Viren's dashboard

Here's the last update on our end: http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/06/select...

I found the PDF for Squid - The Definitive Guide. I purchased and downloaded the PDF, along with the Linux Networking Cookbook. Using Mobipocket Creator I imported the PDFs and built the ebook file. It works wonderfully on my kindle. The text is fine and works great. The only problem is the table of contents isn't hyperlinked on the Squid Text, like most texts I have converted, it has a few but not the ones that count. The Linux book did have hyperlinks in the TOC and search works great. For the really bored you can edit the HTML page that is generated by mobipocket creator and add the links yourself before you build it. I have done that before for a book I will be using quite extensively as a proof of concept and it worked great but is very tedious and I only recommend it for often used books. Also I have had problems with Pocket creator if you use the default standard compression. The pages tend to turn really slow. Use no compression and you should be fine.

As a note to O'rielly publishing. Thanks for your great books, from searching for Kindle books I am also really pleased with your research into using Kindle. I was pleasantly suprised given Tim's public stance on non-open standards and prior patent disagreements with Amazon, which were resolved semi-amicably from my reading. The texts I am most interesting purchasing for the Kindle tend to be dense text for the most part. From my trials they have worked simply and in less than a few minutes of work. I would love for you to publish a list of kindle friendly PDFs that convert if you decide not to go with a full scale support offering.

Thank you very much

This is fantastic that you are preparing titles for the kindle. I am a solider/network engineer for the US army serving in Iraq and as such I have very limited space for books when I am traveling or even in my room. The kindle has worked wonderfully for me so far. I have quite a few Cisco Press books that work great for me. To sit and read a tech book is usually preferable with the hard copy, but to carry around for reference on a technique while on a trouble call it is wonderful. Could you possibly set up a way to buy the hardcopy and then pay a small amount $5-10 for a kindle version as well. I think that a lot of us traveling people would prefer that. The project I am working on now would be greatly enhanced by Squid the Definitive Guide. Since it isn't available on the kindle I will have to order it and deal with a 1-2 week delay due to military mail, which isn't the best situation.

Thanks

Great Stuff! When will you release a list of the titles? – Scott Fleckenstein, on May 23, 2008 05:09

Awesome! I haven't bought a Kindle yet, but this helps get me there, I think. – Eric Suesz, on May 23, 2008 05:06

Hello Melman, as well as everyone else who has contributed to this thread.

I want to let you know that we're preparing files for the Kindle now. I'm not certain when they will be available, but I'm hoping within two to three weeks. We've selected 31 titles that don't have tables and code that have proved problematic with the tests we've conducted thus far. At the same time, we're working with Amazon to resolve the font and table issues, and we're both eager to resolve this. I'll post to this list when the first books are available.

Thanks, everyone, for your patience.

--Allen

Another suggestion:

Nobody likes to be the first guy to jump into a cold pool. So I would suggest making starting small & going from there.
To make a strong initial inroad into the Kindle market, I would suggest selling your most popular, non-technical titles and moving from there.

1. You could start with one of the "pocket Guides". Those are fairly popular.

2. Books on Website design, or "Hacks" (i.e. Google, linux, Office) have a larger customer base & would presumably do better in initial sales ; you could start with those.

3. Once a strong inroad has been made with these titles, your shareholders & management would be more inclined to try to market the advanced titles (i.e. programming languages, Software engineering, & bioinformatics, etc.) for Kindle.

4. In summary: examine your gross sales. Look at what products/titles sell the most, and begin offering some of the most notable titles in Kindle format. Start with a coupon or discount for first time buyers. Do some marketing to current customers.

Of course all of this is pointless unless an agreement can be reached regarding a common file format.
5. Could a software adapter be introduced into Kindle, or some kind of plug-in to enable your products to be read while retaining your own security format?

6. Consultation with other publishing companies? It's a foregone conclusion that other publishers are just as reluctant to participate because of the same issues. Perhaps a formal or informal partnership could be reached to devise a file format, plug-in or security feature to protect your product?

7. Perhaps a more detailed explanation of why Amazon is so reluctant to modify the Kindle's security format to accommodate more publishers.

I don't understand all this griping about proprietary file formats, fonts, and compatibility issues. Not that I'm not concerned, it's just that this is a very strong revenue stream for both O'Reilly & associates as well as Amazon.com. As I'm sure you're all aware, readers, & purchasers of your products are very loyal and more than willing to pay premium prices for your content for years to come. I for one can tell you this; the moment you declare that your products are available in Kindle, I'll buy at least a dozen. Your content more than makes up for the price of the device.

I'd me more than willing to put up with adware, registration or subscription fees, If I can get your books on Kindle. I'm certain that hundreds of thousands of Sys Admins, Net Admins, engineers, students, teachers, researchers, and hobbyists would agree.

Laurie, thanks for the reply. To answer your question, Here is what I will need from a Web Services book.
1) Explain the industry standard architecture for implementing web services.
2) Explain the various API's used to construct a Web Service.(Special concentration on the various XML parsers)
3) Implement a complete solution on one of the Open Source Application Servers such as Jboss or Tomcat/Axis. (This should explain me all the required configurations)
4) A complete chapter dealing with how to secure web services.
5) How to implement transactions with web services.
6) A complete chapter devoted how to deal with different types of data.(such as BLOBs, CLOBs).

I know some of it goes out of scope for a Head First Book, but my be you guys can create a complete series of books explaining 101 Web Services and ending at SOA and design patterns on implementing Web Services architecture.

Create a path for developers to learn Web Services(Because it covers a wide scope) supplemented with Developers Notebook which shows you the minor details.

We've considered publishing a Head First Web Service title, but it's a broad topic. So I'll turn the question around and ask you, what topics or concepts would you expect to see covered in Head First Web Services?

Got it, Thanks for the info. I checked their site and it does say that Kindle supports MOBI files. This will keep my hopes up!!
Few more question: Do you know by what time frame this is going to happen? Are you going to publish only new books or old and the existing ones in the MOBI format?

Viren: Font support isn't a publisher problem, it's a device (Kindle problem).

I would be surprised if converting the PDFs with the Amazon converter yields acceptable results (mainly because of the font problems). We hope to provide .mobi files for many of our titles, which should sidestep the need for customers to convert PDF files themselves.

I understand the problem and don't know how your systems are designed, but inability to change fonts on a piece of content...that's what gets me...but you guys are publishers I have to take your word for it.

One more thing about the PDFs you were talking about..will I be able to convert these to Kindle format through Amazon's conversion program? Or, do I have to go the conventional route of opening them on a computer cauz if I have to open it on a computer then the entire argument of having a portable device such as Kindle is lost. I may as well open the pdf on my computer.

I see two problems with this situation:
1) I will have to buy the book on Kindle and then buy pdfs from Oreilly, how do you address that?
2) Now instead of one device I will have to manage 2 devices Kindle and Computer if these pdfs are not convertable through Amazon's program.

Hmm, what may work for the lacking fonts are images of rasterized fonts. It'll show up right and you can tweak out the renderer exactly for how you want the code shown. Error on the big font side and you should be good. – Lally, on May 05, 2008 15:05

Hi Viren,

Viren wrote:
> So, its an important aspect of your books. In my sincere opinion, could you
> guys just change the fonts if its not that big of a deal?

(reiterating what Tim wrote)
At this point, it's not the lack of a single font that bothers us, it's the lack of a whole class of (important) fonts. We certainly would use any monospace (fixed-width) font, but the Kindle doesn't provide a single one. We're currently evaluating other options to see if a different approach to code fonts and whitespace makes more sense.

> The books will not meet the practical purpose if code is unreadable.

We hope to counter some of this anxiety by making PDF versions (with good typography) available alongside any ebooks. That way, when the reader is in doubt about the meaning of a particular section they'll have another, more legible, version available.

Hi Tim,
Thanks for the update. Just for my information, did you guys receive any updated information on this issue from Amazon? I did email their customer support about this issue. Do you know any particular contact person on Amazon side so that I can send an email them? May be, if they hear from customers, they will address this issue little faster....

--Virendra

Viren -- it isn't something WE can change. Amazon has no support for monospaced fonts on the Kindle. We've told them about this problem, and we believe they will eventually address it. But it's not something that's under our control. – timoreilly, on May 04, 2008 18:39