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Originally Posted by Studio717
I'm not sure of the point of the closed formats. Is it just their profits when selling books on their sites? Or do they get percentages when other book sites sell ebooks in those formats?
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Actually, it's more a symptom of the fact that there was
no standard in the first place. Sure we had text file standards, but they weren't suited to books because the publishers wanted DRM -- an entirely different discussion, but the short version is they're scared of getting put out of business by piracy.
Because of that lack of a standard, everyone was not just free to do what they wanted, but they actually had no choice but to come up with
something if they wanted to play. I'm sure they were each hoping that
their proprietary format would
become the standard and then they'd get to license everyone else as they liked.
The opposite has more or less happened in that instead of new players going with an existing format, they've gone and done their own. Hard to blame them, really. Why saddle yourself with a format that you don't control and can't be sure will still be around later, when you can (like everyone else is doing) just go with your own format that you do control? And if you can't be sure how long yours will be around, well, hey, you won't be around to care that it's gone anyway.
Finally (it appears that), there is starting to emerge a movement to develop a single standard that will be used across the industry. When that happens, and I think it will eventually (it's just a matter of
how 'eventually'), I think that the existing providers of content and hardware makers that still in business are going to be pretty hard pressed to convert to that standard, if they want to
stay in business, that is.
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Originally Posted by nekokami
(Unless... and this is wild, completely unwarranted speculation... iRex is working on a deal to become the "Kindle" manufacturer for Amazon....  ) |
Heh, don't they have enough to do manufacturing the iLiad?
... and would you really
want them to anyway?