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FizzyWater · 08-20-2011, 05:30 PM

The Overdrive people were in town today to demonstrate ebooks to folks at my local library.

I went to see if they were demo-ing the updates that will include the Kindle ebooks. Nope.

However, when I stopped to talk to the folks there (the table was manned by two people from Overdrive and two people from my library system), I specifically asked them about it. The answers were (sadly) vague, but one of the Overdrive guys told me flat out that "mobipocket is going away" as a choice. (He said mobipocket was to ebook software what DOS was to operating systems!) I asked how that was possible, since that's basically the Kindle format, and he said Amazon would be using epubs.

When I pushed on that point, he started to say something but stopped - it sounded like he was going to say that Amazon was going to somehow wrap their format around the epub, but I think he didn't want to say something he was 100% sure on.

I had read on Overdrive's website that you wouldn't have to know what kind of book to borrow, that you'd just pick what could be read on your reader. I wondered what that meant - Sony can ePub and PDF, but I'd rather not borrow a book if the only option was PDF. The answer I got (although I'm not sure I believe it) is that everything was converting over to ePub.

They also said a similar simplification would be going on with the audibooks from Overdrive (that you'd pick your gadget and get to download the format that works for you). Again, I'd prefer MP3 to WMA, even if I can play WMA, so I still wish they were clearer on how this would work.

But I suppose we'll find out soon enough...

08-20-2011, 05:30 PM	#16
FizzyWater You kids get off my lawn! Posts: 4,220 Karma: 73492664 Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Columbus, Ohio Device: Oasis 2 and Libra H2O and half a dozen older models I can't let go of	The Overdrive people were in town today to demonstrate ebooks to folks at my local library. I went to see if they were demo-ing the updates that will include the Kindle ebooks. Nope. However, when I stopped to talk to the folks there (the table was manned by two people from Overdrive and two people from my library system), I specifically asked them about it. The answers were (sadly) vague, but one of the Overdrive guys told me flat out that "mobipocket is going away" as a choice. (He said mobipocket was to ebook software what DOS was to operating systems!) I asked how that was possible, since that's basically the Kindle format, and he said Amazon would be using epubs. When I pushed on that point, he started to say something but stopped - it sounded like he was going to say that Amazon was going to somehow wrap their format around the epub, but I think he didn't want to say something he was 100% sure on. I had read on Overdrive's website that you wouldn't have to know what kind of book to borrow, that you'd just pick what could be read on your reader. I wondered what that meant - Sony can ePub and PDF, but I'd rather not borrow a book if the only option was PDF. The answer I got (although I'm not sure I believe it) is that everything was converting over to ePub. They also said a similar simplification would be going on with the audibooks from Overdrive (that you'd pick your gadget and get to download the format that works for you). Again, I'd prefer MP3 to WMA, even if I can play WMA, so I still wish they were clearer on how this would work. But I suppose we'll find out soon enough...