What needs to occur is a new eBook paradigm. A lot of you are comparing Apple's iPod and iTunes to eBook sales. Apple's is the exact paradigm from which the publishing industry must shift away. In the Apple paradigm, Apple sells specially formatted songs that play only on Apple software. In the Apple paradigm, you wind up with dozens of companies selling songs that play only on their software.

The publishing industry needs to shift toward a paradigm similar to HTML and web browsers. One source (in HTML format) is interpreted by web browser software applications and displayed in whatever formatting deemed appropriate by each application. The web designer needs only to provide one source and that source can be displayed in any number of web browsers. It is of course true that web browsers don't always interpret HTML correctly and thus some cause problems in the way they display the HTML source. But they all can display HTML, and it is up to the individual software designers to verify the compliance of their web browsers with HTML.

Using a similar paradigm, there must be ONE and one only industry accepted source markup language for eBooks. I doubt this will ever happen without government intervention and arm twisting. With only one eBook markup language publishers would be more likely to publish books in this format. It would then be up to software developers to develop the eBook browser software that would enable us to read the eBooks. This would probably kill many companies like MobiPocket, but I don't care. There would be plenty of developers interested in developing eBook browsers for profit or for open source.

This paradigm would shift total publishing control back to the publishing houses where it needs to be. Little money would be made from developing eBook browsers, but companies like Sony could still make money from developing eBook hardware, although their hardware would no longer require only their eBook formats and therefore would considerably cut their profits. I say let the publishing houses dominate and control, just like they do with the printed books. To hell with Sony and other companies that have tried to piggyback onto the eBook industry and have just caused more confusion and less eBooks to be produced. Plenty of hardware and software would eventually be available for browsing eBooks and the publishing houses would be happy that they can produce on source file that can be displayed on any number of eBook browsers and hardware platforms. And they should be able to secure that file without jeopordizing sales. We consumers will be happy because we will have more eBook titles to choose from, and we will be able to read each eBook file using any number different eBook browsers. Even if the security limits us to one or two hardware licenses per eBook file, we will still be much better off.