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By David Rothman

Amazon reader deviceWhat if the IDPF gave a standards party and no one came—or at least got awfully distracted by proprietary competition from Microsoft and Amazon?

Suppose Amazon were selling a reader gizmo that used the proprietary Mobipocket format.

What-if might soon be reality, in line with earlier hints about Amazon’s Kindle prototype or similar machines (photo is just of a prototype—uglier than the real Amazon Reader, I’d hope).

Jim Milliot of Publishers Weekly reports from the London Book Fair:

Amazon has been previewing its e-reader to publishers both in the U.S. and U.K.—HarperCollins UK CEO Victoria Barnsley mentioned the reader at yesterday’s LBF seminar on green publishing—for months, although it has declined to comment on its existence to the press. According to publishers who have seen the player, the reader is a step up from the Sony Reader which was introduced last year. The screen quality is reportedly as sharp as Sony, but the Amazon device has better functionality, and, as should be expected from the e-tailer, a first rate e-commerce option. Amazon is expected to release the reader this spring, although the exact timing may depend on how fast it can develop a critical mass of titles.

Expected price? Perhaps $400. Amazon may well be able to charge more than Sony’s $350—since I expect many more titles to be offered. Remember, Amazon controls the Mobipocket format. It’s an existing choice vastly more popular than Sony’s BBeB, and, of course, readers of this blog know of Amazon’s efforts to herd publishers into Mobipocket. Hey, better Mobipocket—which runs on my PDAs and the TeleCybook—than BBeB! Still better, of course, would be a universal standard that everyone accepted.

Oh, but what about Adobe? I hope that Bill McCoy and friends are indeed serious about standards, and if Sony can join them and implement the IDPF approach in the Sony Reader, maybe the fight against Amazon will be a little less hopeless. While OpenReader is better than the IDPF standard, the latter is preferable to no standard at all for DRMed books. Of courses, it remains to be seen if Adobe and friends can deal with the D word, and whether Adobe, Sony and the IDPF can achieve interoperability in that area. If not, then the eBabel Tower will loom just as tall and sturdy as ever, unless publishers wise up about DRM.

Some Google successes

In separate news, Jim reports that U.K. resistance to Google’s book search program has waned somewhat. He also references Google’s Online Access program, through which customers can buy or rent books online. Problem is, we’re still in E-Book Museum Land, as I understand it. Last I knew, you wouldn’t be able to download your own files for safekeeping and use in locations beyond WiFi range. Maybe if the IDPF can do a decent standards act, it can yet draw the interest of Google and the do-no-evil people can allow people to own their book purchases for real.

A horror story from a more or less orphaned consumer: Me

Guaranteeing continued enjoyment of a purchase, or access to a service, is of no small interest to me. Guess what. I bought an HP Pavilion computer with a CompUSA service plan, thinking that the closest store would continue to be 2 miles away. Instead CompUSA pulled out of Alexandria, VA, and now the nearest store is perhaps 40 miles away in Columbia, Maryland. And then corporations wonder why we consumers don’t trust them? Hey, Sony. There’s a reason why I’m so bloody suspicious of your proprietary approach. No ideology, just practicality. I still remember how you abandoned the Clie PDA line, and as I see it, any publishers who relies too heavily on BBeB will be a damned fool. At least one of the big publishing conglomerates feels the same way, and I suspect that others do, too. Let’s hope consumers are just as smart and will keep making uppity noises about the dead-end BBeB format, which Adobe’s Bill McCoy has suggested will be eclipsed by a nonproprietary XML-based standard—well, to be exact, the IDPF’s. Or will it? What if the true victors are Microsoft and Amazon? And in the end? A Microzon standard?

 
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