Will Kindle become the ereader orphan?

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by Belle2Be

Why is no-one ever ranting about how come Google or B&N don't support azw or mobi?

Because Amazon is the evil empire and hence is the one who has to change. Nevermind that Nook and Kobo chose EPub after the Kindle had been out for a couple of years. Or that Sony started with Mobi and moved to EPub. It is all Amazon's fault.

[joblack]

Originally Posted by GoversAU

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news...114-19q3i.html

I just don't see how Amazon can hold the line on this. There must come a time, and soon, when they provide Epub capability on Kindles.

Apple is getting away by selling crappy proprietary formats (iTunes, iPhone/iPad Apps, ...) for a long time. I can't see why Amazon shouldnt go for it too.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Belle2Be

Why is no-one ever ranting about how come Google or B&N don't support azw or mobi?

Because the obvious answer is "because Amazon owns, and controls access to & use of, those formats."

Epub is an open standard; anyone with a text editor can make their own epubs from scratch. Since the Kindle has a web viewer, it obviously has some form of .html support; adding .epub support should be a very simple matter, as software goes.

The real issue isn't fileytype support, but DRM; if Amazon added non-DRM'd epub support, they'd be flooded with complaints from people who bought a B&N ebook and then discovered it won't open on the Kindle. And Amazon doesn't want to pay for ADE support.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

Because Amazon is the evil empire and hence is the one who has to change. Nevermind that Nook and Kobo chose EPub after the Kindle had been out for a couple of years. Or that Sony started with Mobi and moved to EPub. It is all Amazon's fault.

Sony started with LRF, its own proprietary format, before switching to epub. And it was out before Amazon; it could not have chosen to use "Amazon's format" for customer convenience, because Amazon didn't have one when the Sony Readers were first sold.

[JeremyR]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

The real issue isn't fileytype support, but DRM; if Amazon added non-DRM'd epub support, they'd be flooded with complaints from people who bought a B&N ebook and then discovered it won't open on the Kindle. And Amazon doesn't want to pay for ADE support.

I don't think it's just a matter of paying, it's basically turning over control of their e-book business to Adobe.

Why would they want to do that? Be completely reliant on a competitor for a big part of your business? It doesn't bother Sony and Kobo because they don't really have much of an e-book business (and B&N uses their own scheme)

[JeremyR]

Originally Posted by joblack

Apple is getting away by selling crappy proprietary formats (iTunes, iPhone/iPad Apps, ...) for a long time. I can't see why Amazon shouldnt go for it too.

But all e-books still use a proprietary format for DRM. Either Adobe or Amazon. Why should Amazon exchange their proprietary format that they own, for one that they don't own?

[Tiersten]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Epub is an open standard; anyone with a text editor can make their own epubs from scratch. Since the Kindle has a web viewer, it obviously has some form of .html support; adding .epub support should be a very simple matter, as software goes.

AZW is Mobipocket with a slightly different DRM scheme. Mobipocket has documentation on the file format and is HTML based as it is an implementation of the "Open eBook Publication" standard. Anybody can create a .mobi/.prc file from scratch if they wish.

Mobipocket is an older standard than ePub.

[wvcherrybomb]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

Because Amazon is the evil empire and hence is the one who has to change. Nevermind that Nook and Kobo chose EPub after the Kindle had been out for a couple of years. Or that Sony started with Mobi and moved to EPub. It is all Amazon's fault.

Yep. What she said.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Tiersten

AZW is Mobipocket with a slightly different DRM scheme. Mobipocket has documentation on the file format and is HTML based as it is an implementation of the "Open eBook Publication" standard. Anybody can create a .mobi/.prc file from scratch if they wish.

No, it's exactly the same DRM as any other DRM'd Mobi file. The sole difference is that it uses Amazon's private DRM server.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by janvanmaar

That time has already come, in Europe at least. Try to search for a few (DRM'ed) German, French, Dutch, Spanish,... books in mobi and then try it in epub. Unless your sample is very small or skewed in some way, you will find a clear epub win. Except of UK, Amazon is totally loosing the battle in Europe.

It isn't so much that they are losing, as that they aren't fighting.
The UK is the only European country that Amazon are actually trying to sell Kindles to. Last year your statement would have been true of the UK as well, but once Amazon decided it wanted to be in the market, it came in with a bang. Who is to say that the same wouldn't happen if it targeted Germany or France next?

[joblack]

I must say I have a lot of epubs which I'm reading on my Kindle. Calibre does a great job to convert mobi <---> epub without any (seeable) conversion lost.

Well, there is the DRM obstacle but this is another discussion point.

Btw. all the B&N Nook guys out there. Your epub format isn't ADE compatible as well and uses a proprietary DRM scheme. So you're not that different to the Amazon guys.

[snipenekkid]

Originally Posted by GoversAU

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news...114-19q3i.html

I just don't see how Amazon can hold the line on this. There must come a time, and soon, when they provide Epub capability on Kindles.

the real problem is ADE devices require exclusivity for DRM content. But the original argument could be flipped into "why don't other reader device makers work with Amazon to get Amazon's reader software on their devices?" Of course the same roadblock applies to Amazon as well, they require no other DRM content reader(s) embedded in the device, I assume, firmware. Or am I thinking those were just the MOBI requirements after Amazon's acquisition of Mobipocket?

No matter this entire tying of a device to a given store and format is going to eventually lose out. And why? Because tablets all but eliminate the matter as B&N, Amazon and who knows who else all have reader software for about any OS platform which works around the whole exclusivity inanity.

So maybe the question is, which online store will move first and release a TABLET device rather than a dedicated reader. This is what Apple did and why? Because it makes sense and ironically is one of the few times Apple ever did not limit their users from accessing content to the point of inducing compromise for the end user.

[DMB]

Originally Posted by janvanmaar

That time has already come, in Europe at least. Try to search for a few (DRM'ed) German, French, Dutch, Spanish,... books in mobi and then try it in epub. Unless your sample is very small or skewed in some way, you will find a clear epub win. Except of UK, Amazon is totally loosing the battle in Europe.
It is true that just switching to epub would not help dramatically: it is also about too little advertisement and too small focus. The reader has to be ordered from US, US warranty conditions apply etc. However, it is likely that Amazon will try to reconsider and focus more on Europe at some point - and at that point they might HAVE TO start supporting epub.

But there is a problem no doubt to do with all sorts of stupid regulations or monopolies that stops one from buying all sorts of stuff across European boundaries. For example I wanted a DVD of a French film. It wasn't available on amazon.co.uk. There is no amazon.ch (they own the domain name but you get transferred to Germany). It wasn't available from amazon.de. In the end I ordered it from amazon.fr, but couldn't get it delivered to Switzerland, so I had to have it delivered to an address in France and eventually sent on to me. If the same sort of thing applies to ebooks, then the market will be very fragmented and in any case it is split by language.

[emalvick]

Originally Posted by joblack

Apple is getting away by selling crappy proprietary formats (iTunes, iPhone/iPad Apps, ...) for a long time. I can't see why Amazon shouldnt go for it too.

This is what I think of when I think of the original post...

Apple has been selling and continues to be tops in the music market, even though the Itunes format is fairly proprietary (I know very little about the Apps side). Yet, people can easily go both ways in buying from other sources (i.e. Amazon's MP3 store, etc.) and still use them on the IPod, etc. or one can buy I-Pod music and convert it to MP3 fairly easily... Heck even before the ITunes store removed DRM it didn't take much effort to get music from the ITunes format to a non-DRM or MP3 format.

The EBook industry is no different than the music in that regard. It is kind of sad really because you'd think the EBook industry would try to learn a little from the music one, but unfortunately it didn't.

[thorn]

the epub argument seems silly. .mobi's been around for a long time. epub isn't some magical, better format. the nook reads epub. so what. that doesn't mean nook owners can buy ebooks from kobo or from the sony store. the bigger question, is when will *everything* we want to read be available for whichever reader we've decided to adopt, including library borrowing. there are all kinds of german books i'd like to be able to download from german bookseller sites, but there are no kindle editions; and even if i had a sony reader, i wouldn't know whether i'd be permitted to download the book until the moment of attempted purchase, when there's a good chance my purchase would be shut down because of geographical restrictions. because -- why? they want me to buy some translation into english? that ain't happening. i don't read translations of anything i could read in the original.

point being, we all have our specific reading needs/desires *which should be fulfilled*. there are a lot of bigger problems than format. format is invisible to me as a reader. if my device will read it, it'll read it. feedbooks and manybooks allow us to choose our preferred format, as does o'reilly. it's when my device *won't* read something i'd like to read that i start grumbling. i will also grumble if a book i've purchased is suddenly unreadable by any device i have. but i really don't give a special rip about epub, because lack of epub isn't the problem. drm, geographical restrictions, and which formats are readable by devices are the problem.