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By David Rothman

towerofbabel Starting in with books released in December, the Hachette Book USA Group will begin sending .epub files to stores and distributors—for consumer use in that e-book format or conversion to others.

How popular could .epub become among readers, so they don’t have to worry about books being available only in Adobe or Mobi or whatever?

A so-far-small poll at MobileRead suggests very popular. The catch is that major software companies in the IDPF, creator of the standard, will need to live up to the group’s pro-standards rhetoric.

72 percent aiming for .epub use

Among the 32 participants so far, 23 are counting on using .epub when the right software is available for them. That’s a whopping 72 percent even without the IDPF having done any education at the consumer level. People hate the Tower of eBabel of clashing e-book formats.

I’ll repro the breakdown of the current stats and encourage more people, regardless of their opinions, to participate in the MobileRead poll. While the poll is small, by the way,  it does contain at least one minor inaccuracy that works against .epub: "I’m waiting till someone other than Adobe has a viewer." Actually, if you’re not insisting on DRM-capabilities, which aren’t part of the actual standard right now, you can already use FBReader and the OpenBerg Firefox add-on. Many small publishers hate DRM; let’s hope that .epub can soon be among their format choices.

The good news is that Adobe’s DRM-infested .epub will help make .epub books available from large publishers insistent on "protection." The bad news, beyond the resultant reduction in potential readers of .epub, is that for now, some consumers will falsely see .epub as an Adobe-only standard. The IDPF should get cracking on an accompanying nonproprietary DRM standard—I dislike DRM but am the practical sort—while making it clear that nonencrypted .epub is already a reality. A formal validation system followed by a logo could help immensely.

Now here are the stats so far:

epub is the greatest thing since paper! 4
12.50%

.epub is ok, I’ll get around to using it someday. 8
25.00%

Why do we need another format?  5
15.63%

I’m waiting till someone other than adobe has a viewer. 2
6.25%

I’m waiting till my reader can natively support it 9
28.13%

How is this different that .oeb? 1
3.13%

What was the IDPF thinking!?! 1
3.13%

What the heck is .epub? 2
6.25%

 
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