Good News From Around the World

First: from the ever-so-sexy Shelf Awareness newsletter:

Sony will announce that it will sell e-books only in the open ePub format and will scrap its proprietary anticopying software in lieu of Adobe software that restricts how often e-books may be copied, the New York Times reported. As a result, e-books bought for the Sony Reader will be readable on most other e-book readers, except for Amazon’s Kindle, which operates on a proprietary format. Later this year, Sony will introduce a new e-reader that allows wireless downloads of e-books a la the Kindle.

The New York Times article from 12 August has a great quote from Allan Weiner from Gartner, who says

there is one more company that must declare its allegiance to either an open or closed world for e-books: Apple.

If, as expected, Apple soon introduces a tablet computer that can function as a reading device, and if it embraces an open standard like ePub, Amazon will have to reconsider its closed approach, Mr. Weiner said.

“If you see some Adobe executive up on stage with Steve Jobs when they announce the tablet, at that point Amazon has a lot to worry about,” he said.

Mega whopping high-fives and kudos to the IDPF, who long championed the ePub format. I wonder if this means that Steve Potash will allow questions at Digital Book 2010 as to whether publishers can or will unify behind the .epub format?

Way to go Sony, and way to go IDPF.

And for extra more bonus good news: the IASPR Conference, currently underway in Brisbane, Australia, received some excellent television coverage from ABC. My favorite part: the reporter’s voice over when she said, “Don’t sneer.”

Damn right, don’t sneer. I’ll punch you in your ePub.

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The Link-O-Lator

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  1. Papercut says:

    Errr… This is all well and good but… WHAT ABOUT ALL THE SONY BOOKS I ALREADY BOUGHT?!

    Also, I stopped using Adobe’s stupid Digital Editions after I lost rights to a ton of books. I HATE Digital Editions. Does this mean I have to stick to (non-restricted) PDF’s? OH NOES!!!!

  2. Kalen Hughes says:

    Am I the only person who thinks ePub sucks outloud? It’s not supported by my CyBook, and when I strip the DRM and convert it into something I can use, the results are a heinous mess.

    I REALLY don’t want the whole world to become a Kindle vs. ePub fight, since I basically can’t use either of them. *sigh*

  3. I wish I could be at the IASPR conference! The tweets have been so tantalizing. Why is Australia so far away? *cries*

  4. JenD says:

    I don’t have a dedicated eReader yet so this is good news to me.

    I have used Adobe Digital Editions on my laptop and have lost a few books as well. I wonder if it would be easier to use on a dedicated reader.

    Here’s to a good first step by the ebook industry.

  5. Jessica G. says:

    Those wondering about DE, I’m pretty sure I saw that you won’t need to do that. I guess it’ll work via the Library or something.

    Sorry, that was kind of vague. More info on the ePub for Sony here: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53450

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