A. Just off the line with the company. No, the Ditto Book can’t read DRMed PDF, and for now it can’t read ePub of any kind. That’s on the way, however.

P. Heck, Sony is pushing ePub in the U.K., and it’s also winning followers in Germany. The Sony Reader can read nonDRMed ePub, not just the Adobe DRMed variety.

Meanwhile eReader software will soon be able to read ePub, and as I recall, eReader will be adding its own DRM wrapper to ePub, so it can offer bestsellers in that format from publishers who are still insisting on DRM (I’ll blame writers as well).

Remember, eReader is a branch of Barnes and Noble these days. Meanwhile ePub is a standard exchange format for publishers and distributors.

Bottom line: ePub is anytihng but irrelevant. If you want to own your e-books for real, the best format is nonDRMed ePub.

Thanks,
David

P.S. (added later): ePub is also the native format of Stanza, with well over a million downloads to iPhones and iPod Tounches. Amazon owns Stanza now. But I wonder if the user base won’t revolt if ePub is taken away. Besides, ePub could be baked too heavily into Stanza. Not sure if Amazon wants to kill it off there. But won’t have an easy time doing so.