Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I know the Kindle is "big" in the USA, but even with the launch of the International Kindle, the same is really not true elsewhere, and certainly not here in Europe. Here it's Sony who's the big name in the market, not Amazon, and oretty much every European eBook store (other than Mobipocket, of course) sells ePub books, not Mobi.
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It is clearly now everyone else against Amazon, but only Amazon has an end to end distribution system. Amazon is the only shark in a pool of minnows. In the US B&N is trying to be Amazon mark 2, but they have no international reach and I don't see how they get to even 20% of the Kindle's US sales. Remember, before Amazon entered the market Sony was the biggest player here and although MOBI was the biggest ebook format Amazon only cared to the extent that it expanded its Kindle ebook library. For Amazon, Kindle ebooks are not MOBI ebooks. It will be interesting to see if the Windows Kindle Reader allows the user to change fonts for example (as all MobiPocket Readers do, but not Kindles).
I don't think Amazon can kill ePub, but they may be able to resist everything that is ePub-like. This isn't in their best interest so far as I can tell, but it also isn't a terrible mistake on their part. If they keep doing what they are doing now and if they capture a dominant fraction of the international English language ebook market despite virtually ignoring ePub, publishers may be forced to produce Kindle-specific versions of their ebooks.