I noticed several years ago that every ebook seller offered some program for Microsoft Windows to let you read their ebooks on a PC.
That meant that if you wanted to read everyone’s ebooks, you needed a PC. The problem, of course, was that PCs were not as handy as dedicated ebook readers.
I gave up on DRMed books and went with a $200 7” ARM-based tablet. It read the non-DRMed books.
Then I was checking the web site for my tablet, and learned that if I installed the latest version of Andorid on it, I could read almost all the commercial, DRMed ebooks.
ONE READER CAN READ JUST ABOUT EVERYONE’S EBOOKS! It seems to me that if one device could replicate a Kindle, a Nook, and a few other devices…that news should have been a big headline.
Lately, a new standard has emerged from the publishers of DRMed ebooks: Android.
Amazon’s Kindle books can be read on an Android device:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...droid+standard
Barnes & Noble’s Nook books can be read on Android Devices:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...droid+standard
even Border’s books can be read on Android Devices.
Android appeals to publishers because they can keep their content locked inside their own executables. (I have DRM, but I will have to deal with it to get some books in the foreseeable future.)
How much longer before major text book publishers (e.g., Course Technology, Mcgraw Hill, Prentice Hall) adopt Android? If they did, we would have a very usable standard. Students and avid readers could buy their own Android-based reader, or Windows-based PC and read everything they wanted. Content would have been separated from the hardware (at last!)
When Jeff Bezos introduced the Kindle, he said it was a stop-gap to get Amazon into the ebook market until the ebook reader (hardware) market matured. I think it has.
So, is the ebook Tower of Babel we’ve all been dealing with over? Can we finally buy any Android tablet and read whatever we want?
Did anyone cover this?
Andy