Quote:
Originally Posted by Moejoe
Why didn't the major publishers push for PDF (sized correctly) when ereaders were first introduced? Why would Sony back ePub if they could just as easliy license and affix DRM to PDF (an already marketible and known format)? Where are Adobe in all this and why haven't they been more agressive in placing PDF as the format for ebooks?
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Major publishers (in the anglosphere) may well consider a book that only sells a few thousand copies in its lifetime a failure. The (relatively speaking) negligible additional sales prospects to eBook device owners are simply not sufficient to motivate them to do a great job.
The 2 hours required to create half a dozen custom PDFs may well be 2 hours more than they want to spend on a title that has (by their estimate) already run its course (i.e.: most of their titles). They are too often near-constantly chasing the next Harry Potter to give a damn about how professional looking their backlist titles are on devices owned by a negligible percentage of their target audience.
Why would Sony support ePubs instead of pushing PDF files? I am guessing because they realize publisher will not make the proper effort, and their sales (particularly that of their hardware) does more greatly depend on how tolerable the reading experience is. Sony sees that getting publishers to make eBooks great is not possible, so it's trying to facilitate their being made good enough that people like us keep evangelizing the hardware.