While Kindle could always add ePub support, it’s worth considering the possibility that it doesn’t need to.
In particular you have to wonder -
Could a closed Amazon Kindle take on a collection of eReaders that all support ePub?
Why this question: Well, every other week there’s an article talking about how the Kindle is going to die if it doesn’t open up.
Let’s look at this in three parts -
The Past: Has Lack of ePub Support hurt the Kindle?
While Amazon’s reluctance to reveal numbers means people can always claim that Kindles aren’t selling, the signs obviously point to Kindle being the clear #1 eReader.
There are two ways to interpret this -
- ePub is not that important to users.
- ePub held back the Kindle and Kindles would have sold a lot more.
Whichever view you take, its obvious that ePub support isn’t critical to success.
Kindle without ePub beat out Sony with ePub. So ePub couldn’t be the game-changer everyone is claiming it is.
The Present: Is lack of ePub Support hurting the Kindle?
This gets more interesting when we consider what’s happening right now.
At the eReader manufacturers’ product pages do we see ePub?
- Barnes & Noble doesn’t bill ePub support as a feature or drum it up – Instead Sharing, the WiFi, endless shelf space, and 6 other features are promoted.
- The Sony Reader ‘Features’ Page lists ePub as Feature #11. Even Sony, one of the supposed ePub champions is listing a Built-In Dictionary before they list ePub.
- The Plastic Logic Que eReader page has a list of ‘Game Changing Technology’ and misses ePub.
Obviously eReader manufacturers missed the memo on how ePub support would make people choose their eReader.
That or perhaps they think their customers don’t really care.
Lets look at what features our favorite ‘kindle killer’ articles highlight (these are the top articles that show up on Google for ‘kindle killer’) -
- Fool.com on Plastic Logic - No mention of ePub.
- MIT Technology Review - iRex as Kindle Killer. ePub is mentioned as the 7th feature.
- CNet – Is Nook a Kindle Killer? The article doesn’t mention ePub at all.
- Harvard Business Publishing - The article doesn’t mention ePub at all.
- Daily Finance - Mentions ePub as the 5th important feature of Sony’s Daily Edition.
Again, the writers don’t seem to have discovered the huge, pivotal role ePub will play. Most of these articles don’t even consider formats.
The Future: Will eReaders with ePub support be able to beat the Kindle?
There’s this strong sense of how ‘openness’ will beat the closed Kindle system.
However, at this point everyone (including me) is just making predictions based on assumptions -
- People are assuming that readers care about formats in general, and ePub in particular. That’s a strange assumption to make considering that even Sony and B&N aren’t pushing ePub benefits to users.
- People are assuming that the 27 different companies selling ebooks will all magically choose ePub and the exact same DRM format.
- People are assuming that other eReaders will match the Kindle’s Top 10 Features and bring the choice down to ePub.
What’s perplexing is why People are not recognizing that it’s not Wikipedia or Internet Archive or an actual ‘not in it for the money’ company that is pushing openness.
Why are multi-billion dollar companies promoting openness?
Is ePub and Openness just a competitive attack?
Is this a customer concern that’s just been conjured up – one that’s being used to convince customers that another eReader would be better.
If every eReader except for the leader has a feature there’s an equal chance -
- It’s a valid, good feature.
- It’s just a competitive strategy.
- It’s a mix of both.
People don’t care about Openness and yet this concept is being pushed on them.
It has to be competitive strategy.
Are people falling for the Epub and Openness argument?
Well, sales so far would say that they aren’t.
However, you have to wonder about the effect the consistent barrage from the press is having.
The Press seem to spend equal time tearing down the Kindle -
- The Press has attacked Amazon on DRM.
- It’s attacked Amazon for the 1984 incident.
- They even took a made up issue (supposed download limits) and wrote 50 different articles on it.
And talking up the opposition -
- Take the Nook - the Press loves it because it has sharing. No one mentions that the magical LendMe feature is Publisher enabled and restricted to lending out your ebook just one time.
- Similarly, no one’s asking Barnes & Noble to specify exactly how many of its 1 million+ books are free Google Books. They’re just saying B&N have more ebooks.
- Every eReader that is released is a Kindle Killer.
Which basically means – The Press are systematically building up the issue of openness from a non Top 10 issue into a Top Issue.
Perhaps we’re asking the wrong question.
The question isn’t whether Kindle can fight off Openness and ePub
The real question is -
- When eBooks have taken off without ePub.
- When Kindle sales have taken off without ePub.
- When even eReader companies don’t advertise ePub.
- When even Kindle Killer articles don’t mention ePub.
Why are people drumming up ePub as some big huge messiah for ebooks?
ePub obviously had no part in where we are with eBooks – then on what basis can we assume that ePub is critical to the spread of books?
Filed under: books | Tagged: lack thereof, the case for ePub
[...] always excellent Amazon Kindle Review has a great article today on whether it is really necessary for Amazon to adopt EPUB. It points out that in the past the [...]
I personally think that Amazon will move to ePub with their own DRM. This is because most consumers do not really care, but it will make life easier for publishers to concentrate on one single format. If Amazon goes with their own DRM, they do not pay a dime to Adobe and still retain control of their closed eco-system (“eco” meaning “economical”, hehe).
That said, I would like for Amazon to move to ePub with Adobe DRM because this means that I will be able to buy and read their ebooks on third-party eReaders. I do not think it is going to happen, though, because the Kindle is already returning nice profits by itself, rather than selling the Kindle too cheap and make profits on the content.
Even better would be ePub with no DRM. Hey, I can dream, right?
So if it’s not marketable it’s not important? Because the Kindle does not support standards, the books don’t look as good as they could (the format is VERY limited when it comes to design), and it requires content producers to create multiple versions of the same book at great expense.
B&N’s nook does support ePub natively. It also supports the bastardized version with DRM. The Kindle doesn’t support ePub directly but does indirectly as an e-pub can be easily converted to mobi, which the Kindle does support natively. Note that both of these do not have DRM. Unless B&N licenses its DRM ePub scheme to others, then the others are going to be either DRM free or some other DRM scheme which won’t work on the nook but will on whatever reader they authorize. The Tower of Babel grows taller. This is one of the main reasons that people strip off DRM and to hell with the law that was poorly written in the first place and doesn’t work anyway.
One sees many comments from people who say they won’t buy a Kindle because it is “closed”. Don’t you think that adding (not switching to) ePub to the Kindle’s supported formats would be a good public relations move on Amazon’s part? They could still maintain the walled garden of their proprietary DRM format while to some extent embracing “openness”.
Jordi and Dave – the one format for publishers is a good point.
However, and this speaks to what Richard says i.e. supporting ePub, adding ePub support makes it easy for customers to buy from places other than Amazon.
Why would you turn your customers into everyone else’s customers.
In the real world no one expects WalMart to have stalls for Target in their stores.
Yet online even billion dollar companies expect this sort of charity.
Best thing for the customer is if Amazon stays alive – because no one else fought for ebooks and got them in.
We have the cherry pickers coming in now, and they have zero long term interest in books – they just want to exploit the circumstances.
As long as Amazon wraps ePub in their own proprietary DRM container, they can have the Kindle be the only dedicated device to read their ePub (thus, selling the Kindle very well) while still having the Kindle unable to read ePub with Adobe DRM (thus you cannot shop elsewhere and still read in your Kindle). Amazon is big enough to get away with having their device not interact with other bookstores.
This would obviously result in ePub not being an open standard at all, if we can still call it open now that there is Adobe DRM on it.
We’re talking content here, so the comparison to walmart/target is a moo point.
The Ebook market is very disorderly at the moment. So you see one book sold by amazon and only amazon, for the kindle, while the other book sold not by amazon but by some other website in probably some other format.
This is a mess and it means I need to own at least 2 ebook readers to be able to read all books.
e.g. Use Kindle to read amazon’s kindle version and use Sony Ebook Reader to read PDFs, mobi, epub formats.
I’m so staying out of this one until the market matures.
Actually you can use the Kindle -
mobi – natively.
PDF – after conversion via Calibre or Mobipocket converter.
ePub – after conversion via Calibre.
It’s a mess – however, you can get pretty much everything on your ereader except for DRM protected books. The Kindle Store has the best range so you’re not losing out in terms of new books, and free books can be converted.
The author’s entire (and most of the comments) seem to come from a singular lack of information as to what ePub is and what it does.
ePub is not “a competitor” to the Kindle. In fact, most of the content on the Kindle started as ePub at some point. ePub is, at its most basic, an interchange format for publishers whose purpose was to encourage publishers to convert to a single format. This format could then be wrapped by proprietary DRM and delivered on different devices.
Obviously, this isn’t as good as solution as one format you could read on any device. But ePub isn’t that, and moreover, has never been touted as that.
The author of this article doesn’t seem to get that the Kindle is already using ePub. Yes, it’s post-processed and DRM-wrapped ePub, but that’s how most of their content started out.
ePub is vendor neutral, and DRM free. What people add onto it afterwards is irrelevant to it serving its primary purpose — to give publishers a single target for conversion, and thus, to encourage the ebook market by making it cheap and efficient for publishers to convert once and have their books work on many devices.
Completely naive and biased article. The author doesn’t even have much information about ebooks outside of the kindle world. Why he decided to write this worthless article is beyond me.
If Kindle adds 2 more formats to its officially supported list: 1 PDF, 2 ePub. Then it becomes a device which supports almost all ebooks that exist in the world. Why would they not include it in future version? Afterall it will increase their kindle sales. (Otherwise some if not many, people will go away from kindle and use other ebook reader like sony)
And may I also add, that searching for the word ePub in those financial news articles is totally dumb.
aMoLk – thanks for your comments.
The reason Amazon would not add ePub and PDF and make it easy for users to buy books from sources other than the Kindle Store is because they want people to buy from Amazon and they want to avoid piracy.
Increasing razor sales while killing revenue from blades wouldn’t make sense.
(Late to the party, but….)
I buy (paper) books from Amazon because they’re consistently cheaper than anyone else, not because I have to choose between buying books from them and buying books from anyone else.
I buy MP3s from Amazon rather than iTunes because, again, they’re consistently cheaper.
I would have bought a Kindle if I hadn’t been concerned that, if Kindle failed, I’d be stuck with a doorstop. Instead, I bought a Sony Reader, and now I have two.
Amazon built its market niche, and became the market leader, by being competitive; your argument is based on it maintaining a monopoly (in its format). I feel it’s wandered from its original selling point, and that bothers me.
That’s a very good point – with mp3s amazon took a very different approach. Ditto with paper books.
At some point Amazon will have to open up – it will then compete on price and will probably do better than it does now.
The big danger now is advertising supported free ebooks.
Your point is very valid though – Amazon should weight the closed model carefully.
Maybe Amazon doesn’t find it so important to open Kindle for ePUB because their only interest is that readers will be forced to buy from them. Why should we, when having the possibility to buy books from other sellers gives us the chance to pay less for a title? Not to mention the availability: some books are not on Amazon’s catalog.
Yes, that will not work with the wireless system, but it doesn’t cost any time to load the book that you bought from another store to kindle using a usb connector. It’s the principle of freedom and respect for the consumer. Kindles sounds like a great device, but I hate the idea of having to throw out all the books I’ve already bought simply because kindle will not read them. Is that fair? I don’t think so.
And that is where Sony, BeBook, Irex, and other upcoming readers, deserve my respect for giving me the option to choose what is best for me. And still, they are all compatible. That’s what I call respectful behavior towards the consumer. So why is it so difficult for Amazon to understand that? Give me the freedom to choose the store and I will be the first in line to get a kindle.
My Kindle updated wirelessly last week and now supports PDF natively.
Remember that the Kindle is a kind of computer that can upgrade itself through its integrated 3G modem
I bet that in next updating release ePub will be included, allowing us to download all DRM-free books in ePub format
In fact there is already a hack in the net that allows a Kindle to recognize ePub automatically. [link removed - google it]
I have 2 Kindles. My Kindle 2 does not support PDF for me because I don’t use a font lower than #3 and my Kindle 1 does not support PDF because it has not been modified to do so. I have no problem converting other formats to be read on a Kindle. I am much more excited that Calibre can convert ODT files than ePub files, because that is my primary word processor. I also think the selfishness on the part of BigPub to try and either squash e-books or to proliferate the Tower of eBabel into even more formats is incredible stupidity that smacks of suicide. If we were all on one format with one DRM, then one could buy from the store that has the best price or the best service or the best convenience at the buyer’s choice. If grocery stores ran their business like this I would have to drive 35 miles to get a banana because I wouldn’t be eligible for the bananas at my local store. Do any of these outfits, including Amazon, think that if all readers could read all books that their sales would go down? In all likelihood they would go up because there are MANY people out there that won’t buy a reader at all until this stupidity is resolved.
This article completely ignores the fact that epub books are now available for free through many library web sites, so Amazon is making it so that buyers of the Kindle cannot borrow library books. I can’t support a business model that is trying to monopolize the e-book market and that, to my mind, is trying to wall libraries out of e-books. I bought a nook and I’ve happily borrowed three titles from my local library on it. I’m very happy that I didn’t buy a Kindle.
I decided to buy a nook rather than Kindle specifically because of its epub support. With the epub support I can download books from my public library for FREE!
Why would B&N push epub format? It doesn’t make much sense if I was B&N because of the money that they will make SELLING books. They get nothing when readers download the SAME book from the library for FREE! Seems this could be the same reason Amazon doesn’t offer it all.
It is amazing to me how many people aren’t even aware of the capability to download books for free from the public library.
I was hoping for ePUB support on the Kindle refresh, but it is not there, so I am buying a Nook or a Sony. Does anyone know when the Sony refresh is going to happen? Rumors abound around a Android based Sony reader with the new high contrast eInk display.