Eastern Railroad Discussion > Beware of Morning Sun E-books

Beware before purchasing Morning Sun E-books....they are readable ONLY on Apple machines. If you read every line of the sales and FAQ literature on their site, you can see you cannot buy them and be able to read them on PC's of any kind.

I can't imagine why Morning Sun did something as short sighted as this (they explain the "why" but it is a kind of odd excuse given the state of the art in e-publishing today...) but they did. Ebooks will not be run as print books so they have essentially told anyone without an Apple product that they are not interested in our business.

If you do not own an Apple I-pad or mac or other such item.....don't order the e-books.

Bob

Thanks for the tip, it is disappointing to hear they're limiting their customers' options.
I have met some of the Morning Sun folks and for the most part have had a good opinion of them and have enjoyed their print product very much.
If I bump into any of them in the neat future I'll be sure to ask them why they limited their offering to Mac users only.
Dan

Posted from iPhone

Totally dumb without exception. I wonder... do they have a long-term business plan?

John.

If you read the description of what they are offering, it clearly states its in the iBooks format for Mac/iPad. I guess I am not sure what the concerns would be (unless they changed that informatio after the fact).

iBooks is a pretty straight forward publishing format that even our 7 year old has mastered (yes, we're a part of the Mac "cult"). Its a low end investment that Morning Sun may be just trying out to gauge interest in this format. The other option, the "Kindle" has a proprietary software process I'm sure with Amazon. To that end, this leave just a few options for the PC world.

I do not think this is a "long term" business plan in which Morning Sun is converting everything to e-books. An e-book format for such picture books seems counter intuitive honestly and so far it only appears for books are being offered in this format.

Ebooks are great formats for reference materials and novels. To me, leave the "Picture Book" industry out of it...

CG Tower

CGTower Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> iBooks is a pretty straight forward publishing
> format that even our 7 year old has mastered (yes,
> we're a part of the Mac "cult"). Its a low end
> investment that Morning Sun may be just trying out
> to gauge interest in this format. The other
> option, the "Kindle" has a proprietary software
> process I'm sure with Amazon. To that end, this
> leave just a few options for the PC world.

You didn't mention the epub format, which I believe is fairly widely used. Barnes and Noble sells books in this format. Epub readers are available for all platforms, at least I think so.

I don't know the technology involved in creating an ibook, but presumably the original file would be in pdf format. It may be easier to create and ibook than an epub file from pdf.

Then there's Zinio. I get my Trains issues digitally. I don't know if they do books, but it seems technically feasible.

I investigated having Amazon sell books on their site. They will do it, but it's pricey, and that may also be a factor for the folks at Morning Sun.

jkh2cpu Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Totally dumb without exception. I wonder... do
> they have a long-term business plan?
>

I disagree, and I think they have a valid reason for their decision.

On their site they point out that it is expensive to create a book for a given e-book format. I don't think that there is an easy way to convert the original file that is used to print a paper copy to an e-book format. Today I think that printers generally print from a PDF file. Presumably it is difficult to create an iBook from this file. I know that it is not easy to create an epub format book from PDF.

I did a quick search and discovered that it appears to be possible to read ibooks on a PC, but I have not investigated this, since I use both platforms.

From what I've found out the alternative for photographs is not satisfactory, yet. Also, you should know that there are just a couple of key players that control these platforms and the $$$. I looked into it and there wasn't much of a cost saving producing an ebook versus a print book. I also found out that most of my market aren't interested in ebooks, let alone social networks. The case was closed for me, though I'm keeping an open mind for the future should changes make it more attractive and cost effective. But kudos to Morning Sun for getting its feet wet and giving it a try.

To be honest with you, there have been times that I'd love to move over to a MAC. It's such a better product than the Microsoft based environment. When you get into publishing and other creative venture, you find that Microsoft is a giant that is not really on the cutting edge and often gets in the way of what you want to do. Believe me, there have been times that I could have given Bill Gates and his monopoly a piece of my mind.

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublications.com



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/14 07:14 by wabash2800.

I don't know what the Beware is about? They pretty clearly state what the requirements are....... Just like don't buy a blue ray disk to put in a DVD player..