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Old 12-04-2008, 11:48 AM   #1
Shiren
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Most "future proof" format?

I just ordered a Sony Reader PRS-505 and I have some questions on ebook formats.

I will download ebooks that are public domain in any format since they will always be free.

I also plan to buy recent books. The Sony library looks interesting but I'm not so certain about their future with the increasing popularity of the Kindle. If Sony decides to stop selling ebooks in 5 years, the format will be pretty much dead.

I don't mind DRM. What I do mind is an ebook format going obsolete in a few years. I'd like to still be able to read my ebooks 30 years+ from now and not have to re-buy every book I liked.
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Old 12-04-2008, 12:16 PM   #2
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I just ordered a Sony Reader PRS-505 and I have some questions on ebook formats.

I will download ebooks that are public domain in any format since they will always be free.

I also plan to buy recent books. The Sony library looks interesting but I'm not so certain about their future with the increasing popularity of the Kindle. If Sony decides to stop selling ebooks in 5 years, the format will be pretty much dead.

I don't mind DRM. What I do mind is an ebook format going obsolete in a few years. I'd like to still be able to read my ebooks 30 years+ from now and not have to re-buy every book I liked.
ePub is the most future proof format: it's based on XHTML+CSS+SVG which are all very common web standards.

DRM though is a different question: while you will always be able to transform an ePub file into something else, if it's DRM protected and the DRM doesn't exist anymore, you won't be able to perform this conversion.
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Old 12-04-2008, 12:20 PM   #3
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If you're open to conversion, then buying a book in an easy to de-drm/convert format such as .lit may be one option. You can keep the original .lit files for future use should you change readers (or buy a reader that directly supports .lit) and in the mean time, explode .lit books to .html and then to the format used by your current reader.

Once more publishers start shipping ePub books, that may also be an option. So long as you can remove any DRM to allow future conversion or reading by hardware that doesn't support that type of epub drm yet would read epub otherwise.

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I don't mind DRM. What I do mind is an ebook format going obsolete in a few years.
That's a good enough reason to mind DRM imo. Book formats going obsolete wouldn't be as big a problem if DRM and proprietary nature of formats didn't get in the way.

At least with a format like .lit both those obstacles can be side-stepped so you can still read your books in the future.

I'm hoping the industry at some point will wake up and realise DRM doesn't really work and that a standard format (or even several formats so long as they're open standards) is beneficial to everyone (the music industry is starting to get this idea.)

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Old 12-04-2008, 01:02 PM   #4
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Book formats going obsolete wouldn't be as big a problem if DRM and proprietary nature of formats didn't get in the way.
You're absolutely right. So can we hope for a format that will last long term? Because of piracy, I don't think publishers will endorse a non DRM format for their books.

Does that mean we have to chose between the DRM formats that have have the best chances of surviving? If that's the case then we have to pick between Sony and Amazon.
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Old 12-04-2008, 01:40 PM   #5
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You're absolutely right. So can we hope for a format that will last long term? Because of piracy, I don't think publishers will endorse a non DRM format for their books.
I don't know what publishers care about. LIT has been broken since at least 2002 (or so I'm guessing by the copyright statement on most of the ConvertLIT source files) and Mobipocket and eReader are broken as of last year. If publishers were actually afraid of piracy they would stop publishing books in those formats.
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Old 12-04-2008, 01:48 PM   #6
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The best solution is to use the most advanced format with the weakest DRM: ePub files encrypted with eReader's DRM ?
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Old 12-04-2008, 02:26 PM   #7
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The best solution is to use the most advanced format with the weakest DRM: ePub files encrypted with eReader's DRM ?
Ha, yes! I'm with you 100%.
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Old 12-04-2008, 03:06 PM   #8
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I don't know what publishers care about. LIT has been broken since at least 2002 (or so I'm guessing by the copyright statement on most of the ConvertLIT source files) and Mobipocket and eReader are broken as of last year. If publishers were actually afraid of piracy they would stop publishing books in those formats.
They are afraid and with good reason. With digital distribution, traditional publishers are obsolete and they know it. That is the main reason why they are very reluctant to expand the ebook business. In the long run it will hurt them a lot:
Once ebooks catch on, prices will be driven down, maintaining a website is not the same as maintaining a printing press and a distribution business. That is why we see ebooks priced at the same or higher as paper books. That is why we see the lack of a universal ebook format. That is why we see DRM solutions and proprietary formats. That is why we see limited availability of ebooks. That is why we see series that only have a few books in ebook format.
Publishers are dragging their feet. They do not want ebooks to succeed at all. Their main goal is the keep ebooks as a niche market for geeks.
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Old 12-04-2008, 03:14 PM   #9
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The best solution is to use the most advanced format with the weakest DRM: ePub files encrypted with eReader's DRM ?
Really? Blast! Guess I'll have to give up my idea for taking over the ebook world with my "text files with ROT13" DRM encoding scheme.
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Old 12-04-2008, 03:19 PM   #10
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Really? Blast! Guess I'll have to give up my idea for taking over the ebook world with my "text files with ROT13" DRM encoding scheme.
pfff...
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Old 12-05-2008, 05:07 PM   #11
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Because of piracy, I don't think publishers will endorse a non DRM format for their books.
Because of piracy, I don't think the publishers will have much of a choice. The most future proof format is .txt or .pdf or .rtf. Lit has some nice things about it, mainly de-drmable and nice html layout usually.

I store the vast majority of my personal collection as text or pdf.
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Old 12-06-2008, 07:50 AM   #12
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I store the vast majority of my personal collection as text or pdf.
Hmmm. Those are two of the worst possible choices of format, IMHO - text because if has no formatting, and PDF because it's not an eBook format at all and is tied to a fixed page size.

Far, far better to store books in a "rich" format which can easily be converted to whatever "terminal" format one prefers for reading. I would always store books (as opposed to reading them) in a format such as HTML or RTF.
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Old 12-06-2008, 09:36 AM   #13
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Hmmm. Those are two of the worst possible choices of format, IMHO - text because if has no formatting, and PDF because it's not an eBook format at all and is tied to a fixed page size.
Text with the correct markup can be converted back into a proper eBook for all the formatting. We see this done at PG all the time and it works. PDF on the other hand is a nightmare to convert. But, if it's just plain text with no markup, then forget it, it'll ruint he reading experience for sure. Storing in PDF is a really bad idea.

Quote:
Far, far better to store books in a "rich" format which can easily be converted to whatever "terminal" format one prefers for reading. I would always store books (as opposed to reading them) in a format such as HTML or RTF.
For storing purchased eBooks, I think the best thing to do is remove the DRM and then convert to HTML and save both the DRM free copy and the exploded copy. If you've converted to another format, store the converted copy as well.

I do agree that HTML or RTF would work for storing eBooks. A properly made ePub edition without DRM would do as well.
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Old 12-06-2008, 12:55 PM   #14
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As some further reassurance, the native LRF (BBeb) format used by Sony is also XML based, so it is reasonably future proof in that it will always be possible to programmatically transform it to another XML based format (like ePUB). Assuming that the LRF is not DRM'ed that is...I don't think the ADE DRM has been cracked.

So far all the ebooks I have bought have been in a format from which the DRM can be removed. If and when I start buying DRM'ed ebooks I will buy ePUB format only, as I think this is likely to be the most stable format (ePUB, not the DRM that is).

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Old 12-10-2008, 07:52 AM   #15
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I don't get the whole piracy thing. I mean, I've literally thousands of paperbacks and hardcover books. I've bought from book stores, used book stores, second hand shops, and I've gotten books from other people when they were done reading. Why should an electronic edition be any different from the paper edition? If I can give a paperback to a friend and they are able to read it, how is that different from giving an electronic version to a friend so they can read it? Ah well...just waxing philisophical I guess..

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