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Open eBook Forum Courts Controversy Over Formats
Brad Rigby writes "TeleRead's David Rothman is calling for [1,
2] the replacement of the Open eBook Forum by "an honest
trade association" and a related standards body to create an open standards ebook format at the consumer-level. This will benefit publishers, distributors and retailers, librarians,
the open-source community, and most importantly book readers. Largely because of the proprietary
format wars, ebooks have flopped commercially, with only an estimated ten million dollars in sales in 2003. In
addition, OeBF is being held hostage by its Gold Sponsors, including Microsoft, Adobe, and Palm Digital, companies
with proprietary, incompatible ebook format solutions. And to make matters worse, OeBF's president, Steve Potash, runs
OverDrive, a company profiting from this "Tower of eBabel", which, according to David, is an
obvious conflict of interest and the reason why OeBF is no longer living up to the promise of a standard consumer ebook format. Interesting detail:
The OeBF is so focused on promoting its Gold Sponsors that it has yet to speak out against European VATs that will tax e-books but not p-books."
i released a (crappy) doc reader (there have been better ones since) for the AportisDOC standard for e-books under the GPL a loong time ago. ...theres no real need for yet another crappy e-book standard. we already have one.
http://zurk.sourceforge.net/zdoc.zip
The DOc format is open, can be extended to be secure and is already out there
The extensive Data Format is public, well-documented, and used in dozens of other projects. Lots of companies, commercial and non-profit, have adopted the Plucker format for their content delivery. Out of the other "free" options out there, Plucker reigns supreme (it is also the ONLY one out there that is publically documented, and "Free" to use).
I got an RCA eBook for my girlfriend. There is nothing wrong with it. The screen is nice to read, the battery lasts long enough, and it is comfortable to hold and turn pages.
It's just a pain in the ass to use with Linux, and the selection of books when you plug in via the modem is pretty bad, and you get this "bookshelf" hosted by some company you aren't sure will be around, and if they fold you lose your books, have no way to back them up to your Linux system, and are pretty much SOL. There are a few projects for creating new eBooks, but it isn't trivial to get them copied to the unit.
This really sucks; I'd love to replace certain types of paper books I have with one of these readers. I don't have any particular attachment to paper books for most purposes. And I'd love to be able to grab gutenberg's books and put them on her reader easily.
This issue of eBOOK compatibility seems to be a red hearing to me. I purchase ebooks for my palm devices (now a treo 600) fairly regularly and only once have I run into a book I wanted that was not availible in a compatible format (and the contents of that book...short stories..were availible in a compatible version).
Not only do most books come in multiple formats so do most readers on mobile devices (no one is going to read an ebook on their PC...well some freak on slashdot might but except for computer related manuals it just isn't as practical or enjoyable as with something mobile). Furthermore many readers are distributed freely. I simply can't see how this is blocking sales.
Also almost every ebook currently on the market doesn't use many complicated formatting options requiring any innovative format. This isn't do to lack of a standart but because most normal books don't contain many illustrations and palm pilot devices are the best for pictoral information.
Still, I do support the attempt at a universal open format. However, as the stated goal of eBOOK formats is to *prevent* copying I won't be able to share ebooks with a friend anyway so it is at most a minor convience.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too: