E-Books in ePub format actually being sold (BooksOnBoard)

[JSWolf]

I think it will be happening. It's just a matter of sorting out whatever it is they need to sort.

[HarryT]

The nice thing about "standards" is that there are so many different ones to choose from .

[cftall]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The nice thing about "standards" is that there are so many different ones to choose from .

Ya just gotta love this guy. Great line Harry

[HarryT]

Hardly original, I regret to say .

[Alexander Turcic]

Official press release just came out:

“Readers of eBooks will be the ultimate winners,” according to Bob LiVolsi, CEO of BooksOnBoard. “This shift to EPUB ensures that more titles will be available to be read on a variety of software. For now, eBook readers will need to download the free Adobe Digital Editions software, which renders EPUB on screen. Other formats will be able to render the EPUB standard in the near future, as will some dedicated e-ink readers with new firmware releases. EPUB makes eBooks more accessible to everyone.”

LiVolsi adds, “It is important to remember that this is a step forward. While a significant one, more needs to be done by the industry to accomplish ultimate standardization for our customers. We are very protective of our customers and their digital reading needs. We are working closely with Adobe, MobiPocket, and OverDrive – all significant contributors towards standardization.”

[IceHand]

I wonder how the DRM of the Adobe Epub implantation works. I fear that future firmware upgrades that offer Epub support for e.g. the Cybook will not work with this form of DRM.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by IceHand

I wonder how the DRM of the Adobe Epub implantation works. I fear that future firmware upgrades that offer Epub support for e.g. the Cybook will not work with this form of DRM.

I assume it will have to be designed to support the Adobe ID DRM system.

Although I'm not sure how this will happen. From the Astak thread we have learned that the licensing requirements for support Mobipocket DRM state that no other DRM method can be supported on the device. This means Adobe ID DRM can not be added to a CyBook.

Sony can add it because their current DRM is their own... but once again, Sony has vendor tie-in with their propritary DRM... I know they have talked about supporting DE/AdobeID DRM but wouldn't that open up where you can buy a book. Unless Sony has decided to get out of the book business and just wants to sell devices.

We live in interesting times.

BOb

[delphidb96]

that are mentioned in this entry over at TeleRead.

http://www.teleread.org/blog/2006/10...e-format-hood/

[jerryleejr]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If Amazon ignores ePub, I think this will be a bad idea for Amazon. The 505 should have ePub sometime with the next firmware upgrade.

I would hope Sony would adopt this early it would show their commitment to the Market and ensure sales of current devices and the ones to come. I know it would be alot easier for the Consumers if their was a standard format and all they had to worry about is what Device they wanted to read on. Look at the whole HD DVD vs Blu-Ray battle, Would it have been so hard to just adopt One format and let the war rest with the players.

JJ

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by jerryleejr

Look at the whole HD DVD vs Blu-Ray battle, Would it have been so hard to just adopt One format and let the war rest with the players.

Depends on who you are. If you're a consumer, an industry standard is what you want. If the standards are still being evolved, and you're a manufacturer, you want your of doing it anointed as the standard. You've spent a good bit on R&D to develop and implement your method, and you don't want to write off the investment. You may even have begun producing devices using your approach, to get a jump on the market. You really don't want to eat those costs.

I was rather grimly amused at Blu-Ray vs HD DVD. Sony was the lead proponent of the Blu-Ray format. Finally, Sony has successfully set a standard, after failing with their Betamax videotape format, and being the only one to adopt the Memory Stick format for flash expansion cards. (And even Sony is moving away from Memory Sticks to SD cards.)
______
Dennis

[vivaldirules]

Help me out, again, please. Suppose Sony, Amazon, and everyone else adopt epub tomorrow and the mobile readers they sell support them. Publishers begin spitting out their works in that format and the vendors are selling them that way. Of course, each vendor (e.g., Sony, Amazon, etc.) will be attaching their own DRM to these. So when I go to buy a DRM'd ebook for my Sony Reader I will still only be able to buy them from Sony, right? So why should I care about epub? I can see the publishers would have to send out only one format of ebook to the vendors to sell and that might make some incredibly tiny difference to me by saving the publishers a few cents. But how else will this make a difference? Forgive me, I'm not trying to be argumentative - I'm just trying to understand something that I obviously don't right now.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Help me out, again, please. Suppose Sony, Amazon, and everyone else adopt epub tomorrow and the mobile readers they sell support them. Publishers begin spitting out their works in that format and the vendors are selling them that way. Of course, each vendor (e.g., Sony, Amazon, etc.) will be attaching their own DRM to these. So when I go to buy a DRM'd ebook for my Sony Reader I will still only be able to buy them from Sony, right? So why should I care about epub? I can see the publishers would have to send out only one format of ebook to the vendors to sell and that might make some incredibly tiny difference to me by saving the publishers a few cents. But how else will this make a difference? Forgive me, I'm not trying to be argumentative - I'm just trying to understand something that I obviously don't right now.

eBook format and DRM are seperate issues.

ePub simply defines a comprehensive ebook format. If everyone supports it (which I don't see happening any time soon), you should be able to view an ePub formatted wbook on whatever you use to read ebooks. I'd be in favor: right now I use a Palm OS PDA an an ebook reader (among many other things), and must maintain five different viewer programs to cover all the bases and remember which books are in which format. That's just nuts.

Different vendors will use different DRM, but that's a separate issue. Whether you'll have to buy from Sony will depend on whether the reader will support the DRM method used. But how will that be any different from what you have to do now?

Personally, I see ePub as an intermediate "master" format, used by publishers. They mark up the book and genetrate an ePub file. That can be sold directly to customers who can view it native (few, at the moment), but it can also be converted to other formats like Mobi and Sony LRF, and that can happen automatically as part fo the ebook creation process.

I want a device independent format that will let me download an ebook once, and read it on whatever I happen to have viewer software for. If the DRM gets in the way, I don't buy the DRMed title. I can reluctantly tolerate DRM as a means of soothing the fears of content providers. I won't tolerate it as a means of locking me into a specific vendor's solution.
______
Dennis

[vivaldirules]

Thank you, Dennis. I think you've told me that I can go back to sleep now.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

The new standard can also be used this way as evidenced by the fact that Mobipocket Reader on the PC can already import ePUB files and convert them to their proprietary format.

Since I hadn't heard that before, I had to test it on Mobi Reader for PC (Doubting Jordan... that's me). Sure enough, Mobi Reader opened and automatically converted an ePub document, then sent it as a Mobi format to my PDA. And that is exactly as it should be, device-wide and format-wide, as far as I'm concerned.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Since I hadn't heard that before, I had to test it on Mobi Reader for PC (Doubting Jordan... that's me). Sure enough, Mobi Reader opened and automatically converted an ePub document, then sent it as a Mobi format to my PDA. And that is exactly as it should be, device-wide and format-wide, as far as I'm concerned.

No surprise. An ePub file is a zip archive, containing text in XHTML files, CSS, images, and metadata in an OPF file.

I extracted the "Dynamic Alice" sample epub book to a directory and pointed Mobi Creator at the OPF file. Sure enough, it slurped it up and spit out a PRC format copy of the book. There are a few quirks, in XHTML markup Mobi doesn't understand, but it's a good start.
______
Dennis