Hacker News Reader

Comment by deanebarker | Hacker News Reader

The problem is not the ebook reader. The problem is trying to buy a commercial ebook from anywhere other than Amazon, and having to use someone's stupid DRM scheme. I tried once to not buy a Kindle book, and I just had to end up installing someone's other app just to decrypt the book so I could read it.

You can make all the ebook readers you want. Until we find an easier way to make non-Amazon ebooks easier to read, these aren't going to catch on.

View on HN

I buy from Google, no DRM, plain epub. Big selection.

I buy from Kobo, no DRM, plain epub. Big selection.

I buy from a bunch of authors' own websites or small publishing platforms (like bookviewcafe.com) because an even higher percentage of the price goes to the author, and nobody ever pays to put DRM on their own book.

Is there any good third-party non-google/amazon reading apps for iPhone/iPad that will sync my places where I'm at in my books?

I'm not sure about Kobo but I think no DRM is not guaranteed on Google. For certain authors (e.g. John Scalzi) their books on Google will have the small part in description says "At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied." (e.g. https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=XVwOEeHTU4QC) but my understanding is without that statement the book will be with DRM.

Many books on Kobo also have DRM unfortunately.

You know Kindle books have DRM too, right? So you need an app that supports that DRM in order to read them (the mobi format doesn't have to have DRM, much like epub).

So this is mostly in people's head, because when they have to get something that supports Adobe Digital Editions they're thinking that they're being put out "because DRM", whereas when they have to get something from Amazon to read a Kindle book they're thinking "because Kindle", which is just giving Amazon a pass for no good reason.

To be clear I'm against all DRM, I just want the comparison to be correct.

I recently ran into this issue with ebooks.com [0] which is the only way outside of Amazon Kindle to get Jan Axelson's USB Complete and Serial Port Complete references.

The only choices are proprietary Kindle format or PDF and EPUB with a very restrictive Adobe DRM scheme.

[0]: https://www.ebooks.com/SearchApp/SearchResults.net?term=jan+...

I think this is an area the government should step in and force interoperability with ebooks and ebook readers. Nobody should ever be locked out of a book they purchased and lets face it - all of the companies selling DRM protected books will go out of business one day.

Calibre with Apprentice Alf does a great, seamless job of DRM removal. Works for everything except iBooks, I think.

I was under the impression that Amazon drm v3 wasn't cracked?

It's not, but there is no urgency to it either. You can still download the old format from the Amazon (if you choose the "transfer via USB" option) or by using an older version of the Kindle app.

How is Amazon's drm scheme any easier to deal with? Do you mean in order to read on a kindle device?

in Poland every ebook i DRM free distributed in epub and mobi formats.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com