Who could ignore Jane’s cat graphic—along with her plea for an end to eBabel? Adobe’s Bill McCoy, in fact, came up with a very speedy reply.
Yes, Bill: there’s hope in .epub. It’s the DRM-standards part I’m worried about: this is no small detail. Meanwhile perhaps you can return to your interest in social DRM, which could help address interoperability problems. Why isn’t the e-book business getting serious about SDRM? Or maybe watermarking? Random House seems pleased so far with watermarking for audio books and is ditching DRM requirements in most cases. Why are e-books so bleepin’ different?
Question of the day: Who’s Bill referring to when he writes: “Tellingly, one major eBook retailer, despite promoting their own proprietary format, has quietly begun accepting EPUB submissions from publishers”? Amazon? Fictionwise? Another? Of course, in Hachette’s case, retailers haven’t any choice. Laudably, .epub is now standard distribution format from Hachette, which owns Warner Books. Oh, for consumer formats to catch up—ideally with traditional DRM not cluttering up the works!
How on Earth would .epub be a winner consumer format when no consumers use it?
Plus… with all the DRM stuff they spent their time and money on it’s just another example of a product that is Defective By Design.