Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
Remember, at the time that Amazon developed its format, epub didn't exist yet. Sony was still using LRF, and you could still buy books in MS's .lit format. Sony converted from LRF to epub about a year (or two?) after the kindle came out, IIRC.
I don't think that Amazon will convert to epub because it would be somewhat expensive to convert all of their books to epub, with, presumably, little real advantage to them. (Keep in mind that Sony didn't have a bookstore originally).
I also don't think that there would be much advantage to regular readers if Amazon converted, since I don't think that there's any chance in [insert hot place] that they would use adobe's drm. Amazon is a high volume, low margin business, and even paying 22c per DRM'd book would be a meaningful hit to their profit on many books. Moreover, this would mean giving adobe significant power over Amazon's products, which no company would like to do - this is probably why Apple went with its own DRM.
So essentially, you would end up with a market having all epub, but three incompatible forms of DRM, which might be worse than the current situation.
Finally, I think epub vs. mobi is not like Beta vs. VHS. It's trivial to convert from one (non-DRM'd) format to another - trivial for sellers and trivial for purchasers. I think it's more like .mp3 vs. .aa4 (or whatever format itunes uses) - switching between these formats is not a big deal.
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I don't disagree with most of what you, ftjorres and others have said, although why Amazon would have to mass convert all of their existing books just to sell epubs or why we would be left with only epub has me a bit puzzled. Even I am not dumb enough to think that Amazon jumping ship and abandoning their own format will happen soon if ever.
And Amazon inventing their own epub DRM seems unlikely As Sony or Kobo implementing it on their hardware so that people could buy books from Amazon would be just plain silly.
My original point was that if Amazon really wanted to hurt their competition, they could most likely do this by selling epubs as well as what they sell now. With or without Adobe DRM. Obviously they chose not to do this, whether for sound business reasons, plain stubbornness or a desire not to appear as the big bad wolf I do not know. My psychic abilities do not extend that far.
I will try to stop beating the poor dead horse now before it disintegrates
Helen