Books Versus Tech

The horrors of Kindle Format X

The problem with Amazon’s Kindle platform has always been that it has been designed and maintained by people who, quite evidently, do not understand books. The device and its firmware has been designed by Lab126, a company that specializes in handheld devices, and the name, Lab126, could not be more fitting, because everything about the Kindle has felt like something put together by lab rats, from day one; people with no sense of the real-world application of their devices. I would not be surprised to hear that the engineers at Lab123 have never really read a book on a Kindle or tried to format one, for that matter.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

What’s even worse: Most readers don’t understand books.

They might notice it doesn’t look exactly like a “real” book and that some weird things happen with sub- or super- scripts or fractions, but otherwise they live with it for the sake of both convenience and because they’ve already sunk money into a damn device (be it a Kindle or iPad or anything else that will run the Kindle app).

I still think Microsoft’s LIT format was beautiful.

Although, these days, eBooks look best from the iBookstore on an iPad. Although that contains horrors of its own too.

eBook Device Sales Drop In No Surprise

Waterstones is removing Kindles from stores

Waterstones is removing Amazon’s Kindle devices from many of it stores as sales “continue to be pitiful”.

Why is this any surprise?!

People have large phones to read on.

And better tablets.

When — and if — they read at all something other than narcissistic IMing.

Leak: Ten-Inch Kindle Fire Tablet

Hot off Twitter moments ago:

Not interested. Next!

Additional:

Amazon Underground, The Revamped Appstore That Offers Paid Apps And Features For Free, Will Be Supported By Ads That Play When You Open Up Apps

Let’s Compare iPad Mini 4 And Clones Weights

Same-day revised

Samsung wins for the lightest tablet.

As for the iPad Mini 4 gram weight being higher than the Asus ZenPad S 8.0 “Pro,” chalk that up to Google conversion math. Apple lists 0.65 pounds, not ounces or grams, on their U.S. site.

That said, the iPad Mini 4 probably kicks the Samsung’s ass because it has the guts of the iPad Air 2, which is a supernaturally-powerful beast from the pit.

Same-day update: It turns out the new Mini 4 does not have the guts of the iPad Air 2. It’ll use the A8 CPU, not the A8x CPU of the Air 2. Which means I’ll have to go through an entire new round of Google Books PDF tests on the beast. Thanks for not making my life easier, Apple!

Previously here:

Let’s Compare iPad Mini And Clones Weights

Let’s Compare iPad Mini And Clones Weights

Picard with orange PADD [Source]

In my time holding the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 Nook Edition at Barnes & Noble, I realized that I’d be holding one of these tablets for a lonnnng time while reading.

So I thought I’d investigate weight.

Amazon Tweaking Its Design?

Two related searches, just moments apart, yield different Amazon page designs.

Click = big

Amazon Just Wants To Bleed Money

Amazon announces plans to make movies for theaters, Prime streaming

And Amazon’s not exactly starting small; it plans to produce up to 12 movies each year as part of the new initiative, and those efforts will kick off in earnest later this year.

Bezos must be drunk.

Lew Grade — a several-decade entertainment veteran who gave the world an entire roster of immortal TV programs — let his ego run away and he got into movies.

It was a disaster that basically ended his career.

Wannabe Neverbe “Writers” Whine Against Amazon

Amazon Offers All-You-Can-Eat Books. Authors Turn Up Noses.

Let me fix the headline: Shitheads Who Have No Business Writing Whine Their Free Ride Is Ending

On Twitter, I railed against that article.

I’m publishing those tweets here. Because fuck you.

Amazon: “We Win, You Lose.”

Escape from Stalag $7: Why Amazon’s Pricing Box Is Bad for Indies

But after all the fireworks and fun, the one thing I never ever received from AAAG were coherent answers to my questions, particularly the most important one of all. And that is: Why has Amazon placed indies in a $7 dollar pricing box? Why does it grab 65% of your revenue (not counting its transmission fees, which it charges on every transfer and which vary based on book size) if you price under $2.99 and the same if you charge over $9.99? This is an issue of critical importance to indies because it is not financially feasible to hand over that level of margin to a reseller for a download service. (And if you think Amazon is paying you a “royalty” when you fork over that 65% operating expense, please stop reading now. You are incurably ignorant and I cannot help you.)

Generally I tend to stay the fuck away from publishing these days. Why continue to bang my head against a wall?

But sometimes a post rises to the level of requiring reading by others.

The above is such a post.

Amazon isn’t concerned about how many books it sells as being good for writers. It wants to sell as many books as possible because it’s good for Amazon.

If Amazon could sell fifty-seven billion books yet have each writer make only a dollar in a year, that’d suit Amazon just fine.

And while I focus on Amazon here — because the originating post is about it — this holds true for all companies that have managed to create a stranglehold in any area.

Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation.

This is just nuts. Amazon loves books? Do they know how to read any?

Graeme Reynolds's Blog

This is a really strange blog post to have to write, simply because the situation is absurd. It would be comedic, really, if the situation was not costing me money and resulted in one of my best-selling books being unavailable in the run up to the busiest time of the year.

Let me tell you a little story.

I was sitting in front of my computer on Friday night, as is often the case, talking to friends on Facebook, randomly browsing things that seemed interesting and, in this particular case, attending the launch party for Chantal Noordeloos’s latest Coyote book, when I had an email notification arrive in my inbox from Kindle Direct Publishing.

The email was titled rather ominously as
Kindle Quality Notice: High Moor 2: Moonstruck – B00BVC7MKW

Now – Moonstruck has been out for around 18 months now. It’s done well for itself and, at the time…

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