ZDNet’s Jason Perlow has recently written a piece arguing that Amazon’s lack of willingness to adopt ePub ebook format is the ‘final barrier for Kindle adoption’. His argument is based on the issue of content standardization. We know that ePub has been set as the industry standard ebook format by IDPF, and Apple, Sony, B&N & Kobo have adopted the ePub format. Of course there are some issues with Amazon’s proprietary ebook format:
……there’s the issue that customers don’t want to have to re-buy their content. Presumably, if you’re a SONY eReader or a NOOK user, you don’t want to have to take your entire library and have to re-buy it on the Kindle if you want to switch to that platform. Ideally, you’d like to take those DRM ePub files and just drag and drop them between the devices.
The other issue is that you can’t borrow ebook from library for Kindle, and most of the libraries lend ebooks in ePub format. There are two ways this issue can be resolved:
- Amazon should allow ePub format on Kindle, Or
- Kindle should have function to borrow books from library
The implementation of the second option really depend on availability of ebooks in Kindle’s proprietary format. In other words, it’s important for the libraries to carry ebooks in Kindle format, and Amazon must allow Kindle books to be lent unlimited number of devices. The question is that whether Amazon wants to do that.
There are some discussion on the net about standardization of ePub format, and some bloggers have already announced the death of ePub in the face recent innovation of HTML 5. If there is uncertainty regarding the survival of ePub then the acceptance of ePub by Amazon wouldn’t finally help that much in the long run. The ebook and ereader market is still in their very early stage of development, and average consumers never think about the format of ebooks they purchase as long as they know the ebooks can be read on many devices, not only on a particular one. That’s what Amazon does with its Kindle Apps for iPhone/iPodTouch, iPad, Blackberry, PC & Mac. You can even buy ebooks from Kindle store without having a Kindle though that was not the case when Kindle was first released in 2007.
I liked one comment by “mwagner” in response to ZDnet’s piece:
Putting DRM on an open format just defeats the purpose of the open format because DRM keeps you from porting the content to an “unapproved” device.
It really doesn’t matter if Kindle accepts the open EPUB format or not if no one makes protected content in that format. You can talk about open standards all that you want but most vendors do not create content in those standards specifically BECAUSE they are so portable.
It’s the defacto standard that really matter. You know the ones – they are standards merely because that is what most people use TODAY. Whichever vendor ends up dominating the market will be the one using the “standard”……..Whomever wins the e-Reader wars will define the ‘standard’.
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