BookExpo horror story–and a few words about Microsoft, Woody Allen and an AWOL IDPF

Oh, the horrors!

BookExpo was such a success for OpenReader and dotReader that I may have to slow down the pace of the TeleBlog for today. So many OR-related inquiries to follow up on! Come back very late tonight (EST) or tomorrow. Here’s one tidbit now, though:

My favorite BookExpo dialogue was when OSoft CEO Mark Carey, whose dotReader software will be the first commercial program compatible with OpenReader’s format, dropped by a Microsoft area to say hello to marketer Cliff Guren.

An OSoft-Microsoft dialogue

I wasn’t there, but here’s the funny lowdown as I remember it reaching me.

“What, you’re here?” Cliff said.

Mark smiled and excused himself to get back to all the traffic at the OSoft booth.

“What, you’ve got a booth?” Cliff asked.

That’s right, Cliff–and a cool, standards-oriented program without the usual DRM gotchas.

Cliff is Director of Publisher Evangelism for Microsoft’s Windows Live Books project, and he, too, was busy at BookExpo. At another time that day, I wanted to say hello as well, but didn’t want to interrupt his chat with Bowker.

The Woody Allen angle

He and his buddies from Redmond at least bothered to come to promote their book-related efforts.

Good for you, Cliff. Didn’t Woody Allen say: “80 percent of success is showing up”?

Nowhere in sight were such companies as Adobe and ETI or the supposedly publisher-oriented IDPF. What does that tell the many IDPF members who came to BookExpo? This is one more reason why IDPF should abandon its delusion of being a standards organization and focus on promo of e-books, which, given their minuscule sales, need it badly. Hey, join OpenReader in aiming for a mainstream standards organization such as OASIS without Adobe and ETI running the show to suit their needs. Once IDPF/OeBF was viable as a standards group–but not after the Suits prevailed over the techies. Now the Suits are losing out in both standards and promo, because the IDPF has been so ineffectual.