Kindle sales already eclipse my sales through LSI (apart for those months when Silk does an insane amount of short-discounted, non-returnable hardcovers. So, except for August, Sept. Dec., maybe Jan., I already do more from Kindle than I do from LSI, despite having more books in LSI.)
If Kindle keeps growing at its current pace, my sales through it will eclipse ALL my print sales, through three distributors, by March, June at the latest. Already, apart from the cool covers Goodloe makes for me, which just need to be bound up anyway, my primary concern when printing books is: will it help my Kindle sales?
I’m not entirely alone in this, though the market for smut went digital faster, and it doesn’t necessarily cost me much to print books anymore. I’m sure there are a couple dozen indie U.S. publishers doing greater ebook volumes. In fact, self-reported ebook sales from the big guys (Random House, S&S) are up more than mine are.
So it’s nice, you know, that certain devices, which maybe have sold 50k units since launch, can support Adobe ebook software, finally justify text as God intended, and allow the reader to potentially purchase 10-12k books (soon to be 50k! Any minute now!!!!) But… Sony’s the only Reader other than Kindle to have sold at least 300k units. And it still doesn’t justify. (And the PC-ebook market is a tiny one.)
I’ll be the first to concede that Amazon has not executed well on the International Kindle. But it’s quite possible they’re rapidly building up an unassailable position there as well.
You can’t tell me spending all this time on an “open format” (with mandatory 3rd-party DRM) was anything more than a waste of time, at a very key moment when the opposition was still vulnerable, a mistake that’ll cost authors and readers huge.
/Cool Goodloe covers:
http://u.nu/8a7×3
http://u.nu/2b7×3
http://u.nu/3b7×3
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:19 am
If someone works out how to circumvent the DRM on Kindle for PC it is probably “game over” for everyone else. The ePub format is nicer than MOBI (AZW) if publishers put in extra effort, but all those Adobe Digital Editions devices will be reading format shifted AZWs given half a chance.
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:39 am
Kindle’s DRM was already hacked, I believe. MR did a story about it, and then Amazon made them take it down.
http://u.nu/6azx3
Amazon may have improved the DRM software since then, I haven’t followed, but it’s not likely a major technical hurdle.
/That’s regular Kindle/MobiDRM, not Topaz…
November 23rd, 2009 at 6:07 pm
The Kindle’s AZW DRM is circumventable, provided you have the PID of the device. This is trivial to obtain for a Kindle 1/2/DX and for the iPhone. Kindle for PC has been out for a week, and so far its PID is still a mystery.
It is illegal (go to jail illegal) in the US, and in some other countries, to work on finding the K4PCs PID scheme, but even so there probably are people working on cracking it.
November 23rd, 2009 at 7:51 pm
There’s an exemption to the DMCA regarding circumvention of ebook protection in the U.S.–it’s extremely limited, ebook has to be one with text-to-speech disabled, completely incompatible with screen readers, and no print copies to be found in a library (or bookstore), anywhere. But to just work on developing the software–on the premise that there might be some book, somewhere, only available in the Kindle store, with TTS disabled–is sufficient if you wanted to develop a hacking tool for non-commercial use.
The Librarian of Congress actually approved the DMCA exemptions, even though the people seeking it didn’t follow proper procedure (ebook hacking shouldn’t have been considered for exemption under the published criteria as they missed things like “Must Be Received By” and “include multiple citations of the problems”), because she, like the rest of us, was so damned annoyed at Adobe’s “This Ebook Cannot Be Read Aloud” crap as applied to Alice in Wonderland.
*That’s how I heard the DMCA exemptions explained, from an attorney. Developing a tool and releasing it for free is fine, possessing it is probably OK, actually ever using it is another issue.
**If it matters, I could probably come up with a likely candidate for those (actual use) criteria. Olympia had a sister branch, Editions Merlin, the imprint under which Nabokov was originally published. Some of the other Merlins had single print runs of less than 200 copies. In several cases, I have one of those copies. I usually sell direct, DRM-free, with Kindle store second, but maybe I could get together with a hacker, offer an exclusively locked-down book, and he could snag it ‘cuz the entire universe demands early Christopher Logue poetry, and hack the work right in front of the FBI’s anti-piracy Swat Team. Wouldn’t be a thing they could do.