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By David Rothman

image Dear Jeff—

Many have Kindle lust. But what happens if the iPhone is just as easy—as the K machine—to buy and download books with?

Go to Lexcycle‘s iPhone page and call up the QuickTime demo flick of Stanza (earlier TeleRead items here). What a clever interface!

Competition ahead

So far I notice only features related to freebie books, but what happens when e-commerce capabilities pop up?

You can see the future in this image of Stanza in action. It shows an easy download of a beautifully designed e-version of H.P. Lovecraft‘s "The Outsider," from Feedbooks. The demo indicates how thoughtfully Lexcycle has organized Stanza’s library interface, a major weakness of many reader programs.

No hair triggers—and more open

All in all, given the hair-trigger problems people have had with the Kindle’s page-changing controls, it just could be that the iPhone will be easier to e-book with? Screen size? Forget about that as an issue. You can bet that gizmos with larger screens and similar capabilities will be on the way.

What’s more, the iPhone is a much more open platform than the Kindle. Plenty of companies can compete to win people over with the best e-reader program. Significantly, Stanza can read files in the standard ePub format, which many other apps will be able to work with, sooner or later.

Tear down that wall, Mr. Bezos!

So where does that leave you, Jeff? Yes, you can try to wall off your hardware and books with proprietary DRM. But doesn’t your MP3 store make lack of DRM a key selling point? Not the most sustainable approach to business, Jeff—this DRM malarkey. Absolutely no ideology here. It’s MBA-style stuff, the pesky little issue of whether the dogs will keep eating the dogfood.

image My suggestion is to get with it, go all the way with ePub and try to wean Amazon and the big publishers off that sales and literary toxin known as DRM. Focus less on "protection" and eBabel, Jeff, and more on what the Stanza people are doing—through superior interfaces and taking advantage of Feedbooks’ open API. Open up! In fairness to Amazon, I do know that you’ve been sending notices to Mobipocket publishers to bring their files closer to what ePub does. Nice going! But why not cut to the chase and just say you’ll do ePub all the way and even make it a native Kindle format; in fact, the one of choice. In every respect possible, go for openness.

image Wait! I also recall that via the BookZ text reader program (screenshot), there apparently is direct downloading of Gutenberg titles, even if it may not be as slick as Stanza’s use of Feedbooks’ API. And the same program could probably work with Manybooks.net. Beyond eReader, seamless interfaces from big-time commercial programs will follow on the iPhone–including your own Mobipocket, much to Amazon’s credit. Your Mobi people had no choice. They couldn’t afford to miss out on the market that Apple’s more open approach has created.

It’s the apps, Jeff—and openness means better ones

A lesson here? Of course. It’s easy for the press to get excited over a little plastic box like the Kindle, aided by a Newsweek cover, but in the end, I suspect that openness, alliances and the actual applications will count more.

While Apple’s environment is far from Linux-like in its choices for users and programmers, it is light years ahead of Amazon’s Kindle environment. And sooner or later the results may be reflected in sales, given all the extra programming talent Apple is benefiting from. The Kindle probably will succeed. But it could do much better as an open platform—which, combined with ePub and Amazon’s now-130,000-title inventory of e-related items, could help make a long-term success of your e-book end. Care to turn the Kindle into a developers’ playground?

Cheers,
David
(With an ongoing invitation to Jeff Bezos or any of his Amazon people to come out of the shadows and give their side in the TeleBlog)

Thanks to Mike Cane for the Stanza-demo spotting. I can’t wait for Stanza actually to show up in the App Store, which should be very soon.

Update, 2:27 p.m., July 13: Even better for my argument for openness, it turns out that contrary to what I said earlier, Lexcycle didn’t have special arrangements with Feedbooks but rather just used Feeds’ API. I’ve changed the copy accordingly. Thanks, Hadrien.

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