Found this on Nate the Great's ebook news blog, The Digital Reader. Nate is also a Mobile Read member, of course. Here's the link, and then my take on it: http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2010/09/23/amazon-planning-ahead-for-a-switch-to-epub/#comments
I haven't used the KindleGen tool, but apparently it's meant to make conversion of files easier for people who are interested in publishing their books on the Kindle platform. Now, it seems that instead of letting the author choose to leave out the source file when compiling the .prc file, that option has been removed, effectively bundling the epub source with the .prc output. What does this mean, you ask? Well, according to both Nate and the original source of the news, it *could* mean that Amazon is preparing to support epub. Nate's logic makes sense to me, (if you read his entry, he can't figure out any other reason they'd change that option). However, at this point I'm not sure if I want him to be correct, or not.
My first reaction was, "Oh, hell yeah!!! Epub at Amazon! No more being locked out of books I want because Topaz is a pain in the butt to strip and convert!" But then I thought again. If Amazon switches to epub, I think you can effectively say goodbye to everyone else's epub ebookstores. Like it or not, Amazon IS the 800 lb. gorilla when it comes to content again, even after last summer's squabbles with MacMillan and the more recent falling out with Penguin. Even with the Agency Pricing Model saying you can't charge less than the publisher's set amount for an ebook, there doesn't seem to be anything that says you can't charge MORE...and a lot of ebookstores are doing just that. But we all know Amazon won't....they'll charge exactly what the publisher says they have to, and not a penny more...and then they'll watch the competition vanish. I don't see this as a good thing. Plus that, if all that happens, and another round of Publishers vs. Amazon takes place, we'll all be left high and dry, and this time with no other choices. At least with this round, we could still buy epub formats at B&N and the Sony ebookstore while Amazon and the publishers were playing "chicken". As an ebook addict, that's not a place I want to find myself.
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5 years ago
For Amazon, ePub vs Mobi is a technical detail.
ReplyDeleteAmazon bought Mobipocket, and used the eBook format they devised as the basis for Kindle editions. It made sense at the time: Mobi was the closest thing to a default standard, and viewers that could display Mobi formatted books existing for just about everything save the Mac. ePub was not at the point of being a competitive format.
But while Amazon adopted the *format*, they changed the DRM. DRM protected titles previously purchased from Mobipocket or other vendor using Mobi's DRM could not be red on a Kindle.
For Amazon, it's about vendor lock-in. They want to sell you ebooks, and the Kindle eco-system is designed so that you can only *buy* DRM protected ebooks for the Kindle from Amazon.
ePub is unlikely to be different. From Amazon's POV, whether you get Mobi, ePub, or PDF doesn't matter, as long as you can only get it from Amazon.
Topaz is irrelevant to the equation. From what I've seen, Topaz is the format used when Amazon didn't have an electronic edition to start with. If enough folks click the "I want to read this book in a Kindle edition" button that Amazon decides to make one, there may only be a paper volume as source material. That gets scanned and OCRed by an outsourced operation in Hyderabad, and the result is what Amazon offers the Kindle. AFAIK, those are all the ones that wind up as Topaz files.
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Dennis
Well, the plug in for Calibre for mobi makes buying from Amazon a trivial thing for those of us who prefer our books "liberated". And you're right about Topaz - it's scanned. However, I still don't want to see Amazon as the only choice. You're probably right though, even if they did switch to epub (which I still don't really see happening, despite Nate's best guesses), they'd probably slap yet another version of DRM on it.
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