Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
Amazon's tactics seem to be designed to defeat epub, not to let it coexist.
It's a format war, with Amazon on one side and everyone else on the other side. The ease of format shifting may mean there's a stalemate for a long time.
I'm just wondering--with Agency books, so price is eliminated as a factor, do people with devices that can have both Kindle and Nook/Kobo/etc. apps buy epubs or Amazon books? That would be an interesting survey.
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1- Everybody else? I'm thinking the Apple and B&N bookstores aren't on Adobe's side. Neither are the asian bookstores using XMDF. Or the CIS bookstores using FB2. Or the (way smarter) publishers that do DRM-free ebooks. Adobe DRM is hardly the universally-accepted format its supporters make it out to be nor is it survival up to Amazon. (Nor are we really talking about a format war between azw and ePub; it is really a duel between multiple DRM schemes, each as proprietary and obnoxious as the rest.) Whether ADEPT DRM "wins" the DRM "war" isn't up to Amazon; it is up to consumers who vote with their wallets. Ideally, both camps would lose and we'd get DRM-free ebooks. At that point ePub vs azw becomes meaningless.
2- You bring up a good point about the multifunction platforms; the PC, iPxxx, and Android devices. It might be interesting to see what a proper scientific poll reveals about the percentage of those users that get their ebooks from Amazon vs the Apple, B&N, Kobo, and (soon) Sony stores. Or Baen, Feedbooks, etc. It is going to have to come from a third party source cause none of the bookstores (other than Amazon) are going to have much to brag about, I suspect. After all, if they had something positive to report, they would've said it when Amazon started crowing that 25% of their ebook sales come from people who *don't* own Kindles.
The way I see it, with ebooks now fully mainstream consumer products, the same "read between the lines" rules that apply to other products are now in effect: those with good things to report plaster it all over the media, those without hunker down and keep quiet, hoping nobody notices.
By those guidelines we know the recent holiday season was good to Amazon, B&N, and Kobo, awful for Borders, and so-so for Sony, who ran out of product but aren't bragging about it.
