Kindle in an ePub World

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

It's not. It's only in America, and hardly a supermajority even there.

True. But it is the most widely available, and it does get the most press.

[pilotbob]

Wallcraft... do you know for a fact that Amazon doesn't allow the publisher to submit the mobipocket format directly rather than submitting an epub and allowing some black box conversion?

Just because they accept ePub doesn't preclude them from accepting a well formatted mobi format... right?

BOb

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Just because they accept ePub doesn't preclude them from accepting a well formatted mobi format.

They do accept DRM-free MOBI via their DTP platform. I don't know if they accept DRM-free MOBIs from major publishers.

Note that MobiPocket only accepts DRMed MOBIs. This is important, because Calibre can only produce DRM-free MOBI and MobiPocket's publicly available tools can't add DRM to an existing DRM-free MOBI ebook.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Do you believe that the technically inferior format (by which I assume you're referring to Mobipocket, as used by Amazon?) is likely to win? Amazon are showing every sign of trying to "kill off" Mobi, as witnessed by the fact that virtually every device which previously supported Mobi DRM either has, or is in the process of, switching over to ePub.

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.

I think there's very little likelyhood that Mobi will "win" the format wars; ePub is already in a dominant position, and becoming more so as each new ePub-supporting device is release. I think personally that it's only a matter of time until Amazon are forced, for good commercial reasons, to support ePub.

I think it's certainly possible, yes:

• Amazon is the only 800 pound gorilla in digital publishing
• the Kindle gets the most press coverage of any liseuse (it's certainly the most well known)
• it's available in more countries than all Epub based readers combined
• more ebooks are available for the Kindle than for Epub

TBH, I don't think either format will win. In fact, I question the assumptions of this whole discussion. The problem with discussing the format wars as a binary solution set (Epub vs Kindle) is that it ignores all the other formats out there. Neither of these formats will kill off PDF, for example. What makes people think one will kill off the other?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Note that MobiPocket only accepts DRMed MOBIs. This is important, because Calibre can only produce DRM-free MOBI and MobiPocket's publicly available tools can't add DRM to an existing DRM-free MOBI ebook.

Mobi Creator can produce books with DRM, and as you know, it's trivial to "explode" a DRM-free Mobi book to its OEB source, and then use Mobi Creator to rebuild it with DRM (should one be perverse enough to wish to do so!). Mobi Creator can even automatically upload your built book to the "eBookBase" publishing system for you - it's really a pretty smart piece of software if you're handling DRM Mobi.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Note that it is already common for a publisher to provide a single ebook format to its ebook distributors, with the distributors doing the conversion to other formats.

I'm wondering about this statement. Maybe there are other factors involved, but it seems to me that if this is true then it would make sense for the distributor to offer the book in any format the buyer wanted (or at least any format the distributor supports). Of course I'm thinking of FW here and they seem to have many books that are only offered in one or two formats.

Why limit their market unless they must? (Before someone mentions GR, I'll point out that they limit their market that way because the publisher insists on it. I can maybe see the publisher insisting that the book be sold in a DRM'd format, but can't see why they'd restrict it any further than that.)

So, it seems to me that either the statement isn't true or, possibly, that it's a fairly recent innovation and the books that are offered in limited formats are older ones that were provided in those formats by the publishers.

Or some other reason entirely that I just haven't been able to think of.

[DaleDe]

By distributor Wallcraft was not saying the dealer. Many Publishers contract out the conversion of eBook formats, the adding DRM, and other tasks such as interfacing to dealers. This is the sense in which the term distributor is being used. There are additional costs to the publisher to add additional formats.

Dale

[EowynCarter]

Oh ! First letter don't shows like that for me. It don"'t seam to have crappy margin too.
How does it show on the sony reader itself ?

Mmm, either you don't have the same version than i do, or ade's making a mess of it. Where did you got yours ? American or english edition ?

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Where did you got yours ? American or english edition ?

I got the ePub from Books on Board, US edition. I confirmed that Pablo's description of the Kindle version was correct for US Kindles.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

I got the ePub from Books on Board, US edition. I confirmed that Pablo's description of the Kindle version was correct for US Kindles.

One point for the US publisher then. Uk one have no cover too.
Why do they have to do the job twice anyway ? Coudn't they agree with each other ?

I'll be intersted by that one ccs. I can't figure how get this result while being ade proof. Or maybe Sony did some fix to support the first-letter css parameter ?

[advocate2]

I bought the Kindle DX and the Sony 505 last summer. At first i used the DX quite a bit to read out of copyright classics. The machine is stunning, but I did think the keyboard and wireless were factors not important to me.

Then my County library started a large ebook acquisition program which is now up to about 5000 books. My wish list has over 100 books. Honestly, my DX has sat on my coffee table as a discussion item. Today I bit the dust and put my DX up on EBay. I just don't use it for the kind of reading I am doing. Adios Amazon.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

By distributor Wallcraft was not saying the dealer. Many Publishers contract out the conversion of eBook formats, the adding DRM, and other tasks such as interfacing to dealers. This is the sense in which the term distributor is being used. There are additional costs to the publisher to add additional formats.

Must be something I'm not quite getting as your statement seems, to me, to conflict with Wallcrafts. But don't bother trying to explain it-it's not that important. Books are available in the formats in which they're available & that's really all there is to it. Why doesn't matter and I'm glad if they are finally agreeing on a common format (and even more glad that it's ePub).

Personally, my books are all in mobi (*not* Kindle!) but that's for my convenience. I'm gradually converting my archives to ePub even though I keep my active library in mobi (I like the MobiReader features better than those of any other reader I've tried-so far, at least). My preferred reader can change at any time so I prefer a 'common' format for my archives-and for that, ePub seems best.

[kennyc]

A few months back when I decided to purchase an ereader I started by looking at what was available and it quickly became clear to me that epub was the future and the Amazon was perhaps the biggest, but it was completely proprietary. I went the Sony direction. I've since added a Kindle as well because Amazon does have books and prices better than others and as long as I can remove the drm (for personal use only) and convert then I've got the best of the disparate worlds. I do believe once the tide builds enough from both the epub competition and pressure from the suppliers (for a single format) builds Amazon will eventually support epub as well.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

[Terisa de morgan]

Well, you can't forget a thing. Amazon, mainly, sell books. If they see their sales decrease, they will make the proper change (I think). In my country, my world isn't ePub, it's PDF at best, so format doesn't matter.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Well, you can't forget a thing. Amazon, mainly, sell books. If they see their sales decrease, they will make the proper change (I think). In my country, my world isn't ePub, it's PDF at best, so format doesn't matter.

French publishers are going ePub, pdf sometimes, much to my despair.
I would conssider a kindle DX with ePub support (even no-drm ePub support), but wihout ? I'll wait for iRex, or anyone who support ePub.