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What do you mean by this?
Last time I looked Gutenberg invented the printing press but the general public did not have a printing press in their house. They had to go to a printer to get the book printed.
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Publishers have lost this ability under the new Amazon paradigm as well. Its actually the distributer that now has the sole ability to "create a book" ("the master copy").
The idea is, that as long as you leave this ability to be at least "somewhat known" and "distributed" - you cant inflict structural powerplays as in "this is my format - and I tell you how to...". We are talking about books for gods sake - do I really have to tell you how the "walled garden model" usually goes for those?
Also - the ability for users themselves to "edit" books is still as vital as ever - because Amazon didn't put any quality checks for formated text into the publishing workflow - and as a result they are now combating a low quality distributions segment within their publishing ecosystem. With negative labeling - btw. Ask any developer how well that usually goes..
Also I am not exactly sure if I am sad to see people actually having obtained this ability. Its one of the cornerstones of the argument we make for using Calibre, btw. Yes, manage your library - but also be able to convert those books to keep them accessible after the company seizes to support a format.
Its the cultural argument - do we manage culture, or will a company do so, that we not only pay for that privilege, but also pay for being able to access it. A private company - with ambitions to replace (I think thats fair...) public lending systems for example.