Yesterday I purchased an ebook from buecher.de, Corvus by Neal Stephenson. Apart from the water mark file it contains advertisements that take half of the size of the ebook file.
The DRM-free .epub file is 3.8 MiB in size. It is a zip file, and the unzipped contents are 6 MiB.
There are a lot of files in the folder OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/, and their size sums up to 2.98 MiB. The non-BIC files are 3.04 MiB. Nearly 50% of the ebook's size are advertisements :(
Similar to ads bloating websites and making them so unusable that we have to use ad blockers, advertisements in ebook files waste bytes on our hard disks and make downloads slower.
I know who get electronic books without adverts: Pirates.
Similar to pirates having a
much better movie experience
than people buying and playing DVDs.
Advertisement files
2048 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/marketing.css
2907 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/mp1.xhtml
763 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/lastpage.xhtml
162174 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/253EF476A2ED49549DED6D5B26C0EA1A.xhtml
859 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/336E6DD3E68F4990B1D19F3CA30C4990.xhtml
623 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/6FE2556344D849B281E012E50151547D.xhtml
1112 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/9B8E49F3338942609923919A284CB82E.xhtml
1009 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BAED857E61C049ECB974C479521A9207.xhtml
1025293 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/cover.jpg
748 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/cover.xhtml
2958 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/DA9C6990BEF64CE68BF0407505CF793F.xhtml
484 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/E8719B7E1C4B4C418F61C704A8FD8134.xhtml
721 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/toc.ncx
10054 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/70653622D0534CC6B6C67CBE13E33104.xhtml
1548 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/Amazon.gif
1191 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/Apple.gif
1397 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/Google.gif
10740 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/Kobo.JPG
2517 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/tolino.gif
20577 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/Kostenlos_reinlesen.gif
45514 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/Kostenlos_reinlesen.PNG
60808 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/Kostenlos_reinlesen_klein.png
8724 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/button--reinlesen--color.png
5155 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/button--zumshop--color.png
46701 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/Zur_Bestellung_mit_einem_Klick_50.png
6050 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/button--one-click--color.png
9294 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/Kostenlos_reinlesen2.png
1712 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/marketing.css
3582 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/image/153C113ED16D44E4B456D68D5AC45E41.jpg
3914 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/image/372C80CDB20A44AE86BA05250A1FB430.jpg
3175 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/image/4451B938ADFD4EA89F1F71CEC775730C.jpg
3172 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/image/5C5B46C79F5C45128F4142D96EA0DAEA.jpg
9272 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/image/F6C0DD5F607649E282DA83BCBB0D67DA.jpg
77824 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/font/AGaramondPro-Bold.otf
94208 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/font/AGaramondPro-Italic.otf
126976 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/font/AGaramondPro-Regular.otf
73728 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/font/FuturaLTPro-Book.otf
106496 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/font/HelveticaLTPro-Oblique.ttf
106496 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/font/HelveticaLTPro-Roman.ttf
16357 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_shortened/OEBPS/css/idGeneratedStyles.css
37278 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/9783641300852_front.jpg
757076 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/DejaVuSans.ttf
1548 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/Amazon.gif
1191 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/Apple.gif
1397 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/Google.gif
10740 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/Kobo.JPG
2517 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/tolino.gif
20577 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/Kostenlos_reinlesen.gif
45514 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/Kostenlos_reinlesen.PNG
24354 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/mehr_zum_buch.png
8724 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/button--reinlesen--color.png
5155 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/button--zumshop--color.png
9294 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/Kostenlos_reinlesen2.png
145531 2023-10-12 19:11 OEBPS/BICMediaMarketing/BICMediaMarketing/rh_bg640_6.jpg
Size counting
I chained together some command line tools to get the size.
Advertisement size
$ unzip -l Stephenson_Corvus_9783641249878.epub\ | head -n-2 | tail -n +4\ | grep BICMedia\ | sed 's/^ *//' | cut -d' ' -f1\ | xargs | sed 's/ /+/g' | bc 3129777
Non-advertisement size
$ unzip -l Stephenson_Corvus_9783641249878.epub\ | head -n-2 | tail -n +4\ | grep -v BICMedia\ | sed 's/^ *//' | cut -d' ' -f1\ | xargs | sed 's/ /+/g' | bc 3193311
Problem: Page count
While reading the book, I looked at the page number and saw
901 / 978
After turning to the next page, noticed that it was the last one of the actual story. The next 70 pages were the "Leseprobe" advertisement for another book.
Imagine my disappointment that the book was finished at 90% of the pages, while shortly before my mind was in the good feeling of having another 70 pages to read before the end.
