Sony digiraamatud nüüdsest ainult EPUB failivormingus
Sony andis teada, et korraldab ümber oma online raamatupoe. “Sony Ebook Store” nimetatakse ümber “Reader Store” – otsese viitena Sony Reader nimelisele digiraamatute lugemisseadmele, mis konkureerib turul Amazon Kindle jt sellistega. Olulisem uudis on aga see, et “Reader Store” poes hakatakse digiraamatuid pakkuma ainult standardses EPUB failivormingus. Sony lõpetab oma firmapärase LRX failivormingu kasutamise.
Loota tuleb, et ka Amazon järgib ükskord Sony eeskuju ja asub e-raamatuid lõpuks ometi EPUB formaadis müüma.
In demonstrating the iPad’s new slick iBooks e-book reading application, it was explicitly stated that the iPad uses the free, open e-book standard, ePub format.
This is a surprisingly rare but welcome move for Apple in embracing a non-proprietary media format.
ePub doesn’t mean no DRM, but it does mean you’ll be able, if only through third party Apps, to transfer your own books from other devices.
Jeff Bezos has got to be nursing a migraine right now.
The iBooks app will use the ePub format, which is good news and bad news. The good news is that it’s not a proprietary format, like the Kindle – i.e. Kindle books can only be read on a Kindle. Actually, Kindle has expanded to having books available on the iPhone, but generally it’s a single format ereader. One wonders if Kindle books can be read on the iPad, as they can on the iPhone, what use the Kindle has at all. No doubt that would truly make the tablet a Kindle killer. It’s unclear right now if iPad books will be transferable to other devices, but the use of ePub suggests they will be.
The bad news about ePub is that it’s really cumbersome to deal with and it’s easier to just strip out all extra formatting, as you do for Smashwords books, because ePub is really just a fancy text file. It is possible to do more with it, but it’s not easy. Given that the iPad is built around the app store ($9.99 per app), a Create a Book app could be in the pipeline. There was a thought that Apple might be creating its own user-friendly format, but instead chose the universal ePub format.