Quote:
Originally Posted by Moejoe
.azw would be and probably is King in North America, but let's not forget that most of the world doesn't live in the USA and own a Kindle.
You can keep your fixed, inflexible, looks-like-a-book but doesn't act how we expect things to act in a digital age, format. And I'll have my standards compliant, scalable, one-file-fits-all, based on web technologies ePub standard.
The one thing you never seem to grasp in all these arguments is that I, and many other people, don't want to 'replicate' a book with our file format. We want a format that 'fits' how we read now, not how we used to read in the non-digital world. Same can be said for the web itself. I can't replicate a 'magazine' layout on the web, not with any accuracy, but why would I want to? The principles of design change dependent on the medium and the media used. Blogs are the equivalent of magazines on the web, note that word, 'equivalent'. Not the same, but equivalent.
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Sure, there are people who only want content delivered to them in whatever ugly but convenient way possible.
There are many different ways to categorize "us" and "them", and while basically all of them are fallacious and largely irrelevant, here's a fun one.
You're in a bookstore looking for a classic book you've read before and liked and decided to purchase (to read, not to invest in or build a library with). You see 5 copies of the book by different publishers in different sizes and grades of quality. Let's just imagine the following:
Book A) A bit bigger than the rest, classic cloth hardcover with stitch binding, good quality and design, $30
Book B) Almost same size as Book A, but perfect-bound (glue bound) trade paperback, good paper and design, $20
Book C) Mass market paperback, passable paper and OK printing, but not particularly good. Fairly compact, $10
Book D) Somehow-legal txt file printed with an inkjet in a big font on low-grade recycled paper, in a cheap D-ring binder, A4 sized $2
Book E) Another mass-market-sized paperback but from a different publisher with much better paper, cover art, and typography than Book C. $18
Which one would you buy? No shuffling like "depends on what kind of book..." allowed.
I'm a Book E type usually, but I enjoy A for my favorites and will buy B when E is unavailable. If my only choice is C, then I'll have to think twice before purchasing.