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brecklundin · 12-07-2007, 04:08 AM

Steve:

I agree for sure...I have been thinking quite a bit about the whole Kindle thing. In order to prove to the publishers & their bean-counters perhaps Amazon had no choice but to begin with sort of a closed-system. This way they do offer a degree of control over the content.

I also like that we can get existing content converted into Kindle format. And for now Amazon is taking the "don't ask don't tell" approach to the conversion.

Still I find the closed systems questionable at best...especially since we have seen so many efforts come up short.

Plus it seems the majority of my favorite authors not only have few-to-no titles in ANY ebook format but many of those guys are dead...and it seems the relatives of dead authors are so greedy about royalties there is likely no hope of conversion unless there is a single fairly secure file format with DRM so the books can be read on the 100s-of-millions to BILLIONS of existing devices out there....are you listening whoever holds the "rights" to the works of Edward Abbey??? H. Beam Piper...etc...

But back to the topic...no, I still see no "price war" in the short term...not until there is some uniformity of content format that equates to portability of that content...and given that ebooks were promised to use when the first PC's were evolving I fear the ice caps will melt before we see uniformity...

12-07-2007, 04:08 AM	#60
brecklundin Banned Posts: 1,906 Karma: 15348 Join Date: Jun 2007 Device: mine	Steve: I agree for sure...I have been thinking quite a bit about the whole Kindle thing. In order to prove to the publishers & their bean-counters perhaps Amazon had no choice but to begin with sort of a closed-system. This way they do offer a degree of control over the content. I also like that we can get existing content converted into Kindle format. And for now Amazon is taking the "don't ask don't tell" approach to the conversion. Still I find the closed systems questionable at best...especially since we have seen so many efforts come up short. Plus it seems the majority of my favorite authors not only have few-to-no titles in ANY ebook format but many of those guys are dead...and it seems the relatives of dead authors are so greedy about royalties there is likely no hope of conversion unless there is a single fairly secure file format with DRM so the books can be read on the 100s-of-millions to BILLIONS of existing devices out there....are you listening whoever holds the "rights" to the works of Edward Abbey??? H. Beam Piper...etc... But back to the topic...no, I still see no "price war" in the short term...not until there is some uniformity of content format that equates to portability of that content...and given that ebooks were promised to use when the first PC's were evolving I fear the ice caps will melt before we see uniformity...