Amazon is up to 145,000 Kindle titles. But the Sony PRS-505 Reader could be the better bet in the long run if choice is your goal.
Remember the benefits of a recent software upgrade for the Sony. Tens of thousands of 505-readable titles will be available not just from Sony’s own store but also independents.
That’s what CEO Ahmed Hindawi of the Hindawi Publishing Corporation, an open access academic publisher, argues in essence in a long and thoughtful TeleRead comment.
Say, you buy 200 books worth a total of $1,500, with Adobe rather than Sony DRM. Then, he says, "you can move your library in the future to any other book reader" supporting Adobe DRM. The Kindle doesn’t support Adobe "protection," of course–as applied either to either the ePub or PDF format. The Sony handles both Adobe-DRMed formats.
"At their mercy"
"If you buy books from Amazon for $1,500," Ahmed Hindawi goes on to say, "you are at their mercy. You can upgrade your hardware by buying a new Kindle (only from Amazon and at the price Amazon demands), but you cannot switch the hardware provider."
What’s more, he points out that Amazon might tolerate some publishers walking away as it continues to squeeze the book industry’s margins. That wouldn’t be the best news for your future choice of titles on your Amazon-centric machine.
In fairness to Amazon…
Remember, the Kindle isn’t the only way to go within the Amazon world. You can buy Mobipocket books, which many machine will display. But the number of Kindle selections is probably larger than the number of Mobi choices. Furthermore, although this may change, Amazon doesn’t sell DRMed Mobi files for the Kindle. And for now, you can’t read Kindle-format books on other machines. Will this change? Remember, Ahmed and I are writing about the present. Will the future be better?
The best scenario
And speaking of better, wouldn’t the best scenario be for publishers to drop DRM or go the social DRM route? DRM isn’t nearly as good at protecting e-books as it is at locking consumers into specific products or ranges of products.
Limiting your buys the Adobe universe—however large—could be still constricting when this is least convenient.
Reminder: For now, you can’t upgrade the Sony PRS-500 to support Adobe DRM. And PRS-505s with Adobe DRM already in the firmware are not quite shipping yet. See Sony PRS-505 gets update today: ePub and DRMed PDF and information on downloading the new firmware.
Like many other readers I’m using a Clie TH55 (for me, it’s a recent upgrade from my Clie SJ30, thankew early adopter types).
I can’t imagine buying anything with DRM, or anything that’s even less of a multipurpose computer than the Palm OS5.
Just saying. I found this site poking around for whatever’s next, likely one of the Linux Nokia devices once they get cheaply available on the used market.
Don’t forget that Apple patent for token-passing DRM. I think that might turn out to be something Very Very Big.
I really think this is a no-brainer. If you find DRM offensive, as do I, then just vote with your dollars and don’t buy the product. There are hundreds of thousands of books available for the Kindle that are DRM free. Also not in the AZW format of the Kindle but still readable there. Both TXT and PRC files are directly readable on the Kindle as are unlocked Mobi files. If and when we ever get the tower of e-Babel knocked down, then the interoperability of our toys will be secure as well. I have bought a book on the Kindle from Amazon that is unreadable. The only reason I kept it is because I wanted the search function, which sort of worked as long as it didn’t give me a hit in the unreadable portion. And yes, I did notify the author, with no response. There is NO reason for Amazon to tie a public domain book with DRM or any other book that the author wants DRM free. I am just grateful that most are available elsewhere.
Go with the bigger corporate giant. Sony dwarfs Amazon. Enough said.