Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
And what are those sound business reasons and how sound are they?
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This has been extensively discussed in the epub3 threads here and elsewhere as well in the regullar "why won't Amazon sell epubs" threads but I'll summarize:
There are three main reasons why Apple and Amazon run proprietary ebook formats:
1- The control their own fate - by using proprietary formats they get to define what features they support, when to support them, and how to support them. They do not rely on outside sources or certification as to what constitutes a valid file. They can tailor their format's capabilities to what their products can properly support. (For example, KF8 supports a commercially-useful subset of epub3 in ways that even the millions of Kindle 3and Kindle 4 readers can support.) They are also solely responsible for what the user experiences; in case of consumer problems there is no ping-pong between customer service departments.
2- Time to market - since proprietary solutions do not depend on external committees to decide what the format looks like and how it behaves, the implementation process is a lot shorter. Case in point: epub3, which after nearly 3 years is still in gestation, as an interoperable consumer product, while iBook and KF8 quickly adopted the commercially useful features of epub3 and added them to their formats and are already selling product with those features. The interoperable "open" epub crowd are still waiting on the Readium reference implementation. It might be another year before epub3-capable readers reach the market, whereas every Kindle from the K3 on is already KF8-capable.
3- Money - supporting the "open" interoperable epub DRM costs money; a fixed per file fee that amounts to anywhere from 4% to 25% of the sale price. It also costs a per-device fee as well as back-end server fees. Those are all costs that Apple and Amazon avoid that their interoperable competitors have to pay. So neither is going to go out of their way to help their enemies and competitors; they would rather give up sales. So far, the results are proving them right.
There are other, lesser technical issues as well as strategic considerations, but in the end it comes down to the fact that in the world of technology products history tells us that proprietary products have always out-performed committee standard products. Proprietary solutions get to market faster, evolve faster, and blend the capabilities of software and hardware better. Further, historically, companies that start out proprietary and get "open" religion after the fact end up as roadkill. And fast.
Two notable examples of once-dominant companies that lost their grip on the market in a single year, waiting on committee standards, are Netscape and Sony.
Sony stated out doing everything that Amazon does--proprietary format, dedicated ebookstore, eink reader, etc. They had the first mover advantage, outselling the field before Kindle showed up, and gave it up to "run with the pack", letting others define what the key features of their product were. In one year they went from industry leader to also ran, in three to after-thought. Since then it has been a constant struggle to catch up with the new leader and close followers.
Right now, the publishers--for good and valid reasons--only want to support one *distribution* format for their product but since their specification does *not* define a consumer-grade product, the vendors are free to craft the retail product as best fits their needs. And in a world where mainstream consumers care about as much about format as they care about DRM (i.e., near zero) the sharper retailers have taken advantage of this freedom to add as much proprietary value and differentiate their offerings as technology and economics allow them. And consumers have responded.
People buy into the various walled garden ecosystems because they like what they see. And the internal plumbing of the ebooks is not something consumers see or care about; they care about what shows up on screen, not *how* it gets there.
There is nothing irrational about the proprietary walled garden business model, it is just hard-headed business sense at work. It has its pitfalls but it also has its rewards. And until publishers change the rules on *their* end, the odds of major changes anytime soon are very low.