Quote:
Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan
I think the real barrier is not technical but commercial. Which would be the real benefit for Amazon? If there's no benefit (customer welfare is not a reason, we are talking about an enterprise  ), I see no reason to change. And, if your device admits books from other bookstores, I think it's not good for you, so... |
Sony abandoned LRF and B&N ditched PDB in favor of ePub because it made good business sense. Amazon must be facing similar issues. Whether or not they adopt the same solution remains to be seen.
Rumor has it that Amazon is allowing some publishers to submit ePubs for conversion into Kindle format. This should improve the quality of Kindle books, since due to their consistent structure, valid ePub files convert easily into other formats. Too many Kindle books are released with glitchy formatting errors, caused by converting poorly structured source documents. This results in lost sales when books are returned, and additional customer service load, even when customers keep poorly formatted books. When/if the format problems are corrected, Amazon offers customers the choice to keep the existing version or replace it (which removes all annotations).
Moving to ePub would only open the Kindle device to additional bookstores if Amazon used Apple's Fairplay or Adobe's ADEPT DRM, and there's absolutely no reason for them to do that. If Amazon applies their current DRM to ePubs, Kindle would continue to be incompatible with the DRM from third party bookstores.