Wall Street Journal Buy Amazon or Barnes & Nobles?

[pking36330]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Yes, it will. The question is not whether it will support ePub but whether it will use its own flavor of DRM wrapper so that other devices that also support ePub will not be able to support B&N ePub books.

Originally Posted by pking36330

Citation please.

OK, no reponse means that no one here knows of any written statement by B&N indicating they will support ePub, right? To clarify:

To date, B&N has only discussed support of their proprietary eReader format (Palm reader based) for Windows, Mac, and a variety of mobile platforms (currently only the iPhone and Blackberry). B&N has not discussed ePub support as a part of their eBooks marketing plan or eBooks store implementation.

[zacheryjensen]

Originally Posted by pking36330

OK, no reponse means that no one here knows of any written statement by B&N indicating they will support ePub, right? To clarify:

To date, B&N has only discussed support of their proprietary eReader format (Palm reader based) for Windows, Mac, and a variety of mobile platforms (currently only the iPhone and Blackberry). B&N has not discussed ePub support as a part of their eBooks marketing plan or eBooks store implementation.

I'm quite certain this article is conflating the original electronic reader partnership announced with Plastic Logic–and their reader that will support ePub–and the BN store itself as meaning BN will use ePub as their format of choice. The other rumor is that BN will move to ePub eventually but use their own DRM (which, frankly, I'm fine with. All DRM sucks but if they follow the eReader model then at least my old credit card numbers can act as passwords long after any servers have gone and died.)

I don't believe there is any actual official word, however, that BN is actually going to change anything about their current store's format.

That said, they do make a big deal about their books being readable on many devices. They launch with a promotion of their support for PC, Mac, iPhone and a little later Blackberry. It isn't a huge jump in logic to suspect they would gladly move to a new format if it meant they could further bolster this claim. The only thing that stops me short of just believing the rumor is the DRM thing. Even if they switch to ePub, if they do not support ADE, they will not support any more devices than they would with their own format. In fact, if they ditched eReader they would have even fewer targets.

As it is, at least I can still use Stanza for BN purchased books. Take that Amazon!

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by zacheryjensen

As it is, at least I can still use Stanza for BN purchased books. Take that Amazon!

Since Amazon now owns Stanza, they'll be happy to "take that". Who knows what will happen with Stanza in the future. I imagine it's desktop component will be able to read Kindle books in the future.

[zacheryjensen]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

Since Amazon now owns Stanza, they'll be happy to "take that". Who knows what will happen with Stanza in the future. I imagine it's desktop component will be able to read Kindle books in the future.

Yeah that's exactly why I said "take that." As in, I'm using the free software they now "own" to read books purchased from competitors...

Also on your second statement, the desktop component of Stanza is horrid as a reader. I can't think of any desktop reader I've ever used that was worse. My opinion of course...