TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Compatible e-book formats talked up by OeBF Exec Director–as paraphrased by Guardian in UK

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Is the Open eBook Forum going to do the right thing–both for the public and the e-book industry–and get serious about a Universal Consumer Format? And maybe even give us a schedule for UCF development? This morning via Google I ran across the following in the Guardian in the UK:

Nick Rogaty suggests that compatible file formats and a good ebook reading device, something as desirable as one of Apple’s iPods, would help e-publishing break out of the geeky male ghetto. Improvements in digital rights management (DRM) are also needed.

Actually that’s Nick B-o-g-a-t-y who’s exec director of the OeBF, and I’ll hope that the paraphrase and context are more accurate than the spelling. As quoted, he uses “formats”–the plural–but maybe he’s at least pointing toward an e-book equivalent of the RTF format for word-processors, which at least would help. In effect that might be a UCF. Let’s just hope it wouldn’t simply involve a multiformat reader, which could be a real kludge.

Way to go, Nick–just so you’re talking compatibility in more meaningful ways and we can see some timely action. Even the big boys in the OeBF, such as Adobe and Microsoft, could come out ahead with compatiblity in ways beyond just a multiformat reader. E-books should sell many times more than the current $10-$20 million a year, and it will happen much faster if the industry gets serious about format compatibility and more convenient DRM.

Other excerpts:

Unlike music, the book business’s core demographic is older and female and not drawn to piracy. But the fear of “Napsterisation” has led to rather stringent DRM measures in e- publishing. Rogaty suggests things are beginning to settle down, with companies recognising that the right to use ebooks in certain ways is important to consumers.

“Another thing we need is a really good retail experience,” he adds. “What Apple has done with the iPod, the iTunes software and the iTunes store is amazingly good. We need an equivalent in the ebook industry.” …

It is still early days, but Rogaty says public libraries, and ultimately schools, could be the interim home for the ebook. The OeBF is organising a conference in March to discuss the idea. Electronic publishers may not get the vast profits they anticipated last decade, but they might stay alive and help out libraries in the process.

“In the age of Google, libraries are trying to find their space as 24-hour providers of information to communities,” says Rogaty. “Providing ebooks in a service that is open 24 hours a day, that’s accessible from home, could be a tremendous improvement on what we have now. The libraries of the future could be based around ebooks.”

Indeed! We’ve been saying the same thing since 1991. If industry can get its act together about compatibility and DRM–and if the hardware improves, as we all expect–then dreams will become reality.