By the way, I wouldn’t underestimate the librarians. The academic libraries in particular are very e-savvy. Journals have largely moved to digital and the academic libraries are a major market for e-books.

I also admit the weakness of my clothing analogy based on insufficient information. I’ve been out of retail too long, apparently.

Nevertheless, even after the corrections and explanations, it remains true that this policy is a disadvantage to those publishers who choose to offer ebooks in ALL formats rather than a few protected, proprietary ones.

And given the current trend for everyone and his cousin to jump on the “make our own ereader” bandwagon, I have to wonder if this isn’t going to end up being as big a headache for the agencies you say asked for it as it will be for us.

The problem, as I see it, is that this issue wasn’t addressed until major publishers entered the market. Then, as is always the case, it was treated as if they invented it, ignoring the fact that small publishers were doing ebooks commercially as early as 1996. This community of small publishers has NEVER been part of the processes that result in decisions that affect them.

Taxation without representation, if you will.

Furthermore, the people in those libraries and such usually have no idea what ebooks are really about, other than what they’ve garnered from the media, who are clueless, or the mainstream industry, which isn’t much better. As such, they are unaware of the crucial differences between print and digital media, which are not the same as the differences in audio media.

So, this protest is as much about a thriving group of publishers who are fed to the teeth at being constantly overlooked and ignored as if they were of no relevance when they are, in fact, the people who laid the foundations of the ebook publishing industry.