Thread: Google to sell ebooks (NYT)
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Old 06-01-2009, 01:21 PM   #30
tomsem
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Quote:
Originally Posted by InlawBiker View Post
This will be good for the end customer - more places to buy means more competition and better services. As a Kindle owner I'm happy to have a new place to buy books, because I can convert ePub to Mobi. I'm assuming Google will use ePub, they'd be crazy to use a proprietary format.
ePub can be DRM'ed in which case conversion will not be straightforward (and would probably be considered illegal by publishers).

On the other hand, if Google can convince publishers not to use DRM, presumably they would provide automatic conversions for most ebooks to whatever format you wanted, including mobi/azw. Why would they want any barriers to sales?

In any case, this is excellent news for consumers and for the ebook market generally. Apparently ebooks still represent only a tiny fraction of the publishing market, so there is a lot of growth and innovation possible.

I like my Kindle well enough for now, but am looking with interest to future developments and innovations, wherever they come from.
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