Sony Approves Epub As Its Standare Ebook Format

Sony announced last week that its newest Sony Reader will support the International Digital Publishing Forum's (IDPF) standard EPUB format for e-books. In addition, the device (model PRS-505) will support Adobe's ADEPT DRM, meaning that publishers can create DRM-protected e-books for the Sony Reader with Adobe InDesign CS3 using Adobe's Digital Editions technology.

The IDPF's EPUB format is a set of specifications that the e-book standards body (formerly the Open eBook Forum) released almost two years ago. The book publishing industry has been pushing for EPUB to be adopted throughout the e-book value chain.

There are two things to note about this set of announcements. First, this is evidence that Amazon, despite its refusal to reveal sales volume figures for its Kindle e-book reader, is emerging as the market leader -- surpassing Sony, who's Sony Reader has been available for a longer time. The standard tech market strategy playbook -- for example: Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian's superb Information Rules (Harvard Business School Press, 1999 and still relevant) -- dictates that the market leader should keep its platform proprietary and closed (e.g. Apple and iTunes, Microsoft and Windows), while challengers should embrace standards in an effort to achieve enough critical mass to topple the leader. Thus, the fact that Sony is embracing EPUB implies that it lags Amazon.

The adoption of EPUB is a good start to cleaning up this mess. Among other things, it enables publishers to publish e-books in a single format that can be rendered on a variety of devices and software applications. But unfortunately it does not go far enough: in particular, the EPUB Open Container Format (OCF) spec leaves DRM unspecified, which means even the same epub format ebook can't read on different devices unless using some epub drm removal to erase the protection first. DRM implementations for EPUB files are up to the hardware or software vendor and therefore could remain proprietary. Such is the case with Sony Reader, except insofar as it will read files in Adobe's ADEPT DRM for Digital Editions.

Right now, the e-book market is a mess, even with Amazon the purported leader. There are several reading devices on the market, including those from eReader, eBook Technologies (Gemstar), Bookeen, and iRex in addition to Sony and Amazon. There are several e-book formats for PCs and Mac, including those of Adobe, eBooks.com, ebrary, LibreDigital, Microsoft, NetLibrary, Texterity, and Zinio. None of these are compatible with each other. And let's not even mention the e-book platforms for PDAs and smartphones.

Of course, this begs the question of whether publishers should continue to require DRM, especially now that they are no longer requiring it for audiobooks (in line with the music industry's major labels). It's important to bear in mind that book publishing comprises several disparate segments, which have differing requirements about supporting certain business models and preventing unauthorized use. For example, the college textbook industry has particularly stringent antipiracy requirements and is moving towards a subscription model. As the normally anti-DRM Randall Stross noted in last Sunday's New York Times, this business model necessitates strong DRM.