One of the biggest issues in e-book publishing today is the incompatibility of formats across vendors. Right now, without invoking digital arcana and probably violating a EULA or two, I can only read my Kindle books on a Kindle or the Kindle app for my iPhone. I can’t read them on my computer or a Sony Reader or any other device I might purchase (from anyone but Amazon). The same is true for e-books purchased from Barnes and Noble or Sony’s online store. The difference (see below) isn’t just in technical standards (written in malleable code) but in DRM implementation and policy (partially written in obdurate contracts and agreements).
The diversity and incompatibility of e-book formats is a pain for consumers and also threatens the renaissance of engaged reading as a basis for social and intellectual discourse (part of what sbooks.net is all about). However, the dominance of a single format and vendor (with Amazon the front-runner) would be even worse.
The market power of a dominant non-portable e-reader is especially insidious because books are a long-term investment and the more books one buys, the more one is locked into a particular vendor and their e-reader. This makes it hard for consumers to change and essentially crystallizes early market dynamics (where we are right now).
Having a dominant vendor and platform is bad for both readers and publishers. For readers, we’ll find a technology which should have expanded innovation and increased choice does the exact opposite. Instead of the innovation and growth which accompanied the open-by-design Internet, we will have progress which is slow and limited by a single organization’s strategy. Some publishers might actually be attracted to this scenario, but they pursue it at their peril.
Publishers lose in this scenario because the market power of a single vendor/format is tremendous. Big book chains (like Borders) and e-tailers (like Amazon) already use their scale and scope (in terms of outlets or registered accounts/credit cards) to wield pressure over publishers and limit competition (though sometimes in the publishers’ interest). Having a dominant vendor with a non-portable format will result in shrinking margins for publishers and will hit smaller publishers (with less negotiating power) earliest, leading to reduction in choice.
As the title suggested, in the e-book world, a proprietary non-portable format is like owning an alphabet, enabling the vendor to be a gatekeeper for publishers’ access to the market. While there will certainly be alternate channels (like ink-on-paper), the absence of an easy way to “rip” purchased books (as you can CDs) makes the advantage even stronger than for music publishing. And because there is no portable open format (like MP3, which iTunes supported), Jeff Bezos will end up having much more power to dictate to publishers than Steve Jobs ever did, to nearly everyone’s detriment.
– Ken Haase
Geektails: One basic incompatibility is in container formats, with Amazon supporting only Mobipocket-derived formats (they now own Mobipocket, but run it as a separate business) and everyone else apparently converging on the (technically better) EPUB format. But the deeper incompatibility is the DRM (digital rights management) which is essentially a plug-in for EPUB, so different readers may all support EPUB but still be incompatible for DRM’d books. And with most of the publishing industry convinced that they can’t live without DRM, this means we have many flavors of incompatibility.
