Hacker News Reader

Comment by benrutter | Hacker News Reader

It benefits Amazon obviously, but otherwise it's a massive shame to ebooks as a whole. I was really excited about ebooks when they started, but DRM has completely stagnated the format so much that I've almost completely given up on ebooks now, and read hard copies instead unless I really want to read something and it isn't otherwise available.

View on HN

What about the format is stagnant? I haven't read a physical book in roughly a decade, and haven't remotely found ebooks lacking.

And to be clear, I understand and agree with the moral objections to DRM. I think we have lost something more than just the loss of ownership and control. But while you're actually reading an ebook, none of that ever actually affects the experience.

I would love to see some more interactive fiction (like Twine) possible. Aside that though, I think formatting to me, seems constantly poor. I think you'd have a really hard time rendering something like Hope Mirles' Paris (you might need to google it!) in ebook form well.

The main formats are plenty powerful with the formatting they support. The bigger issue is that ebooks need to render on a pretty big variety of devices, and users can override typefaces and font size. So short of using a PDF to override those choices, there's not a ton that an improved format could accomplish.

Also, ebooks do support links (I see them most commonly used for linking to chapters from the table of contents, or linking to appendix notes), so you could make interactive fiction if you wanted.

I never even got into ebooks in the first place, precisely because of the DRM and "your so-called purchases can still get yoinked" problems.

You definitely had better foresight than me then! I wrote off a lot of the "your purchases might get yoinked" talk at the time as "it would never happen in reality", but have had this happen to ebooks I've bought.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com