Nate Hoffelder

Have you been interested in the alternate Android and Linux tablet firmwares for Kobo’s ebook readers, but not enough to completely replace the existing firmware?  Then I have some good news for you.

There’s a new hack over on MobileRead Forums that lets users install Android on the external microSD card, saving them the effort (and risk) of cracking open the ereader and removing the internal microSD card.

I haven’t had a chance to try it myself, but I’ve been following the topic on MobileRead ever since the first proof of concept photos were posted in early November. That work was based on porting the firmware originally developed for the Tolino Shine and adapting it so it could run on kobo’s hardware, and for the past few months hackers have been working to make the alternate firmware run better and easier to install.

The Tolino Shine runs Android 2.3, so if you try this on your Kobo device you won’t exactly be getting a new version of Android. Android 2.3 Gingerbread is close to 3 years old and lacks many of the refinements of later versions of Android, but on the plus side this firmware was adapted to run on E-ink screens, so what it lacks in modern features it makes up for in screen optimization (or so it appears based on user reports on MobileRead).

This new trick has been shown to work on the Kobo Aura HD, Glo, and Touch, but not the Kobo Aura (no files have been posted for that model). That latter ereader doesn’t have an internal microSD card slot, so the earlier hack didn’t work on it either.

Directions on how to setup the dual-boot card can be found over on Angor’s blog, along with the download files. He’s posted files for the Aura HD, Glo, and Touch, as well as instructions on how to set up and install the Android firmware image.

Check out MobileRead for tech support and more details.

MobileRead via my competition

Most ebook ereaders sold in the US are not accessible to the visually impaired, and thanks to a recent decision from the FCC things are going to stay that way for at least the next year.

The FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau granted a waiver on 28 January which allows ereader makers to continue to avoid complying with a federal regulation on accessibility.

Back in August 2013, Amazon, Sony, and Kobo filed a petition which asked that their ebook readers be granted an exemption to a new accessibility regulation. They weren’t trying to avoid complying with all regulations, just one which was crafted in 2011. The companies wanted to avoid the requirement that Amazon et al comply with:

Sections 716 and 717 of the Communications Act of 1934, as Enacted by the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010

This particular regulation (parts A and B of a single rule) requires that makers of "advanced communications services" make sure those services are accessible to the disabled. It’s a generally good idea, and the rule was written broadly enough that it covers everything from ISPs to mobile devices like tablets and some ereaders (ones with Wifi or 3G).

Of course, there’s a problem with applying this rule to ebook readers; by the time the regulation was written numerous models available on the US market could not comply. Amazon, Kobo, and B&N all had at least one ebook reader which lacked the sound capability that would clearly be a basic requirement. The basic Kindle, the Kobo Touch, and the Nook Touch were each completely incompatible with the new regulation, putting the device makers in the position of either junking their existing models and investing in new hardware , or requesting an exemption waiver.

Given the cost of compliance, and the limited value it would generate, I can understand why they asked for the waiver. And they succeeded – to a limited to degree. The waiver was carefully written so it only covers mobile devices that meet certain criteria. Tablets are excluded, and so are any devices that don’t meet certain limitations:

• the devices have no LCD screen;
• they have no camera;
• they are not offered or shipped to consumers with built-in email, IM, VoIP or other similar ACS client applications and the device manufacturer does not develop ACS applications for them;
• they are marketed to consumers as reading devices and promotional material about them does not tout the capability to access ACS.

Those restrictions were spelled out in the original request, and the FCC basically gave Amazon et al the exact waiver they asked for.

The FCC shared their reasoning behind this decision. To put it simply, ebook readers might have email and other web functions but they are designed for reading:

After a review of the record, we find that basic e-readers are capable of accessing ACS, are designed for multiple purposes, and that consumers do utilize them for ACS, but, at present, we find that they are designed primarily for the purpose of reading, which makes such devices eligible for waiver under section 716(h)(1)(A) and (B) of the Act and section 14.5(a) of the Commission’s rules. To begin  with, we consider the design of these devices. The current relatively slow refresh screen rates, the absence of apps for integrated e-mail clients,82 the inability of basic e-readers to display video for any purpose, including video conferencing, and the lack of high powered processors on these devices support a finding that these devices at this time are not designed for ACS,

It’s worth noting that this is a limited waiver that only affects a single regulation, and does not exempt ebook readers from all accessibility regulations. (For example, libraries and other public institutions are still going to have to buy devices that are accessible to the disabled.) That’s a nuance many missed when this story broke in August 2013.

This waiver is going to be in effect until 28 January, at which point it will either be extended or allowed to expire. I would bet money on Amazon et al getting an extension; whatever new ebook readers introduced over the next 11 months won’t be terribly different from the models we can buy today, and I don’t see a reason why the exemption wouldn’t be allowed to stand.

image by kodomut

I’m sure you’ve read the news today about Sony and Kobo. The former is bailing on the US ebook market, and as one last kindness to their customers they’ve convinced Kobo to take them in, while the latter is going to gain a few thousand more customers.

This deal is generating a lot of debate and punditry, including a new article over on Forbes. Jeremy Greenfield thinks it would be a good idea for B&N to follow in Sony’s footsteps and simply walk away. While at first I thought it sounded like a horrible idea, it’s actually not all that implausible:

Sony and Kobo are both thought to be very minor players in the U.S. ebook market. I doubt the move will add too many readers to Kobo’s rolls. The company wouldn’t tell me how many accounts are being transferred but in its press release announcing the move, it claimed the same 18 million worldwide users as it has claimed in other recent announcements.

This could be a good model for Nook, which many in the publishing industry expect to be shuttered or sold before the end of 2014. Nook is Barnes & Noble’s device and ebook business and it has been faltering badly for nearly two years. While it still brings in over $100 million in revenue every quarter, it loses much more than that and revenues have been shrinking rather than growing.

That’s a terrible idea and it is also wildly improbable, but as much as I might hate it I am afraid it might actually happen.

And just to be clear, I’m not referring to the possibility that B&N might sell out (I wish); I want to examine the Forbes proposal that B&N might simply walk away.

The thing is, Sony didn’t sell out; they threw in the towel. They bailed on the US ebook market because the revenue probably didn’t meet their expectations, and on their way out the door they asked Kobo take in the soon to be orphan customers (Sony’s last friendly act of customer service).

The US Sony Reader Store isn’t going to be transferred to new ownership; it’s going to be dismantled. I’m sure no one thinks that would be a good solution for B&N’s problems with the Nook, but they could still do it.

All it would take would be for B&N to perform a cold cost benefit analysis and decide that the ongoing hemorrhage of money outweighed the negative publicity. I would have reached that conclusion months ago, so it’s not impossible for B&N to reach the same conclusion in the near future.

And here’s how the result of that analysis might play out.

B&N’s first step would be to fire nearly everyone working at Nook Media. Not counting the people who have left over the past 6 months, that’s somewhere around 600 people, most of whom work in either Palo Alto or NYC. This would take the development teams that B&N spent years and a ton of money putting together and cast them to the wind, completely throwing away all that work, but if B&N is walking away from ebooks I don’t think they would care.

Next, B&N would have to find another company to take over the customer accounts. (Actually, this would come first, but I wanted to be melodramatic about the firings.) This could be Kobo, but Apple and Amazon are out. The latter would never get regulatory approval, while the former wouldn’t deign to support customers that didn’t own Apple hardware. And I doubt Kobo would be able to take over the accounts; I think Amazon would do their best to block regulatory approval for a B&N-Kobo deal.

As a result, that leaves just one company as the most likely candidate to take over the charred remains of the Nook Store: Microsoft. Remember, MS already owns a chuck of Nook Media, and the international Nook Store appears to operate under Microsoft’s auspices (it’s Windows 8 only). And that makes MS the best candidate to keep the Nook customer accounts from going in the shredder.

Update: A reader has pointed out that MS can be multi-platform when it suits them; they already have iOS and Android apps for Xbox Music and other apps. Thanks, Commons!

MS would probably abandon the Android apps, the iPad and iPhone apps, the OSX app, and maybe even the Windows apps, but they would at least keep the Windows 8 app going. And MS would keep many readers from suffering the same fate as Fictionwise’s international customers (left in the cold when B&N shut Fictionwise down).

Sure, almost no one would be able to read their ebooks because they didn’t run Windows 8, but at least their investment wouldn’t be completely gone.

But I’m not sure that would matter much on the larger scheme of things, because if B&N simply abandoned their Nook customers to MS I think most of those customers would flee for a safer harbor.

They would go running to Amazon.

Sure, they would keep reading their existing ebooks (assuming they still had access), but future purchases would be made in the Kindle Store – where it’s safe to assume that the ebooks will not vanish in the night. After all, many people might hate Amazon but who would you trust more, Amazon or MS?

In short, if B&N followed in Sony’s footsteps Amazon would come out a huge winner. And for that reason alone we should all be hoping that B&N doesn’t simply throw in the towel.

What do you think?

There’s been a story building over the past week about self-published ebooks. According to Chuck Wendig, the massive volume of self-published titles has resulted in a "shit volcano" of worthless content. Another blogger picked up the story, and then yesterday Mike Cane jumped in with the prediction that Amazon would eventually take steps to clean up the Kindle Store.

If you have time today you might want to read these posts. But if you don’t have time, don’t worry. This line of reasoning is arguably flawed in that it is focusing the wrong problem, and it is safe to simply ignore it (especially since Chuck Wendig’s post is so long).

• Slushy Glut Slog: Why The Self-Publishing Shit Volcano Is A Problem — which the people who are the problem will never think they’re the problem.

• Why the self-publishing shit volcano isn’t going to stop erupting any time soon — which the people who are the problem will never read to the end because they can’t understand it.
• The Self-Pub “Shit Volcano” Will End – which the people who are the problem get booted from the Kindle Store.

That last link leads to one of Mike Cane’s post which was published yesterday. Mike is usually right about these kind of things, which is why I posted that article last night.

But in this case it’s much more likely that he is wrong. As Mackay Bell pointed out in the comments, this is the new normal:

We heard the exact same arguments about blogging and You Tube. How can Blogger continue to allow anyone to create a site for free? They will have to start charging. Not yet. Same with You Tube. Google can’t possibly continue to allow people to post any video on line, they’ll have to start limiting it. Didn’t happen. (Same arguments about photo sharing sites, as I recall.)

Welcome to the digital age. It costs almost nothing to allow people to post this stuff, and the benefits to the companies that allow it are enormous for the small portion of stuff that turns out to be valuable.

This is true, and the same generalized comment could be made about every platform that is built on user-generated content, including Tumblr, Facebook, WordPress, Flickr, etc.

And now that we have a new perspective on the problem, I have a question for you: Would you describe the many, many Youtube channels with poor quality video as a shit volcano? Would you say that about the many badly written blogs?

What about the many podcasts in iTunes, or the excessive number of duplicate apps in iTunes, Google Play, and elsewhere? Surely those are shit volcanoes which need to be cleaned up, right?

I wouldn’t say so; all that content is merely the dross which I ignore while searching for the good stuff. In fact, I hadn’t even thought of the unwanted content on Youtube, et al until Mackay left that comment, that’s how well I have ignored it. All that excess and possibly bad content isn’t a problem for me, much less one deserving of the title of shit volcano.

And if we don’t call that other user-generated content a shit volcano then is it really correct to apply the term to self-published ebooks?

Again, I would say no.

I think Chuck Wendig’s original argument is flawed. The problem we should be looking at isn’t the volume of content or its quality; the problem is how to sort through the dross and find the good stuff.

The term we’re looking for now is discovery, which basically means connecting readers with their next read, and I’m not convinced discovery is a problem, either.

This whole discussion started with Chuck telling us to go look at 10 ebooks at random in the Kindle Store so we cans see how many are terrible.

Okay, we can do that but does anyone really use that as a way to find new content?

I don’t. Like most other readers I listen to recommendations, check free ebook sites, and read descriptions and reviews in order to tell whether I might like a book. I don’t usually grab ebooks at random in the Kindle Store, so the enormous mass of ebooks don’t bother me at all.

In short, the "self-pub shit volcano" is no more of a problem than my current dilemma of deciding whether I should get my morning sandwich from McDonalds, Panera, or the local coffee shop.

It’s the new normal, so there’s little reason to complain about it.

Good news! Adobe announced late this afternoon that they won’t be breaking a lot of ebook readers in July.

According to the Datalogics blog, Adobe has decided to revise the adoption timeline for their new DRM, and they will no longer be requiring all ebook retailers, app developers, and device makers to upgrade their DRM support by July 2014:

After receiving feedback from customers and webinar attendees, Adobe has revised the migration timetable for customers.  “Adobe does not plan to stop support for ACS 4 or RMSDK 9.  ACS 5 books will be delivered to the older RMSDK 9 based readers”, according to Shameer Ayyappan, Senior Product Manager at Adobe.  “We will let our resellers and publishers decide when they wish to set the DRM flag on ACS 5, thus enforcing the need for RMSDK 10 based readers.”

If you’re just tuning in, news broke yesterday that Adobe was going to require ebook retailers and developers to upgrade to the recently release Adobe Content Server 5 by July 2014. ACS 5 supports a new type of DRM which is not compatible with existing ebook apps and ereaders, thus forcing everyone to upgrade or replace their hardware, or they will lose access to their legally purchased content.

This would have hurt readers, indie ebook retailers, and probably helped Amazon, Google, and Kobo. Yesterday I was the first to report about the many problems this would cause, both to me and to other readers, so I am especially pleased that Adobe changed their mind.

Will readers be willing to subject themselves to ads just to read free ebooks?

Readfy set out to answer that question today. This "Spotify for ebooks" opened to the public today, launching a beta test for their ebook subscription service.

German ebook readers will now have the option of reading ebooks from a catalog of 15,000 titles for free, on the condition that they subject themselves to ads. The ebooks are available via Readfy’s own Android app, and include ads along the lines of:

The ads interrupt the reading experience and are displayed over the text, including both as a footer and centered in the middle of the screen. They also require that readers stay online so the reading app can stay connected with the ad server.

Readfy plans to offer text, image, and video ads which will be sold via an ad network at first; the startup would like to launch their own direct ad sales in the near future. They are also going to release an iOS app later this year, and they are working on plans for paid services that will have fewer ads and, at a premium price of 10 euros per month, be completely ad-free and offer an offline reading mode.

And that’s not all that might be coming. Once Readfy has worked out the bugs they will be doubling the catalog to 30,000 titles, and they already have their sights set on international expansion. In 2015 the service is expected to expand to other European countries and the US. And of course Readfy plans to add English-language and Spanish-language books to their catalog.

Readfy, which is affiliated with the Dusseldorf-based 1stMover startup incubator, was founded about 7 months ago by Felix Bauchspiess, Ryan David Mullins, and Frank Großklaus. It first came to my attention last November, but has been operating in stealth mode both before and since.

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So do you think this service will prove to be popular?

I don’t think so, but then again I dislike ads so much that I have them blocked in my web browser. (Yes, the irony of a blogger subsisting on the ads he hates has not escaped me.) As such I might be an outlier.

But as I noted when I wrote about Readfy in November, this service has to walk a careful tightrope. It has to bring in the right amount of users, advertisers, and content, and failing on any one of those could doom this effort if Readfy isn’t careful.

BuchReport

Update: Adobe has backed down.

When Adobe announced their new DRM a couple weeks ago some said that we would soon see compatibility issues with older devices and apps as Adobe forced everyone to upgrade.

At that time I didn’t think Adobe would make the mistake of cutting off so many existing readers, but now it seems that I could not have been more wrong on the issue.

The following video (found via The SF Reader) confirms that Adobe is planning to require that everyone (ebookstores, app and device makers) to upgrade to the new DRM by July 2014.

http://youtu.be/9qb-sXVlK_o?t=24m47s

The video is a recording of a webinar hosted by Datalogics and Adobe, and it covers in detail aspects of how and when the new DRM will be implemented (as well as a lot of other data). If the embed link doesn’t work for you, here’s a link to the video on Youtube.

The tl;dr version is that Adobe is going to start pushing for ebook vendors to provide support for the new DRM in March, and when July rolls Adobe is going to force the ebook vendors to stop supporting the older DRM. (Hadrien Gardeur, Paul Durrant, and Martyn Daniels concur on this interpretation.)

Update: Adobe has backed down and removed the July deadline.

This means that any app or device which still uses the older Adobe DRM will be cut off. Luckily for many users, that penalty probably will not affect readers who use Kobo or Google reading apps or devices; to the best of my knowledge neither uses the Adobe DRM internally. And of course Kindle and Apple customers won’t even notice, thanks to those companies' wise decision to use their own DRM.

But everyone else just got screwed.

If you’re using Adobe DE 2.1, come July you won’t be able to read any newly downloaded DRMed ebooks until after you upgrade to Adobe DE 3.0. If you’re using a preferred 3rd-party reading app, you won’t be able to download any new DRMed ebooks until after the app developer releases an update.

And if you’re using an existing ebook reader, you’d better plan on only reading DRM-free ebooks until further notice.

One thing Adobe seems to have missed is that there are tens of millions of ebook readers on the market that support the older DRM but will probably never be upgraded to the new DRM. Sony and Pocketbook, for example, have released a number of models over the past 5 or so years, most of which have since been discontinued.

Do you really think they’re going to invest in updating a discontinued (but otherwise perfectly functional) device?

I don’t, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Not only will millions of existing readers be cut off, there are also hundreds of thousands of ebook readers sitting on store shelves which, as of July, will no longer support Adobe DRM.

And do you know what’s even better? All signs point to the ebook reader market having peaked in 2011 or 2012 (I have industry sources which have said this) so the existing and soon to be incompatible ereaders will probably outnumber the compatible models for the indefinite future (years if not decades).

If you look hard enough you can still buy many of the ebook readers released in 2010, 2011, and 2012 as new, and you can also find them as refurbs or used. They work just fine today (albeit a little slowly by today’s standards) but when July rolls around they will be little more than junk.

And that includes ebook readers owned by libraries and other cost conscious institutions.

If you’re beginning to grasp just how bad this move could be, wait a second because I’m not done.

Not only will readers be affected, but so will indie ebookstores. They’re going to have to pay to upgrade their servers and their reading apps. That cost is going to hit them in the pocketbook (potentially driving some out of business), and that’s not all.

Many if not most of the indie ebookstores are dependent on the various Adobe DRM compatible ebook readers on the market. They cannot afford to develop their own hardware so they rely on readers buying and using devices made by other companies including, Pocketbook, Sony, Gajah (a major OEM), and others.

Once those existing ebook readers are abandoned by Adobe the indie ebookstores will probably lose customers to one or another of the major ebook vendors.

In other words Adobe just gave Amazon a belated Christmas present. After all, everyone might hate Amazon but we also know we can trust them to not break their DRM.

Folks, the above scenario spells out all the reasons why I didn’t expect Adobe to completely abandon support for the older DRM. It is so obviously a bad idea that I thought they would avoid it.

With that in mind, I would also like to add an addendum and apply Tyrion’s Razor. Perhaps Adobe has internal data which says that this won’t be a serious issue.  I seriously doubt it, but it’s possible.

P.S. But if this turns out to be the utter disaster I am expecting, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Adobe for on yet another occasion giving DRM a bad name.

One of the great things about Android is that it is almost infinitely customizable. If you don’t like how something looks, you can search Google Play for a replacement.

Don’t like a widget? There’s a dozen alternatives. Don’t like the home screen on your tablet? There are a hundred alternatives to choose from!

I was reminded of the many options today when I set out to find a new home screen app for my Hisense Sero 7 Pro. I was looking for a home screen that behaved and looked like the home screen on the Kobo Arc 7 (or possibly the home screen on the Kindle Fire HD).

In short, I was looking for a home screen which would put my ebook library front and center. I didn’t finds that home screen (not yet), but while I was exploring I found a few fun alternatives that I thought would be fun to share.

Sidenote: Scroll down to the end of the post for a few tips on how to install these apps and how to switch between them.

Espier Launcher

First up is the Espier Launcher. This is an iPhone inspired home screen app which looked pretty good on my tablet:

This launcher replaces the app drawer with the infinitely long chain of iOS home pages, and uses icons that look a lot like Apples. It offers quite a few customization options, including some that require a paid upgrade. It’s available in Google Play as Espier Launcher and Espier HD (for larger screens).

Best iPhone Launcher

Next is the Best iPhone Launcher. Yes, this app is basically the same as Espier, but it looks different and it manages to replace the notification bar across the top of the screen with one that looks like it was copied from Apple (it doesn’t, however, replace the existing icons). Also, I preferred it over the Espier Launcher, which was a good enough reason to include it.

This home screen doesn’t work so well on a high resolution tablet, but it should work okay on a smaller screen. You can find it in Google Play.

Paper Go Launcher Ex Theme

This next home screen app makes your app icons look like they were drawn free hand on a piece of brown paper. It appears to have been designed for a smaller screen, so I wouldn’t try it on a tablet.

You can find this app in Google Play. It is actually a theme for Go Launcher, so you will need to install both.

Launcher 8

If iOS isn’t your thing then how about Windows Phone? Launcher 8 offers a stomach-turning Metro-style replacement home screen that will convince the uninformed (me, for example) that we’re looking at a device running one of Microsoft’s OSes.

This is a terribly confusing home screen app which I assume is behaving just like you would expect a Windows Phone to behave (even the lock screen behaves differently). The tiles are customizable, and the home screen scrolls vertically to show more rows of tiles.

Y0u can find this app in Google Play. And if this launcher doesn’t suit you, check out Windows 8 launcher. That second launcher would have been my first choice (it looks nicer) but it’s not compatible with my Hisense Sero 7 Pro.

Atom Launcher

And if yu’re looking for a theme out of left field, try Atom Launcher. It’s a minimal;ist typographic theme which looks and acts like nothing I’ve seen before on an Android tablet.

You can find the Atom Launcher in Google Play. If you want a suggestion, I would combine it with the Typo White theme. It replaces the more common icons with words (Chrome, music, browser, etc). It’s visually eye catching, though I’m not sure I would want to use it for long.

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Of the 5 launchers mentioned above, i think I like the Espier the best. I’m not an Apple fanboi, but I like the number of customization options and the generally clean appearance.

Which launcher did you like?

Can you suggest one to add to this post? (Any launcher that will make my Android tablet look like it’s running a different OS would be great.)

P.S. Installing these alternate home screens is simple.  Just look for them in Google Play and click the install button. If you cannot find an app in Google Play on your device, chances are your device isn’t compatible.

P.P.S. Make a note of the home screens you install; you can remove them by going to the apps menu under the settings menu and then selecting the app and choosing the uninstall option.

P.P.P.S. If you want to switch between the home screens on your device, press the home button. Once you find a home screen which you want to use all the time, press the home button, check the box, and then click okay. it will lock in one home screen as default.

Epub advocates like to pretend that it’s an industry standard format, but that’s not completely true.

Kobo (to name one example) adds their own nonstandard components to the files they sell, Apple prefers their own bastardized form of Epub3 ( iBooks) and uses a proprietary DRM, and then there’s the fact that no vendor actually supports the complete Epub3 spec.

And now it seems we can add Google to the mix. A reader has tipped me to the news that Google Play Books doesn’t actually display Epub. Sure, Google will let users upload Epub files, and they maintain a pretense of selling Epub, but their reading apps apparently Do Not Display Epub files when you are reading an ebook.

I learned of this oddity from Ben Hollingum, an ebook developer based in London. He detailed the quirk on his blog a couple days ago:

Most e-readers ruin your books by not recognising certain CSS declarations, overriding them with their own defaults, or by implementing your CSS in a freakishly non-standard way – not so Google Play Books. The part of Google Play Books that handles CSS stylesheets – presumably forked from the Chrome browser – seems to be excellent, it can understand complex pseudo-class selectors and parse combinations of pseudo-class and pseudo-element selectors with ease. The problem comes from the way that it handles the HTML framework onto which that CSS is applied.

This first became apparent to me when I loaded one of the books I was working on into Google Play Books. This book had drop-caps on the opening body-text paragraphs of each chapter. These were identified using an HTML class (p.first) and a pseudo-element selector (::first-letter). I did it this way because it allowed swanky modern systems like iBooks and Readium to display drop-caps, but phrased it in such a way that Adobe Digital Editions and similar readers (which always render drop-caps wrong) would ignore it (pseudo elements mean nothing to them).

When I loaded this book into Google Play books I noticed something odd. In addition to the drop cap on the first paragraph (which rendered very nicely), it added a drop cap to the first letter of the following page (the page break having fallen halfway through the first para). This seemed to imply that Google Play Books was altering my HTML in real-time (it reacted to changes in font-size and line-height that moved the page break), adding in a hard paragraph break on either side of the page break.

Ben goes on to explain the steps to confirm this strange behavior, eventually ending with:

Intrigued, I added another layer to my selector. I changed it to body>div.text>p:first-of-type::first-letter this absurdly convoluted selector should, in theory, have selected only the first letter of the first paragraph of the first div in the whole HTML document. What it actually did was select the first letter of each page.

This seems to imply that in order to render a book, Google Play Books takes the content from your epub and pastes it into an individual HTML document for each page. To make it even stranger, in order to work out where to put the page breaks it must have to apply the CSS to the HTML first, then work out where the page breaks will fall, then chop up the HTML into individual documents and re-apply the CSS. Only after it has gone through all that can it render the page.

Based on this behavior Ben has awarded the title of "weirdest epub rendering engine" to Google Play Books.

If his report is correct then it will most definitely deserve the title, but unfortunately for me I have not yet managed to confirm Ben’s claims.

I don’t think I know anyone (other than Ben) who has looked closely enough at GPB to have noticed this strange behavior, and I didn’t get a response to my tweet yesterday. It had an #eprdctn tag attached, so I thought it would get some attention, but aside from a single retweet I have not gotten even a nibble.

And so I am throwing this story on to the blog just to see what happens. If anyone can confirm or deny this story, please let me know.

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In spite of the lack of evidence, I have to say that this report rings true.

This report is consistent with Google requiring that you upload an ePub before downloading it and reading it in the Google Play Books app, and it offers the best explanation for Tom Semple’s remark that GPB only downloads a fragment of an ebook at a time. It would also explain why GPB didn’t support 3rd-party ebooks until the middle of last year.

All of those quirks can be explained by the simple supposition that the Google Play Books app for Android doesn’t actually support Epub. Instead it appears to be using some type of concealed intermediary file format of unknown design to serve up fragments of an ebook.

In a way, this quirky non-Epub behavior might be caused by Google Play Books' early history. While Google focuses support on Epub now, there was a time when they would let authors and publishers upload just about any type of file to be sold in Google’s ebookstore. This included RTF, PDF, PDB, XML, DOC, and even Mobipocket (I kid you not).

The behavior reported by Ben could be the result of some Googler’s kludged together attempt to support all those disparate file formats in a consistent manner. I don’t know why they didn’t just convert to Epub, but I suppose at some point this chimeric file made sense. Or maybe they didn’t have enough time to get it right, I don’t know.

P.S. If anyone knows of a best practices FAQ for GPB, please don’t hesitate to share a link. I want to see what it says.

image credit Heidi Taillefer

I’m sure that you’ve already read the news that Amazon released their year end report today, but did you happen to notice what wasn’t in the press release?

There were a few telling absences from the press release, and if we read between the lines we end up with a few questions Amazon hasn’t answered.

The press release starts out well. The financial news was generally good, with Amazon reporting that net sales were up in 2013:

Net sales increased 22% to $74.45 billion, compared with $61.09 billion in 2012. Excluding the $1.28 billion unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the year, net sales grew 24% compared with 2012.

Operating income increased 10% to $745 million, compared with $676 million in 2012. The unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the year on operating income was $29 million.

Net income was $274 million, or $0.59 per diluted share, compared with net loss of $39 million, or $0.09 per diluted share, in 2012.

Analysts weren’t happy, of course, but that’s no surprise.

After the financial news Amazon listed the accomplishments they wanted to highlight. It’s too long to quote here, so I suggest that you go read the press release. While you’re at it, count the number of times the Kindle is mentioned, and then count the mentions of the Kindle Fire.

Did you notice what wasn’t there?

There’s no mention of how many tablets and ereaders Amazon sold, and there’s no mention of how many ebooks they sold, either. Those are telling details, IMO, and they could be saying that Amazon’s hardware efforts and ebook efforts have peaked.

Amazon took the time to mention the new Australian Kindle Store, and they took time to mention Kindle on airplanes, Kindle mayday, Kindle FreeTime, and pretty much every other new Kindle program.

And yet Amazon didn’t mention ebook sales or hardware sales.

I’m sure some of my readers recall that I wrote a very similar post around this time last year. I can’t link to that post because it unfortunately has been eaten by my blog (I cannot find it in the Internet Archive’s Wayback machine, either). As I recall, I commented upon Amazon not mentioning their hardware sales; they mentioned ebook sales in the press release (up 70%), but not hardware, and I concluded that the hardware news was not good (or at least that’s what I think I wrote).

Earlier today I was reminded of that post by a reader who I think wanted to remain anonymous. He reached much the same conclusion I did. Actually, he went several steps further than I dare, and he wrote that

• International expansion is basically at a standstill, both for Amazon as a whole and in particular for Kindle. After a few big launches in Europe and Asia, the roster of countries has remained the same for about a year. So the Kindle ecosystem basically exists in ten countries.
• The Kindle Fire has gone through countless sales.
• Kindle Fire appears to have flopped in mainland Europe. If you look at the rankings sometimes you’ll see it below the top 100!
• In both the UK and US, the Kindle store shows Paperwhite ahead of any Fire model.
• This is anecdotal, but less and less Android developers seem to be making the effort of publishing on the Amazon store.My guess is the Kindle Fire has flopped, and the Paperwhite is doing OK but not booming in sales. Amazon will shove this under the carpet the usual way, i.e. through total silence.

I think he went too far, but I do agree that Amazon is no longer seeing the growth along the lines of what they reported in past years. I would go along with the theory that hardware sales have flattened (IDC estimates back this up), but I am not so sure I would make the same claim about ebook sales.

Yes, Amazon neglected to mention ebook sales, and while that probably means that there was insufficient growth, the relative lack of growth might have a cause other than Amazon’s digital efforts fizzling.

As you might recall, in 2012 there was an ebook sales bubble due to the release of The Hunger Games movie (and 50 Shades). This made the AAP’s stats for 2013 look flat, and Amazon’s sales could be suffering from the same effect.

Of course, the AAP statistics mainly cover the US ebook market, while Amazon sells internationally. But if Amazon wasn’t seeing much in the way of growth of international ebook sales then it might not have been enough to overcome the unimpressive stats for the US ebook market.

This is all speculation, obviously, but before you dismiss it as the ramblings of a madperson I would like to ask you one question.

Why didn’t Amazon use a phrase like "best year ever" to describe their ebook sales?

It’s vague enough that Amazon could have used it to refer to sales that were up by as little as a couple percent and still told the truth (and avoided an SEC investigation).  But Amazon didn’t even use a vague phrase, and I would argue that it’s a sign that sales were not up.

As survey after quarterly report after survey has shown, the holiday season is the prime tablet buying period in the US, with tens of millions of devices being sold in just a few short weeks.

All those tablets and smartphones changing hands mean that the holiday season is just as high stakes for device makers as it is for retailers, and Chitika has been keeping score. Chitika surveyed a sampling of devices on their ad network, and they’re reporting that Apple was the big winner in the smartphone market and that Amazon and Microsoft were the big winners among the tablet makers.

Thanks to bumper iPhone sales, Apple hardware accounted for about 2% of of the smartphone ad impressions than it did before the holiday season.  Google was the other winner, going from 0% to 0.7%, but all the other smartphones tracked by Chitika showed noticeable declines.

And in tablets, Amazon showed the biggest gain, with the Kindle Fire accounting for 9.4% of ad impressions (up 0.6%). MS also showed a healthy bump in sales, taking home a 2.3% share. And the big "loser" was Apple, who’s iPad only accounted for 76% of ad impressions (down 1.3%).

The data is based on ads served in the US and Canadian markets, and it only reflects the devices that browsed the web, and it is only based on a sampling of the ads served, and as a result it’s not a perfect view of the market. But even as an incomplete snapshot, the chart below (and the report that Chitika is selling) reminds us that Apple’s lead in tablets is slowly being nibbled away by other device makers (very very slowly).

As DisplayMate’s recent screen study showed, Apple’s competitors are getting better at a faster rate than Apple. They’re catching up with Apple’s ability to produce good tablets, and consumers are beginning to notice. Sales are shifting, and unless Apple pulls amazing tech or marketing out of their hat I expect the sales to continue to shift away from the iPad.

When Adobe debuted their new Epub DRM last week some predicted that the new DRM would soon cause compatibility problems, and it looks like that prediction came true sooner than I would have liked.

There are several reports on Twitter this morning that a bug in the latest version of Adobe DE is wreaking havoc, with several users reporting that they have ebooks which could be downloaded to Adobe DE but not transferred over to an ebook reader (like the Nook, Aura, or PRS-T3):

If you install current ADE3, some books you download to it may not be able to be transferred or downloaded to mobile devices.

— Micah (@micahsb) January 25, 2014

This has also been confirmed by a couple other users (one, two). According to Micah Bowers, CEO of Bluefire Reader, the bug is only affecting a small fraction of newly downloaded ebooks and it is blocking users from transferring their purchased ebooks to their ebook readers. That’s not what one user reported on Twitter:

I had a bunch of books on my laptop & yesterday ADE wouldn’t let me access them. I purchased them 7 years ago. So NOT happy.

— Rebecca (@RebeLovesBooks) January 27, 2014

It’s not completely clear whether the new DRM is specifically to blame and not simply the fact that major new app releases are sometimes buggier than one would like, but Adobe has been apprised of the issue and I am sure they are working on a fix.  But until they release an update you probably should not install Adobe DE 3.0.

What we have here is an example of why you should never install new apps until after someone else has had a chance to be a guinea pig. Adobe DE 3.0 included a few minor improvements, but its chief noteworthy feature was the new and supposedly uncrackable DRM, and until I knew for sure that it wasn’t going to bite me in the ass I wasn’t going to install the update.

TBH, I wasn’t going to install the update until I knew for sure that the DRM had been cracked, thus enabling me to protect my purchases. I’m told that has not yet been accomplished, but I would bet that someone is working on it.

There’s a fascinating post over on Writer Beware today which links to a new Kickstarter project and cries copyright infringement. Victoria Strauss, editor of Writer Beware, is concerned by a new app called Story Surgeon.

So…playing now on Kickstarter, a project called Story Surgeon. Created by aspiring author Ryan Hancock, Story Surgeon is:

An eBook notation app that saves your personal edits as a separate file, and can be shared with anyone who owns the original eBook.

In other words, Story Surgeon is an app that enables anyone to alter a published book in any way they like, and spread the altered copy around at will.

I would disagree with her interpretation, actually.

According to the description (it’s clearly stated) Story Surgeon is going to give readers the ability to edit an ebook and create a custom version of the ebook. They can then save the changes as a separate file, and then share the edits (the user’s work) online so anyone who owns a copy of the ebook and the Story Surgeon app can recreate the edited version of the ebook. It won’t enable you to share the ebook itself, just your own work.

Arguably that is not copyright infringement any more than taking a pair of scissors to a paper book and then explaining online how to duplicate your efforts.

It’s a great idea, IMO, and it’s one I’ve heard before. Chris Walters wrote about a similar idea once or twice a couple years ago:

A wholly formed and unauthorized Harry Potter novel would clearly be a violation of U.S. copyright law, but the process is decentralized so that neither the author of the new work nor the template website is responsible for the final creation of the infringing work. In fact, other templates are available that would turn the story into a brand new work with original characters and places, or that would let a reader personalize it with friends and local places. If you’re feeling perverse, you can apply a Vampire Chronicles template and giggle at Lestat, Louis and Claudia as mystery solving young wizards vampires.
Now I’ve got a new, unauthorized Harry Potter book.

This is certainly the first time that I have heard about someone trying to develop an app to share the instructions to edit a file, but it’s not the first time that I can recall reading about fans, parents, and other parties re-editing works for one reason or another.

For example, back in 2001 a Star Wars fan edited the commercial release of The Phantom Menace to create The Phantom Edit. This was in the pre-Youtube era, and that movie was probably the first most famous re-edited work which probably inspired many of the custom movie trailers, fan flicks, and other fan generated content found on Youtube today.

There’s also the gamer dad who reprogrammed The Legend of Zelda so his daughter could play Link as a girl. And it was only last month that Slate published an article about a parent rewriting The Hobbit as she read it to her daughter, only in the new version Bilbo is a she:

My 5-year-old insists that Bilbo Baggins is a girl.

 The first time she made this claim, I protested. Part of the fun of reading to your kids, after all, is in sharing the stories you loved as a child. And in the story I knew, Bilbo was a boy. A boy hobbit. (Whatever that entails.)

But my daughter was determined. She liked the story pretty well so far, but Bilbo was definitely a girl. So would I please start reading the book the right way?

I hesitated. I imagined Tolkien spinning in his grave. I imagined mean letters from his testy estate. I imagined the story getting as lost in gender distinctions as dwarves in the Mirkwood.

Then I thought: What the hell, it’s just a pronoun. My daughter wants Bilbo to be a girl, so a girl she will be.

And you know what? The switch was easy. Bilbo, it turns out, makes a terrific heroine. She’s tough, resourceful, humble, funny, and uses her wits to make off with a spectacular piece of jewelry. Perhaps most importantly, she never makes an issue of her gender—and neither does anyone else.

Do you see what I did there?

I just gave you a couple examples of a positive way for someone to use and share an app like Story Surgeon which might possibly be copyright infringement, but only a cad would argue against them.

And that’s not the only way this app could be used. What if one reader used it to create and insert their own glossary or map index? This could prove useful when reading large fantasy novels like the Game of Thrones, ones where the reader cannot keep track of the hundreds of characters in a dozen locations. What if a teacher created their own annotation file for a Shakespeare play being read in class? Or what if (giggle) Story Surgeon were used to edit Bram Stoker’s Dracula so it resembled Twilight?

None of those uses are infringing, so clearly Chris Meadows was right when he argued that this app has numerous non-infringing uses. Sadly, that’s probably not going to stop someone from complaining and getting the app pulled from Kickstarter, though they might not have to bother.

This funding campaign has only raised $170 of the $15,000 requested, so it’s probably not going to go anywhere.
Which is a shame, because there’s a market for this idea.