Thread: Sony Reader Lives on with Rowling!
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Old 06-27-2011, 01:27 PM   #174
EatingPie
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres View Post
This is really important to you, huh?
That epub exterminates all possible competition?

Fair'nough, I guess...
Just bear in mind that it'll be a cold day in the amazon jungle when Bezos pays adobe for ADEPT.

I would politely suggest that the "format war" is a smokescreen and that the fight for ebook market share is a DRM war and that universal ebook interoperability will not come this decade or next. It may never arrive.
You have layed out the absolute worse case scenario!

A common format readable on all readers opens up the market. Right now, Amazon is not competing with B&N for books. B&N is not competing with Sony for books. Nobody competes. So price fixing is the result, and publishers dictate, sellers acquiesce, consumers pay.

Same goes for devices. What drives Kindle/Nook/Reader improving? Competition? Thing is, you buy based on bookstore, so they're not really competing on a level market. And R&D costs don't get spent, and e-Ink improves at a snail's pace.

We need to break the device/format lock-in. It's the only way to open the market. After all, I want to choose what Reader I use, and what bookstore I go to. I don't want to be stuck if, at some point, my favorite Reader starts sucking and all my books are DRM locked (yes, I can get around this, but the average consumer probably cannot).

Maybe it does not have to be a single format, but all formats must be supported by all devices. Same with all DRM. Though isn't it much easier to just pick one of each and run with it?

-Pie
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