Quote:
Originally Posted by shalym
I just want to point out that Amazon is only one of *many* sellers that serves up proprietary data formats. Kobo, Apple, and Google Play all use proprietary formats as well if you download directly to the device/app from the store. Has anyone been able to reverse engineer Google's proprietary format yet? Has anyone tried? Or are they just leaving it alone because you are able to also download your book in epub format?
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Thats exactly the point. You are witnessing the "appification" of books. The creation of something inherently proprietary, so you can sell access to it as a service. So you can upsell your customers on better readability as a "paid feature".
Who needs ePUB, when you can sell your customers the same book in 15 segmented blobs with no real file extension, said exclusive features and in a format that was designed from the beginning to be encrypted for the sake of being encrypted - and never become archivable, even when you reverse it.
Oh and by the way - Kindle developer "mavens", you had your time, you had your chance - to talk about this in a civil manner amongst people that would understand most of the implications this brings with it.
You decided you wanted nothing to do with it, and instead make it a public matter. Now its my turn to see if the wider public has an interest in understanding what happened during the recent months without there being much interest in reporting on it.