What Format Will Be Standard For E-Books?

After two years of total domination by Amazon, it’s looking like there is now some genuine competition emerging in the e-book market. The Amazon Kindle reader may even be knocked off the top spot in the not too distant future.

In terms of the e-book reader devices themselves, a number of manufacturers are preparing to launch new hardware – some before the end of the year, some early in 2010. Sony recently confirmed the launch of three new readers. Probably the most significant of these is the Sony Daily Edition reader, which will launch in December 2009, has touch screen functionality, wireless 3g connectivity and will allow users to download e-books “on loan” from their local lending library.

Other manufacturers, including Plastic Logic and Apple, will have new readers on offer in the near future.

The technical specification of e-book readers is certainly a very important factor. However, in the final analysis, it may not be the most important aspect in determining success. Amazon currently have a huge selection of books to download for the Kindle on their website – over 300,000 are available (and increasing every day). Unfortunately, if you have a Kindle, then you are pretty well tied to buying your books from Amazon. If you want to change to a different reader later on, you won’t be able to port your Kindle books over to it due to the proprietary format. Maybe in future some transfer option will be made available – but right now it’s Kindle books for the Kindle reader.

Other manufacturers seem to be moving towards a common e-book format – called ePub, which is different to that used by Amazon. This would allow users the licence to port books between different reader devices. It would also allow them to source their e-books from a number of different vendors. In other words, it would give them more freedom of choice.

If this move goes ahead, and it seems likely that it will, then it’s not out of the question that what is currently a feather in Amazon’s cap, their huge collection of Kindle books, may become a liability. Of course, it would be within Amazon’s power to change the situation by making their Kindle books compatible with whatever format is defined by the industry, either by the use of a translation facility or by adopting the new standard.

Whether or not Amazon are able to retain their current dominant position, it looks very much as if the e-book market is going to have some strong competition in future and that industry standards will be put in place sooner rather than later. All of this is excellent news for consumers.

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