0

By

Tower of BabelIf you doubt that the Tower of eBabel is a turnoff for prospective converts to e-books, check out a clueful post by Rochelle Hartman–a librarian friend of mine in the midwest. Rochelle is not a programmer. But she is far, far more tech-savvy than the typical librarian. In character, in the Tinfoil+Raccoon blog (“looking for the new and shiny in libraryland and beyond”), she warns of the harm that proprietary formats can do.

Rochelle says that if she were to pay $18.50 for an autobiography of Bill Clinton in electronic form, there would be “no guarantee that I could use that book forever… because it wouldn’t necessarily migrate if I bought a new machine. There’s something rather disposable about the proprietary format, which is another reason that ebooks still haven’t caught fire. I feel horrible recycling a $3.00 magazine that I know I’ll never read again. There’s no way I’m going to spend $18 on a book that I can’t keep for several years, or resell if it’s a dud.”

The confusion factor

Consider, too, another problem with proprietary formats–consumer confusion and the devastating effect on sales of e-book-related hardware and content. Rochelle has been trying out a loaner RCA REB1200 e-book for a library-related project in which I’m also involved; and I told her, correctly, that I couldn’t scare up the Clinton autobiography in a format for that particular machine. In her post she worried she would not be able to read the Clinton book electronically, period. But I’m glad to say that if she can tolerate a small screen and risk format obsolescence, then her loaner Sony Clie will work with the Clinton book in Mobipocket format; this particular Clie already has reading software installed for Mobipocket. I’ll blame the little misunderstanding on myself, not Rochelle, and help her get the e-book edition going if she wants. I’m just happy that Clinton’s My Life is not a Microsoft Reader-only book. Otherwise Rochelle would be out of luck since the Clie and RCA don’t run any form of Windows–a required operating system for Reader books. Nothing like letting the software industry dictate your e-reading tastes, eh?

Rochelle’s main point, of course, holds up beautifully–that the format war is bad news for consumer. The situation with the RCA and Clie, the tricky question of which books can display on which machines, is a splendid example of the confusion that ensues when the industry is in such a mess. Wait. There’s more. Remember, lawyers from Gemstar or another company have apparently thwarted Fictionwise’s efforts to make recent DRMed e-books conveniently available for the RCA and other machines that use Gemstar technology.

A raccoon-friendly solution

OpenReader, anyone? The idea isn’t to force everybody to use the same reader, but rather offer a common format that could be digested by an open source program, proprietary software from Microsoft, a rival program from Adobe, you name it. Different programs can have different interfaces and different coding. Only the format for the actual e-books will be identical. OpenReader will also promote standardization of the accompanying DRM and seek to make it less onerous than the present varieties–something that will be inherently easier with standards in place.

Jon Noring is the main ringleader for the OpenReader Consortium, and prospective volunteers and industry supporters can reach him at jon@openreader.org. He and I are on the lookout not just for hardcore techies but also standards-setters from related fields such as libraries and publishing–people who know what they want. OpenReader will build on a production format that Jon helped refine for the Open eBook Forum (not to be confused with the OpenReader Consortium), which, alas, has stubbornly refused to create a true consumer format despite past promises.

The price issue

As a newcomer to e-books, Rochelle will also be learning further about another form of insanity–prices. Why is it that so many mainstream publishers insist on gouging e-stores and consumers for the electronic versions? Amazon.com is selling the Clinton book new in hardback for $21 and directing people to used p-editions for as little as $10.99. The price of the e-book from Amazon in Adobe or Microsoft format? $18.48 despite no “shipping costs” but server space and bandwidth. And a Mobipocket version apparently isn’t even available from Amazon.

Luckily Rochelle can buy the book in Mobipocket–the best proprietary format for recreational reading on the Clie, far better than Adobe, which also has a reader for Palm-style machines–from eBooks.com. But the eBooks.com price will be $28. The same applies at Fictionwise unless you use rebate offers for “Club” members ($19.04 after rebate) or Micropay users ($22.40). What a downer for consumers and e-stores. I realize that the publishers are trying to protect their hardback sales. But mightn’t they be better off pricing e-books reasonably to do higher volume than they would otherwise?

The DRM Mafia

Of course, in fairness to publishers, it does not help the appeal of e-books when the DRM Mafia charges prices that at times exceed 15 percent of revenue. This is the kind of abuse we intend to wipe out with the OpenReader format. We want software companies to prosper, but let them make their bucks honestly rather than overcharging the publishing industry, libraries and the rest of us to justify the many redundancies in the Tower of eBabel.

Detail: Isn’t it interesting that Amazon apparently does not even carry the Clinton autobiography in the Mobipocket format? Even the world’s biggest online bookstore can’t keep up with all the formats in the Tower of eBabel. Nothing at Amazon for eReader fans, either. List price at the eReader store is $35, and even with a discount you’ll still pay $22.68.

 
0