Converting e-Books to Open Formats

Regarding the author's article in general, and this comment in particular...

"An ebook supplier could charge enough to cover royalties, operating expense and a modest profit. In a model where the ebooks are all in a standard format, they could be formatted as needed, including drm controls, on demand to any format needed by the client for whatever ebook format they needed."

...(and please excuse me that for now, the app is Windows-based).

There is another "open standard" which has been around for a while, but ignored; it is called OpenReader Format.

Meanwhile, there was a free but proprietary app, using its propietary format, called ThoutReader. It was an awesome app (and format) for the Windows platform! It allowed you to do all this, and more:

• increase and decrease font size
• search text, table of contents, or both
• add "notes" (literally notes you write in the middle of the text)
• share your notes publicly
• download public notes
• keep a record of all your e-book downloads in your account
• re-download both free and commercial downloads from any computer
• categorize your e-books

There were many free and some decent commercial e-books. The best free ones were technical manuals, such as those for PHP and MySQL. Accounts are free, but credit cards are needed to buy commercial e-books and to upload public "notes".

Then the creators, OSoft, were hired by "Teachers Without Borders" to customize the app for them. At that time, they decided to a) go open-source, b) support the OpenReader Format, and c) rename the app "dotReader" after a pioneering woman in computer science.

dotReader has an area that can be customized via application customization, or by the e-book itself (to support a small advertisement area and bring down the costs of textbooks). dotReader has the old features and some additions. A conversion tool is being developed. It reads OpenReader Format, the old ThoutReader format (buggy, though, depending on the particular ebook), and a few other formats.

Now that it is open-source, someone will port it to Linux, I'm sure. Meanwhile, those who already sold their commercial e-books in ThoutReader format should be the first to offer them in OpenReader Format as well. dotReader allows for DRM support while maintaining an open file format.

Reportedly, textbook publishers really don't like the current cost situation either. Their high costs in the U.S. (as compared to U.K.) are apparently because of the way a traditional sales force is employed (even required) to get the textbooks used by academia and offered in college bookstores, and because of the high travel expenses in a much bigger country.

These publishers' stated goal, reportedly, is to keep textbooks $30 and under.

These developments should give the industry, and software makers, the kick in the pants they need. This is great for the industry and awesome for comsumers!

You can download dotReader from osoft.com

Are MobiPocket and Rocket Ebook files really the same thing? Rocket Ebook appears to be a non-DRM'ed format, whereas MobiPocket files are DRM-ed. At least the stores that I've seen selling MobiPocket files appear to need the key off the MobiPocket software you're using (extracted from the PDA) and the files appear to be keyed to this software.

Will the rbmake utilities really touch DRM-ed MobiPocket files?

As the owner of an RCA ebook reader, I can say that the hardware is an excellent way to carry large volumes of reference material in a portable manner. Gemstar shot itself in the foot by pricing the ebook versions too high. I use rbmake to convert html ebooks for my reb1100 and it works quite well, however, many titles that I need are pdf format and are not readily converted to html for input to rbmake. I like the idea of a common open standard that can be readily converted to whatever proprietary standard is needed.
On the flip side, the publishing industry favors DRM and proprietary standards. The main problem is that the digital rights are controlled by the publisher and not by the original author/artist. The publishing industry should wake up and realize that the average ebook reading joe can figure out that the ebook publisher doesn't have the manufacturing and distribution costs associated with producing paperback copies of the same material. An ebook supplier could charge enough to cover royalties, operating expense and a modest profit. In a model where the ebooks are all in a standard format, they could be formatted as needed, including drm controls, on demand to any format needed by the client for whatever ebook format they needed.