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eBabel and ePub: The bottom line for libraries
May 20, 2008 | 12:18 pm
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By David Rothman
"Creating and maintaining so many formats raises costs for vendors and increases complications for libraries that need to be able to support all of the technologies their patrons are using to access these ebooks." – ePub-friendly item in Library Journal.
Details: "Currently, the ebooks for sale online and licensed by libraries are available in many different formats, most of which are proprietary and often tied directly to one particular reading device or platform. For example, the ebook site Fictionwise.com lists as many as 12 different formats available for downloading a single book, including separate ones for Amazon’s Kindle, the Sony Reader, and Palm brand smartphones like the Treo."
The TeleRead take: Hello, publishers and library vendors? Think of ePub as a consumer format, please, not just a distribution one. Do what needs doing, or get set to see Amazon clean your clocks eventually, in both the library and retail markets.
Footnote: I won’t knock Fictionwise for offering all those formats. In the eBabel era, it has no choice.
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Comments:
Until ePub is well supported on mobile devices this makes it a tough call for libraries and stores not support other formats. Also given the current publishing landscape, file format is secondary to DRM systems used in determining how to offer content for sale.
Jim, many thanks for your comments. I continue to encourage libraries to think about business models that wouldn’t be quite so reliant on DRM. That would vastly speed up the adoption of ePUB, which would be good for Adobe and the entire e-book industry, Amazon included. Thanks. David