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Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
• How lucrative is the Russian ebook market, compared to others (assuming the more profitable markets will be first in line for a roll-out)
• How will the Russian publishers react, i.e. will they play along or kick and scream
• How badly will piracy erode profits
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These are good points. There are certainly a vast market in Russia for ebooks. If I think about this, most Russian I know have been reading books on computer all the time. And buying and reading paper books as well.
Currently the paper book market is undergoing the same issues as in the US. It is slowly shrinking and publishers lack funds to make investments in ebook marketing.
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"Standards" are not going to fix anything or grow the market.
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It definitely worked for GSM networks.
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The reason why you need a full platform is because you need things to Just Work.
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What "just works" may be different things to different people. American may be perfectly happy with long term contracts, single book store who you have entrusted your credit card to and so on. Russians won't trust such system and no single vendor is capable in transforming online commerce of a big country in short time. Prepaid SIM cards worked better in Latvia but I don't know what would work for e-books. Probably cheap e-ink readers
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You need the ebook reader to be fairly easy to use; you need it to be easy to buy content; you need it to be easy to get content onto the device.
Nowadays you also need to smoothly coordinate the information across multiple devices.
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Absolutely agree.
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None of this is the job of a "standard;" rather it's a description of a "platform."
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I am not sure what you mean with "platform". I don't expect any sweeping changes in the current level of technology but interoperability between different devices and different content sellers is definitely required and it cannot be done without some standards, so to speak.
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I've found that generally speaking, most people don't know about, let alone care about, file format when it comes to digital content. You may care, and have valid reasons to care, but if the public doesn't care then it won't matter.
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It is true most people can't explain the difference but it doesn't mean that it is meaningless. I can't explain why I like e-ink better than LCD either but I prefer the former over the later. Aesthetics play very important role. Even the color and form of packaging have national preferences.