7:24 AM - Will Amazonâ??s exclusive ebook format effect sales of the Kindle
The Amazon Kindle eBook reader has quickly become one of the most popular eBook devices available, and many authors and publishers would like to sell their books to the hundreds of thousands of Kindle users. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of information available on how to truly succeed in the development process. Amazon's Digital Text Platform (DTP) website has some basic information, but authors and publishers are not usually well-versed in the technologies and formatting specifics that come with the Kindle conversion process.
But the wrong ebook format…..
The problem being, the format that libraries all over the world use for the ebooks they offer is the effective industry standard, ePub. And Kindle ereaders can't work with ePub formatted ebooks. Thus Kindle owners are excluded from this source of ebooks to read. But Kindle has native support for PDF file, if your PDF ebook is drm proetced, you need to remove the protection first with pdf drm removal before you can read it on your kindle device.
So, what happens next?
I am curious to see if in future versions of the Kindle, Amazon will broaden the range of ebook formats it can handle, or even go as far as to drop their own ebook format and simply go with the rest of the world and accept ePub as the format of choice for ebooks.
I am reasonably sure that if they stick to their guns, and refuse to make the Kindle work with ePub, their sales will surely suffer from this one unexpected development - the ebook lending libraries.
Of course, the other possibility (there are always other possibilities after all) is that libraries will change and start to stock their ebooks in the Amazon format as well as ePub. For Amazon, this would obviously be the best outcome, and one I am sure they are beavering away in the back rooms trying to bring about.
In any event, I hope that a sensible solution is found, since the Kindle is one of the best ereaders out there, and I can understand that people would like to buy it… But if that choice closes a wonderful source of ebooks, then I can only see sales dropping in time, as other brands of ereader who do support ePub take the lead.
More drm removal tools for ebook reader: Nook drm removal Kobo drm removal
