What it basically, realistically means is downloading to one’s *desktop* and then, I guess, maybe emailing yourself with the ebook as an attachment and then picking it up on the iPhone/Touch?

No bloody way would I just have *one* copy on an iPhone/Touch without a desktop backup that is also in some way accessible on the desktop too. That’s even worse than DRM!

However the real worrisome bit is that Apple could decide that it doesn’t like that way of doing synching, or if Apple decides to do eBooks on their own, they can choose not to make any competing 3rd party eBook readers available, sigh.

However, as Phi Dinh already noted, it looks like there is just direct downloading to play with. However syncing could be done in the app, if your computer were running an FTP/HTTP service that allowed the iPhone the download/upload files, but getting the security model on that correct is going to be a bit touchy (most likely something like mutually authenticating SSL with some sort of enrollment process), and it’s nowhere near as elegant as tying into an existing synching model.

However the real worrisome bit could decide that it doesn’t like that way of doing synching, or if Apple decides to do eBooks on their own, they can choose not to make any competing 3rd party eBook readers available, sigh.

It means we probably won’t see ebooks coming into the iPhone through iTunes or disk access, but users will still probably be able to add books to their library through the application itself: Imagine a repository feature of some sort within the Ebooks application that fetches whatever files you want from gutenberg website.

So formats are irrelevant, providing the books application can read them.

The “twist” is that you won’t be able to extract these book files from your phone onto say your PC, because there is no direct access via disk or iTunes, and backing up your iphone it becomes encrypted.

Huh? Please clarify that. How does the library get *in* the device to begin with? And if the library are unencrypted files, backing them up *encrypts* them?!

That means that an e-book reader application could store its library on the device. It could also provide web-based access to add to that library.

As far as formats go, this seems to offer no limitation. A given application can read whatever type of e-book file type it likes; it just can’t share its files with any other application on the device.

An interesting twist is that it appears you will not be able to add to your library outside the device, such as via iTunes. While you can back up an application’s storage onto your computer’s disk via iTunes, the backup version is encrypted and thus unalterable by the user. In other words, it’s fine if you need to restore the application on your device, but is otherwise inaccessible.

Does anyone know how long it took amazon to round up the publishers it did for the Kindle eBook Store?