Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
That's a fair point. Kobo has an obligation for DRMed EPUB3 books to render well on Kobo devices/apps. And under their current system, DRMed EPUB3s will only be available (for all practical purposes) on Kobo devices or in Kobo reading apps--no harm no foul with the proprietary kepub format or DRM (relatively speaking of course) in that scenario.
Where things go a bit pear-shaped is with DRM-Free EPUB3s. Like the ones being discussed in this thread. While providing these ebooks in DRM-Free proprietary formats (kepub) to customers who utilize your devices/apps is perfectly understandable (if not entirely commendable), not making the original DRM-Free EPUB3 available as a separate download (as is done with DRM-Free EPUB2s) is either a huge, fairly long-running oversight; or it's a conscious decision. A link to download the original publisher-submitted DRM-Free EPUB3 isn't any more complicated to implement than the link to the original publisher-submitted DRM-Free EPUB2 is. So at this stage of the game, I have to assume that they just don't want to provide a (working) link to the original publisher-submitted DRM-Free EPUB3.
Even if the reason for not providing those downloads happens to make good business sense, it's no excuse for implying that a user CAN, in fact, download the DRM-Free EPUB3 (the big blue button that says click me to do just that) when they can't.
Honest mistakes are fixed when they get brought to the right person's attention. Kobo KNOWS no one can download/sideload a DRM-Free EPUB3 from them (CS told me so in their response), and yet still they continue to mislead people into thinking they can.
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I think they also have the obligation to have a non kepub version for the Sony customers they took over too. I wonder how the kepub only books look when shopping from a Sony ereader that now connects to the Kobo store. Does it appear that they would work on a Sony, or do the books not show up at all?