Is Books on board dropping the mobipocket format?

[FlorenceArt]

Hi all,

Is it just me or is something going on? It seems that every time I look up a recent book at booksonboard.com, there is no mobipocket version. Old books are still available in .prc version though.


Florence

[sianon]

they have had very few new releases in mobi for a few months, I suspect that you are correct. more and more books are only PDF or EPUB

[HarryT]

Different formats come from different suppliers. It's probable that the book isn't getting to the Mobi supplier (which is Overdrive, I believe).

[anurag]

Mobipocket isn't completely out yet, but the percentage does seem to be decreasing. Digging into the Inkmesh DB, here's what I found:

Of all the books for sale on BoB, around 32,000 ebooks were published this year (and had a valid publication date). Of these, around 6k, or 20% were available in Mobipocket (all with Overdrive DRM).

Of these, around 12k were published after June 2009, and around 2k (or 16%) are available in mobi.

Of these, around 3.3k were published in October or later, and only around 350 (or 10%) are available in mobi.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Different formats come from different suppliers. It's probable that the book isn't getting to the Mobi supplier (which is Overdrive, I believe).

Originally Posted by anurag

Mobipocket isn't completely out yet, but the percentage does seem to be decreasing.

But some of the books I checked are available in mobi format at Fictionwise and not at BoB.

I wouldn't be surprised it the number of books available in mobipocket format is decreasing, but I do think there is something else happening specifically at BoB.

Oh well, I've been using Fictionwise more and more anyway. They have more books, and the price difference is not so clear-cut any more, I have a feeling that FW is more often cheaper or at a similar price compared to BoB. And I have always liked FW's interface MUCH better.

[anurag]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

But some of the books I checked are available in mobi format at Fictionwise and not at BoB.

That's interesting. I just verified this - around 4.8k ebooks published since June are available on both BoB and FW, but BoB has only 1.5k in mobi, and FW has 4k. OD supplies mobi books to BoB (but not to FW), so like HarryT said above, it might just be OD pulling out of Mobi, and not BoB specifically.

[zacheryjensen]

Originally Posted by anurag

That's interesting. I just verified this - around 4.8k ebooks published since June are available on both BoB and FW, but BoB has only 1.5k in mobi, and FW has 4k. OD supplies mobi books to BoB (but not to FW), so like HarryT said above, it might just be OD pulling out of Mobi, and not BoB specifically.

This is completely unfounded speculation but, perhaps OD has inked a deal in secret to be bought by a major competitor like Sony who would have a vested interest in not supporting mobi and they are beginning the process of phasing out non-ePub support while the accountants go over the monetary details

Recently I was involved in a buyout, we worked on buyout related tasks for almost 3 months before the deal was public. So it's not unreasonable, just, unfounded heh.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by anurag

That's interesting. I just verified this - around 4.8k ebooks published since June are available on both BoB and FW, but BoB has only 1.5k in mobi, and FW has 4k. OD supplies mobi books to BoB (but not to FW), so like HarryT said above, it might just be OD pulling out of Mobi, and not BoB specifically.

Yes, very interesting! Thank you.

[wallcraft]

Books on Board gets MOBI ebooks from both OverDrive and MobiPocket. FictionWise only gets them from MobiPocket. I checked their bestsellers and a couple were available in MOBI "OD" but none in MOBI "PX" (MobiPocket). So it might be that BoB has dropped MobiPocket as a supplier of new titles.

Note that if OverDrive had dropped MOBI, that would be bad news for MOBI lending library ebooks.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Books on Board gets MOBI ebooks from both OverDrive and MobiPocket.

That appears not to be the case. I publish a number of books through Mobipocket's "eBookBase" system. When I queried why they were not appearing on BoB, BoB told me that they didn't gets books directly from Mobi (hence my books were not appearing), but only from OD.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That appears not to be the case. I publish a number of books through Mobipocket's "eBookBase" system. When I queried why they were not appearing on BoB, BoB told me that they didn't gets books directly from Mobi (hence my books were not appearing), but only from OD.

Can you publish via OD?

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That appears not to be the case. I publish a number of books through Mobipocket's "eBookBase" system. When I queried why they were not appearing on BoB, BoB told me that they didn't gets books directly from Mobi (hence my books were not appearing), but only from OD.

This may be confirmation that they have dropped MobiPocket as a source of ebooks. The Advance Search at BoB lists MobiPocket (PX) and MobiPocket (OD), but the PX search always seems to return no ebooks. When the Kindle 1 came out, they very definitely did stock both OD and PX MobiPocket ebooks, because only the OD ones would work with kindlefix. OverDrive has way fewer MOBI ebooks than MobiPocket, so dropping PX on its own might explain the decline.

[JSWolf]

But, Overdrive is upping the number of ePub eBooks. So from that standpoint, Overdrive is better then Mobipocket.