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From an email I received from Ed Klopek:

E-mail from OverDrive
Streamlining the eBook Experience – Eliminating Mobipocket eBooks

As part of our ongoing initiative to streamline the user experience, OverDrive has ended support for the Mobipocket eBook format which means that this format is no longer available for selection in Content Reserve. For libraries with Mobipocket eBook collections, OverDrive will replace any copies with a corresponding number of units for use with Kindle or other supported reading devices. There will be a very small number of titles that we are unable to replace with other formats. For those libraries affected, we will contact you separately with a report of these titles and issue a full content credit for amounts paid for those titles.

If your library hosts a Customer Support form, references to Mobipocket eBooks should be removed and “Kindle Book” should be added once available at your library’s Virtual Branch website.
They were removed right after the Kindle format became available on OverDrive. I wonder if this was part of the Amazon/OverDrive Kindle deal.

2 COMMENTS

  1. This fits with Amazon’s demonstrated policy of killing off a Mobipocket. It bought Mobipocket, then refused to license it for iPhone (I had bought hundreds of DRM Mobipocket ebooks on Palm which thus became useless on iPhone). When the best independent ereader program for iOS, Stanza, kept asking Amazon to license Mobipocket so Stanza could read that format, Amazon bought them, too.

    There’s been no response on the Mobipocket forums for over two years, and none on the Stanza support forums for over a year. “Buy it, strip the assets, then strangle it” seems to be Amazon’s policy. After all, it worked for B&N when they bought Fictionwise, then the biggest and most successful ebook vendor.

    Amazon bought Mobipocket for the format: the Kindle format is only Mobi with some Amazon DRM. B&N bought Fictionwise for the eReader format, which now has B&N DRM. Meanwhile, they cut off support for the users of the original format.

    It certainly doesn’t win them any friends. A simple offer to convert previously-purchased titles to the new format, would dispel all the angst and gain them new customers.

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