Quote:
Originally Posted by speedlever
That being said, I view the format "wars" as a blight on the entire ebook world. From a consumer perspective, I fail to see why I can't read the book of my choice on the device of my choice.
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The mechanism: DRM.
The reason: Device lock-in.
If you could just read the book of your choice on the device of your choice, you might decide that some other company sells a reader you like more than the Kindle. So you'd buy one of those readers, and you'd buy your books somewhere else, too. As it is now (the way Amazon likes it) you would have to throw away your entire library and buy it again. Since most people aren't going to do that, and even fewer will as ebook libraries get bigger, they'll stick with buying new Kindles, and since they have Kindles (either the physical or virtual model) they'll buy books in a format they can use ... it's a circle. It works out great for Amazon. For the people buying the books, of course, not so much.
Oh, and to correct a few misconceptions that have crept in:
There is no such thing as "Kindle format"; the Kindle is a device, and it uses a form of .mobi format.
The Kindle was not the first ebook reader, or even close to it. It was actually fairly late to the market.