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."

Comments

We already have a standard for eBooks.

[Psychic Burrito]

It's called ASCII.

Re:We already have a standard for eBooks.

[macemoneta]

HTML takes care of that issue, with the img tag. There are already cross-platform e-book readers that take HTML (including embedded graphics and tables) and convert them to a compressed form for display on the target device (iSilo is my personal favorite). And yes, the conversion software is available for Linux as well.

Any document that can be displayed as a web page (pretty much any document that exists) can be read as an e-book.

The real problem is that there aren't any DRM-like controls on the documents. That's a good thing, but obviously it's going to take about a decade before book publishers finally agree to that.

No one reads books anymore

[Amsterdam Vallon]

I read a Stephen King interview where he said that people just aren't into books anymore. And it's basically true.

DVDs and CDs and TVs and LCDs have replaced the printed word. Many househoulds don't even have ONE BOOK on display. Kids are going to start growing up without ever having read a book at home or had their parents read to them.

It's truly a sad state of affairs here in America.

same rules apply to...

[akaina]

text as digital music. Here's what uncle Steve had to say:

Because of their technological innocence, I would say. When we first went to talk to these record companies -- about eighteen months ago -- we said, "None of this technology that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.s here who know the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital content."

Why I didn't buy an ebook reader.

[DAldredge]

Do you know why I didn't buy a handheld ebook reader? I will tell you. NONE of them would display PDF's. Not a one, at least I was unable to find one that would.

Re:so what?

[Vaevictis666]

I don't know about that. If I had a decent device that was capable of viewing "standard" ebook formats, could hold a fair amount of text (say 6-7 novels the size of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books), was easy to read (and maybe backlit) I wouldn't mind picking one up for my bus rides to/from work. It would mean no need to muss marking my page, and a smaller package to stick in my pocket. Plus without paper production costs, I could see ebooks selling for $2 or so, compared to $10 or so for paperback these days.

Re:so what?

[orthogonal]

Does anyone actually think that the lack of a single format is scaring consumers away from ebooks, and solely because of this they've been a flop?

Well, I do, sort of. I have a Zaurus, and before that I had a Palm.

I liked to read ebooks on the Palm, and I liked it even better on the Zaurus. I read some classics, some popular science books made freely available by Dr. William Calvin, and some free Baen science fiction novels.

As it happens, I'd previously bought some of Dr. Calvin's books in soft and hard cover; reading his ebooks (actually, Plucked HTML) encouraged me to buy more. At least one of the Baen titles prompted me to buy its sequel in soft-cover -- and without having read the ebook, I'd never have heard of the author, and probably wouldn't have bought his book.

I went to fictionwise.com to get some books, but most of them were either in proprietary formats -- which the Zaurus can't read with any open source reader --, or in Palm .doc format -- which is technically lacking compared to, say, the Plucker format.

I signed up with fictionwise.com, and downloaded some of their freebies. Their version of .doc didn't play well with my reader on the Zaurus, so I emailed fictionwise, and explained I'd be happy to pay them for books, if I could read those books in Plucker format. I realized they'd only be willing to do this for books in unencrypted formats, but I figured that they could at least convert books in (unprotected) Palm .doc format.

Fictionwise, to their credit, did take they time to reply to me, but they reply was that they didn't have any interest in the Plucker format.

I haven't been back to fictionwise.com since.

I'm not a pirate. While I have about 10000 mp3s, all were legitimately obtained, most through the now sadly stunted emusic.com.

As someone who writes code, some of it GPL'd, I'm sensitive to copyright, and I don't want to violate anyone's copyright anymore than I want my copyright violated. As someone who writes code, some of it for profit, I know that artists and authors deserve compensation for their work, and I want to see them get that compensation, if only for the very selfish reason that I want them concentrating on creating their next work (so I can enjoy it) rather than concentrating on how to cadge some more Ramen noodles before malnutrition sets in.

Even if I didn't feel morally opposed to copyright "piracy", I really don't have the patience to browse KaZaa or whatever to find inferior rips and munged transcriptions of creative works. I have a few bucks in my pocket, and I'm not adverse to spending a few bucks on a good book or an good CD.

But that book or CD needs to be convenient to ne to. Publishers need to understand that DRM'd music files are worth less than nothing to me, because my portable MP3 player won't play them. DRM'd books are worth less than nothing to me, because my portable computer won't display them.

Were the music or the books in a accessible format, I'd put my money were my mouth is. I was happy to sign up with emusic (until they drastically limited downloads in November); I wanted to buy books from fictionwise.

But don't treat me like a dummy: I don't want it in a format I can't use, or must ask permission every time I use, or can't transfer from one machine or another, or (as with the PDF version of the ANSI C++ Standard) I can't copy at least small portions of to quote.

Do that, and I'll fall back on MP3s, and ASCII text, and in the case of the C++ Standard, the Draft Working Paper. Do that, and you've lost me as a customer. And once you've lost me as a customer, don't come weeping to me that it's piracy that destroyed your business model. Publishers have destroyed their business models all by themselves, by being more concerned about thwarting shop-lifters than pleasing paying customers.

One word: Baen

[Anonymous Coward]

Baen Books (www.baen.com) has been giving away e-books of early titles in popular author's series for some time. They've even been putting them on CDs in major new books. The result has been increased sales of the dead tree versions of those same books, plus increased interest in the current and new versions.

No DRM, no passwords, no encryption. You just can't turn around and sell it.

That basically says one thing to me: people really don't want the e-book version of something they read for pleasure. They prefer the dead tree version. When the rest of the publishers wake up and discover that the e-book is a marketing tool rather than a profit center, all this idiocy about multiple versions and DRM will vanish.

John Roth

Re:so what?

[cyberchondriac]

If I had a decent device that was capable of viewing "standard" ebook formats, could hold a fair amount of text (say 6-7 novels the size of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books), was easy to read (and maybe backlit) I wouldn't mind picking one up for my bus rides to/from work.

I agree, I started looking into e-books recently, looking for a device that was large enough to support "normal" sized text, the odd graphic or diagram here and there, something light, and backlit, that I would be just as comfortable reading in bed as I would a paper book. The closest thing seems to be a tablet PC, way too expensive for what I need. I hadn't even gotten into worrying about format yet, because most ebooks I've run across so far are either pdf or html, so I hadn't really worried about it.

I figure if someone would make a reader that was about 9"-10" x 6"-7" ,weighed about half a pound, could parse both HTML and pdf (although I'm not fond of pdf), and had an adjustable backlight, we'd be in business. It might even be cool to have a device that could display two pages simultaneously, so long as you didn't have to squint to read it.

Even cooler, once those ultra thin organic LCD displays become a production reality, maybe one or two of those mounted on a reader would be ideal, giving you the ability to flip a page or two like a real book. I often find myself referencing text on an adjacent or semi-adjacent page, something I find easier to do when flipping through paper rather than scrolling.