Apple forces users to pay full price to redownload already bought ebooks

http://www.baekdal.com/publishing/apple-pay-full-price-for-an-ebook-you-already-bought/

by stuff4ben • 16 years ago

115 78 16 years ago

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gte910h3• 16 years ago

Yet another reason amazon has won the eBook battle....

rbanffy4• 16 years ago

Yet another reason to avoid DRM...

Try to get your DRM'ed Kindle books to any non-Kindle platform.

mtrichardson• 16 years ago

I can read my Kindle books on my iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Mac, and Windows computer (and soon Android). It's still Amazon's software (which, for the desktop computers, sucks), and it's still DRM'd, but you don't have to have a Kindle to enjoy the Kindle library.

gte910h3• 16 years ago

1> There are few non-kindle platforms

2> The type of DRM they have is pretty easy to strip:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-strip-mobi-and-prc-ebook...

adolph2• 16 years ago

If I remember correctly, music on the iTunes store works similarly. They charge you at download and you had better back up your files. The operational concept is that the user downloads the content once and then syncs that content among devices (iPhone, iPad, whatever) using their desktop computer.

From http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4059:

"Can I copy my books onto other computers or devices?

Books downloaded from the iBookstore can be placed on up to five computers you own that you’ve authorized with your iTunes Store account. You can sync your books to all iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches you own.1 Audiobooks, PDF files, and ePub files you've added to iTunes will appear in Books under Library. To sync Books to your device, connect it to your computer using the cable it came with. In iTunes, select your device then click the Books tab. Choose the books you would like to read on your device then press Sync. Books will sync to iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch even if iBooks is not installed; to read synced books, download iBooks from the App Store."

"1Requires iPhone and iPod touch with iOS 4 or later. iBooks is not compatible with original iPhone or iPod touch (1st generation)."

masklinn2• 16 years ago

> If I remember correctly, music on the iTunes store works similarly.

Interesting, because it definitely doesn't work that way for apps. And I checked with one of the free singles iTunes gives weekly, it does indeed warn me that I'm re-buying the stuff (but detects that I've bought it in the past), it doesn't seem to just launch a re-download.

Cements my decision to never buy any music on iTunes.

adolph2• 16 years ago

Yep, apps are different. Apps also have update downloads.

As far as buying music online, caveat emptor. Even Amazon works similarly as far as MP3 downloads go. From http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_m...

"Downloads are only available for a short time after purchase. If you saved the .amz file to your computer, you should "Open" it using the Downloader application immediately after saving it. If you wait to complete your download, it may expire and no longer be available."

jackowayed• 16 years ago

But why? What's the difference to them between redownloading it on your new phone and syncing with your computer to get your books? The bandwidth costs?

And it works fine for apps. I can buy an app over the air, delete it, and redownload it for free, all without my computer ever being involved.

jasonlotito2• 16 years ago

I look at Steam as what iTunes should be. With Steam allowing me to download my games, I doubt Apple is suffering because of download costs. I'm pretty sure it's a holdover from their DRM-laden days.

bobbyi• 16 years ago

I think they are trying to make it hard for 100 people to share one iTunes account and "redownload" the purchased content onto their respective iPods.

rbranson2• 16 years ago

This is not going to work in the era of the iPad-only home. While I understand the technical reasons and humble beginnings of the iTunes store, let's face it, there are a lot of people who don't even own computers now because their iPhone and/or iPad suffices.

tannerburson2• 16 years ago

Really? Can you cite a source for this rather absurd claim?

mrinterweb• 16 years ago

You have to own a computer in order to use an iPhone or iPad so I really don't see your point. Owning a computer is a requirement to use both devices.

Qz• 16 years ago

That's funny, the last time I bought anything on iTunes was several years ago, and I had the opposite problem. I had bought some episodes of Law and Order, and once I was done watching them I deleted them. Every time I started up iTunes it kept automatically trying to redownload the files I had deletes, which was ~1GB of data.

Maybe it was different for music, though...

CoryMathews• 16 years ago

Yet another reason for people to wake up and see how closed and restricted apple is and always will be. I'm actually getting tired of reading about apple screwing people over the same way again and again.

pyre2• 16 years ago

While I hate a lot of the restrictions that Apple places on things, you have to entertain the possibility that the content industries (music,movies,books,etc) heavily push these types of these things when negotiating distribution deals with Apple. As others have mentioned, the things that Apple does control (e.g. Apps) don't have the 'rebuy to redownload' restriction.

borism• 16 years ago

but nothing except profits prohibits Apple to stand up for the interests of it's users the way Amazon and Google do, yet Apple seems to always choose it's own short-term interest ahead of it's users' long-term interest.

joblessjunkie• 16 years ago

This sounds more like a series of first-release bugs than an evil policy.

bitmover• 16 years ago

Sounds like a bug to me. I redownloaded eBooks I had purchased on my iPad just fine.

leviathant• 16 years ago

As much as I'd love to give Apple a hard time over this, I'm going to put it out there that this is likely just capitulation to publishing companies. You have to pay to re-download MP3s and eBooks, but not apps from the app store. I may not like Apple's philosophy regarding a lot of things, but they're generous by comparison to record labels and publishing companies.

ghshephard• 16 years ago

If that's the case why is it that the kindle will sync all my books to my k1, k2, iPhone 3G/3GS and iPad with zero fuss and no repurchases required?

rudyfink• 16 years ago

Amazon and Apple my have a different contracts with the publishers?

ugh• 16 years ago

Amazon is better at negotiating with publishers or has more bargaining chips?

I don’t really know whether Apple’s heart is in all this book stuff (Steve Jobs famously said that Americans don’t read anymore), they might not care all that much at the moment. iBooks might just be a fallback solution in case Amazon tries funny stuff (or some other competitor emerges which doesn’t want to play ball with Apple).

edd2• 16 years ago

Amazon's Kindle has similar limits[1].

[1] http://consumerist.com/2009/06/amazon-tries-to-clarify-downl...

lt2• 16 years ago

Actually, if you buy an app when it's on sale and then try to download it again after it goes off sale, it won't let you.

I once caught a an app that was temporarily free and got it in iTunes with my account it in one of my computers, expecting it to show up as an available download when I got back to the one I sync my phone with. It doesn't appear and I had to copy the .ipa file there.

I have no experience trying to redownload paid apps that are still the same price, but first thing I did was to add .ipa files to my daily mozy backup.

edd2• 16 years ago

In my experience if you delete an app you have paid for you have to try and re-buy it and type your password in but just before it would normally do the transaction it tells you that you already have the application and its a free download. I imagine the same thing might have happened if you had tried to buy the app you got on sale again.

anigbrowl• 16 years ago

Perhaps so, but I can't buy into the idea that Apple is helpless in the face of their greed. Apple is a huge company, bigger than many publishers, and Steve Jobs is a business god. If he calls up a publisher and explains that iBooks is like someone installing a new bookshelf for the books they already own, and that making them buy new books for a new bookshelf would be laughable (especially when it might dampen their inclination to make more purchases), they're probably going to pay attention to him. I just can't see him passively sacrificing his new revenue stream on the altar of their technical ignorance.

On the other hand, I can sort of see him telling people 'it's not my fault you wedged all those Ebooks into itunes. Are books tunes? Is e = i? No? Then get with the program!'

Edit: 'bigger than any publishers'. D'oh! They're the second biggest publicly traded company by market cap, so arguably Apple is larger than the whole book publishing sector put together in pure $ terms.

yardie2• 16 years ago

Personally, I'd never buy an eBook, ePub, or whatever. I either invest in a dead tree, get a unDRMed PDF, the web copy, or just check it out from the library.

There are far too many options available today for me to buy into a format that can do less than what I was able to do 5 years ago.

kristiandupont• 16 years ago

Now that the ipad and other ebook readers are good enough to read on comfortably, I don't see myself buying a technical book made out of dead trees ever again. I might for fiction because I am a bit of a romantic..

yardie2• 16 years ago

I guess it depends on the technical usage. I still go back to my college era calculus and physics books. Expensive at the time but worth it's weight in gold.

For emerging technologies (hot, new languages) I prefer StackOverflow, Google, and wikis. I'd only give ePubs a shot if the price was substantially cheaper than the dead tree version.

I'd still buy an iPad, but only for light reading and the 100k apps.

sliverstorm2• 16 years ago

I really hope you change your mind eventually. Dead-tree books are probably on the decline, and if nobody is willing to pay for electronic books because of the prevailing attitude (electronic things are free!) that's going to mess things up.

Don't get me wrong, dead-tree books have their place. In addition to ebooks, I own something like 200lbs of reference books. I'm not blind to the pros of paper. (though you can bet I'll be excited when a real textbook replacement comes along, and I don't have to lug 200lbs around)

abstractbill• 16 years ago

What does "mess things up" really mean though? Do you think people would stop writing books if it was harder to make money from them? I don't.

drewcrawford• 16 years ago

I'm in the same camp as you--no DRMed books.

However, I just cut up and scan all my dead-tree books to PDFs. Problem solved. A lot cheaper too.

http://sealedabstract.com/lifehacking/the-joy-of-electronic-...

cabalamat• 16 years ago

I wonder how long before everyone gets the message: Just say no to DRM.

glhaynes• 16 years ago

What does this have to do with DRM?

crad• 16 years ago

This must be publisher specific. I purchased a book on my first iPad and when I bought a second (with 3g), I re-downloaded it without having to pay for it.

commieneko3• 16 years ago

The solution is called Stanza (owned by Amazon now I believe) and ePub books. I agree that the legitimate selection possilby isn't as good, but I see no advantage to buying books, _books_ for chrissakes, that have DRM.

I actually use Apple's book software a bit here and there, it works fairly nicely, and when they add PDF support I'll probably use it a bit more. But I'm not buying a page from Apple's book store until the DRM situation has changed.

I waited them out on DRMed music, never bought a note before they offered DRM free files. Now I spend money there regularly, among other non-DRMed places. Its a shame the "powers" have to learn this lesson over and over and over and over...

joubert3• 16 years ago

I think iBooks is a better app than Stanza (notes, bookmarks, PDF capability) and you can get your EPUBs in there via iTunes (even ones bought from other stores such as the one my startup runs, fifobooks.com).

lt2• 16 years ago

I have been using Stanza on my iPhone for a while now and I think the opposite.

I like the interface and usability of Stanza better. It does have PDF support, annotations and bookmarks. You can load your own ePubs and PDFs into it through iTunes. It has nice dictionary features, brightness controls, themes, support for third-party libraries.

Overall seemed like a much more mature app than iBooks for the short time I spent with iBooks so far.

commieneko3• 16 years ago

Both readers have their strengths and weaknesses, which is why I'm still playing with both. iBooks is certainly the younger of the two and I expect it to pass ahead, especially since the Stanza folks seem to be under the sway of Amazon, which has a vested interest in the fight. PDF capability will certainly be a big plus for iBooks when it comes to the iPad. I'm running the new version on my iPod Touch, but PDFs on such a small screen aren't that useful, at least to me.

Frankly, all the readers I've used fall short when it comes to library management. I want something like iTunes (only better!) both to manage my library and create and manage reading lists. Right now everything just goes into one big pile that takes _forever_ to scroll through (I've around 800 titles in iBooks and several hundred in Stanza). iBook on iPad actually has crashed (!) a couple of times as I've gone scrolling from the top of the alphabet to the bottom. I'll admit I'm pushing iBooks harder, but that's because I expect so much more from Apple ;)

The best desktop solution I've found for PDFs (and cbr/cbz comic files) is a comic book reading program called Comicbook Lover. I use it for PDF management (okay, I manage my digital comic book collection with it too...) It works very much like itunes. If they would add ePub support to it, and change the name, they could rule the world, at least for a while. Unfortunately their iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch app is woefully lacking in the very features that make it work so well on the desktop.

Edit: And I do a slow burn every time I go to add documents to my iPod Touch or iPad. Syncing through iTunes is just _stupid_. I understand this is a problem with _many_ apps on the iOS platform, and that there are political and commercials issues involved, but I don't care. Apple needs to work this out, post-haste...

marbletiles• 16 years ago

Just tested. Downloaded a book on the phone that I'd bought on the iPad, and it gave me the "you have already purchased this book; press to downloaded it again" message you get from the App Store. If you go into the "purchases" tab it offers to redownload any books you've purchased elsewhere.

What the OP is seeing has to be a bug; after all iBooks does syncing between iPad and iPhone -- they can't expect you to repurchase each time.

DeusExMachina• 16 years ago

The message says:

"You have already purchased this but it isn't available for redownload. To purchase it again at full price, tap OK"

Given the exact phrasing of the parts I highlighted, I don't think it is a bug. I cannot see in the picture what book it is, but since this does not happen to you for your books, it could be something related to copyright/distribution.

fjabre• 16 years ago

The main point I took away from this:

Syncing to iTunes sucks. It's been broken for a long time and it's becoming more apparent with the release of the iPad.

It's easily the most frustrating experience I've had managing my iDevices mainly because it's archaic to have to constantly sync to your desktop in 2010.

Google was right: "We discovered something really cool...it's called the Internet."

Real opportunity for Google here to improve on this with Android/Chrome OS devices.

tzs• 16 years ago

Plug iPhone into computer. Select the iPhone in the sidebar on iTunes. Click the books tab. Check the box to sync books. Sync.

Your purchased books are then on your iPhone.

Apple forces users to pay full price to redownload already bought ebooks

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