In the five years that I’ve been involved in publishing e-books, I’ve eagerly followed the progress of the publishing industry’s efforts to create a universal e-book format. It all made sense. Why have a bunch of competing formats that become obsolete as you upgrade your reading device?
Still, it was all somewhat academic. I didn’t own a e-book reading device. I didn’t buy e-book novels. I don’t even buy many RPG e-books in PDF, and that’s what I’ve been publishing! In short, I supported the theory of a universal format but I never really experienced the dirty reality of the electronic Tower of Babel until now. Now that I have an e-book reader of my own, the problem is a lot more immediate and personal.
I have a Sony PRS-505, which reads LRF files. It can also read EPUB, which is the first-generation universal format. The accompanying software can convert DOC and HTML files to LRF, so even though it’s not native support, there is some measure of support. The problem is that many publishers are still insisting on DRM (Digital Rights Management, aka copy protection), and so they are using proprietary formats like eReader and MobiePocket which support DRM. This makes books shopping difficult. I can buy some books from Fictionwise, but it looks like I’m beholden to the Sony store if I want anything approaching a contemporary mass market book. Now that we have this universal format called EPUB, can anyone clue me in on where I can find stores selling new releases in this format?
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. I still really like my Sony. It has been a week and a half and I’ve only used about half the battery charge. Go e-ink! Even though I was frustrated at my limited choices at Fictionwise, I did manage to score something unexpected– current issues of Analog and Azimov’s science fiction magazines. I haven’t read either of these mags since I was a kid, when I hungrily absorbed their magic courtesy of the library. If I like them as much as I expect, I may buy a subscription and download new issues as they’re added to my online bookshelf. The other cool thing is that I’m finally reading that Firefly novel Steven Brust posted on his website a year or two ago. Burst is a favorite author of mine, and Firefly was of course Firefly. That’s definitely a case of mixing chocolate and peanut butter. Anyway, Brust posted the novel as a PDF, text file, and HTML, but I never got around to reading it because I didn’t want to read from a monitor for that long but didn’t want to print it all out either. Sony Reader to the rescue!
All of this format angst will definitely have a bearing on how Buried Tales of Pinebox, TX gets released this summer. I’ll probably have to release it in Mobiepocket and eReader, but you can rest assured that it will also be available in EPUB as well.
Have you examined webscriptions? http://www.webscription.net
It’s run by Baen, and they had the same issues with ebooks that your having… Mainly regarding the different formats, and how they should release them… Here’s what they decided on:
The chapters will be available as HTML through our password protected site. Examples are currently available in the Baen Free Library. This format should print without difficulty from your web browser, and can be saved and opened using your word processor.
When the Final release of a month is made it will include Palm Pilot/Mobipocket/Kindle format, Rocketbook, Sony LRF, RTF and MS Reader versions. There won’t be any partial version in these formats.
A ZIP file of the various versions will be available for download.
Thanks for the suggestion, Benjamin. I vaguely remember reading about it, but since I didn’t have an e-book reader at the time I probably mentally filed it away for future reference. We can see how well that worked out! I’ll definitely take a closer look.