Windows Phone Thoughts: Lack Of Ebook Standards Hurting Industry

"Book people--whether editors, writers, publishers or librarians--hate it when bean-counters and politicians tell them how to run their business. So how about Microsoft, Adobe, Palm Digital Media and OverDrive? Do we really want them to intrude on book people--and balkanize our readerships by e-book formats? The format war is no small reason, according to a HarperCollins executive, why e-books sales of perhaps $10-$12 million a year are still a speck of the industry total."

David Rothman, of TeleRead, has written up a post on his blog about the toothlessness of the Open eBook Forum and strongly believes that incompatible standards are actively hurting the ebook industry -- and believes that the Forum has done little to stop it and should be replaced.

I'm inclined to agree. I know a lot of our readers use either MS Reader or Palm Digital Media formats, but it would be infinitely simpler if an easy standard that supported multiple platforms existed. As it is, if I want to pick up a Smartphone 2002 or (gasp!) a Palm device and use my MS Reader books with it, I can't. Only Microsoft can make .lit readers, and they won't make readers on those devices -- which effectively locks me in to a limited subset of handheld devices, unless I decompile books and circumvent the DRM encoded into them -- which, at the minimum, is a huge hassle and is fraught with legal issues. It would also be nice if that standard's DRM was user-friendly. Sadly, I'm not holding my breath, even though I'm an avid ebook fan.