Publishers Campaign For Universal E-Book Format

As the battle rages for control of the e-book market, publishers are starting to unite behind a common desire: a universal e-book format. David Shanks, chief executive at Penguin Group USA, said, "Our fondest wish is that all the devices become agnostic so that there isn’t proprietary formats and you can read wherever you want to read. First we have to get a standard that everybody embraces." The company's president, Susan Petersen Kennedy, explained that book publishers did not want to "make the same mistakes as the music industry, which had an epic struggle over electronic distribution and piracy and lost huge market share."

Comments

ePub

[masmullin]

Issue solved. Everyone should just listen to me.

Re:ePub

[Rary]

Issue solved. Everyone should just listen to me.

Issue not solved.

It seems to me that the main complaint about ePub is that it is text-centric, and doesn't do well with any book that requires a particular formatting, or includes anything other than text. That means no comic books, obviously, but it also eliminates many Kurt Vonnegut novels, among others.

Re:ePub

[Qwavel]

If it has the option to plug-in any DRM then the problem isn't solved at all.

What good does it do me to buy a book that uses this wonderful universal format, only to find that it is wrapped in DRM that only works on one platform?

Re:ePub

[nine-times]

When you create a PDF, you specify a particular size of the output. It makes sense since PDF was designed for print documents, and print documents are designed for a specific size of paper.

So if you want to use PDFs, then you're going to want to standardize ebook screen sizes and resolutions. That's going to cause lots of problems. Also, if you want to resize the text in a PDF, you need to shrink/grow the entire document since text in a PDF is not designed to reflow. The only way to reflow text in a PDF is to hope that the text is actually embedded and display the text instead-- at which point your pretty much treating the PDF as a plain-text document and losing all the benefits of using a PDF in the first place.

Its a much better idea to use a modified for of HTML (or something similar, designed to be displayed on-screen, to be screen-size independent, and to allow reflow).

It already exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

*.txt

(or *.pdf, if you're a stickler for pretty graphics).

Coming up with a "new standard" at this point is just wasted effort.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Same mistakes

[Aladrin]

They don't want to make the same mistakes, and yet they're following the same path anyhow.

DRM DOES NOT WORK.

If someone tried to sell me a security measure that encouraged thieves to attempt to steal my products while preventing my legit customers from using them and made everyone angry, I'd tell them where to shove it.

Re:Same mistakes

[m2shariy]

Yes this is a DRM issue. Each vendor has it's own DRM scheme and typical reader does not support all schemes, so each vendor pretty much requires it's own device. And yes, I bought a DRM protected book for my device once, making it work was one of the most revolting computer experiences I've ever had. Since then I just download my books DRM free.

Making the EXACT same mistakes

[CritterNYC]

They're making the EXACT same mistakes as the music industry. They don't want a universal format. We have one. It's called ePub. They want universal DRM. Which isn't gonna happen.

The music industry tried the same thing. We wound up with multiple different DRMed formats that only worked on specific devices. All were incompatible with each other. Most were overpriced compared to CDs (the elimination of the physical distribution and associated costs should have been factored into digital sales from day one). And if someone did try to make a tool to unlock your music from a device so you could use it on another device you owned, they were sued... and it was made illegal even for fair use with bought-and-paid-for legislation in the US. So, everyone got used to stealing music, since it was the only way to actually get what you want on the device you wanted it and be able to listen to it anywhere.

Now, the Big Publishing is making the exact same mistakes. Insisting on DRM. All of it is on different platforms in different formats. None of it works with anything else. And the pricing is absolutely absurd compared to paperback sales. So, what happens? Everyone is starting to steal books using file sharing, etc. Big Publishing is already losing, they just don't realize it yet. And for all their whining about wanting a universal format and not wanting to make the same mistakes as Big Music, history is already repeating itself.