The Frustrating Lack of a Universal Format for eBooks

Where is the "read books how I want to" button?

Here’s an abbrievated list of ebook formats: PDF, Kindle, Sony Reader, PalmDOC, Mobipocket, Rocketbook, eReader, Plucker, txt, rtf.

It seems like every device that peddles book functionality now gets its own format. Add to those the formats of the dedicated readers, like Kindle and Sony Reader, and the formats that were here before ebooks, like txt and rtf, and you have a messy bucket of corporate crap that necessitates sorting ebookstores by compatibility first (more on that in an upcoming post). And all that’s even without mentioning our terrible DRM troubles.

So where is the mp3 of ebooks? Where’s the format that most sellers will sell and most devices will read? Here’s what’s happening in ebook formatting, and why it’s bad for readers of ebooks.

The corporate standoff over ebooks

Make no mistake, this is not a consumer advantage. These companies are not optimizing books for their devices, and each creating their own format does not give any benefit to their customers.

The major producers of ereaders have a vested interest in selling ebooks that only their devices can read, and their competitors’ devices can’t. It’s a devious way of manufacturing brand loyalty by default, and it’s a manipulative marketing tool for the sales of their ereaders.

Sony and Amazon are currently in a prisoner’s dilemma that they’re treating like a Mexican standoff. If either one allowed the other’s device to read their ebooks, or started selling ebooks in a universal format that the other’s device could read, they’d lose a perceived competitive edge.

But if they both started selling books in a universal format, it would streamline the process for publishers releasing the book digitally, and make it easier for customers to find editions of the books they want that their devices can read.

The first one to blink gives their opponent an advantage, but it would be a temporary advantage, not an advantage that would ensure their permanent defeat. The problem is that these companies aren’t thinking long-term and aren’t doing what’s best for the state of the epublishing industry as a whole.

Meanwhile, they’re both paying the price. Sony Readers have a limited selection (relative to Kindles) of pay-for-it books, while Kindles can’t borrow ebooks from libraries like Readers can. Both customer bases suffer.

What’s to be done about it

It’s unrealistic to think that Amazon or Sony will embrace a universal format before the Great eReader Adoption. Afterward, perhaps, when their goal becomes to sell more ebooks, and not simply to sell ereaders, then maybe we’ll see some changes.

To kickstart a change before the Adoption, we need a third-party ebookstore that will sell primarily one format that most devices can use. PDF is the logical candidate for a pro tempore universal format (until something like the ePub format takes off and gets more than a handful of titles).

PDFs started out primarily as easily printable image scans of documents. They were large and cumbersome and impossible to use for word processing. Today’s PDFs, though, are perfect for ebooks. They have a static pagination, they can reflow to resize text, they can be formatted to have hyperlinked tables of contents, and they’re much lighter than they used to be. These days, most PDFs (not these) are a pleasure to read on device. Also, PDF is the most popular format at ManyBooks.net by a whole, whole lot.

{See ePub update, at the bottom of this post.}

So when can we expect at least a relative universality?

A hopeful future for ebook formatting?

I think it would be easier to create programs for repurposing devices like the iPhone to read PDFs (I refuse to believe that we need a smartphone-only format like eReader) than it would be to create whole new libraries of specifically formatted books, and it would be much, much easier for ebook consumers to have one library of books that works with any device they might want.

I don’t even pretend to hope that one ebook format will ever become as predominant as the mp3. The mp3 was groundbreaking in terms of file compression, and that functionality, that suddenly music files were small enough to be really useful, was what gave the mp3 format its dominance.

What I do hope is that publishers will wake up, and stop signing exclusivity deals when they release ebooks. It’s not a ballpark, you don’t have a captive audience, and exclusivity deals are only good for the distributor of the book; it hurts the publisher by reducing the potential audience for any release.

If a third-party bookstore can emerge, that sells books that both Kindle and Sony can read, a relatively universal format will begin to snowball. Until then, rest fitfully knowing that Sony and Amazon care more about screwing the other one out of the potential sale of an ereader than they do about the customers who’ve already bought one.

UPDATE: After some great comments on this post, I’m sold on the ePub future. ePubs can do static pagination less obtrusively than PDFs, and can work with more devices. I wouldn’t be surprised if PDF was the pro tem universal format, but publishers have a vested interest in making ePub their primary format going forward.

RE-UPDATE: Stanza is adding support for PDF, which will throw a monkeywrench into the ePub works. One of the primary advantages for ePub is that it works on all devices (except Kindle). Now, if PDF does the same thing (and is already more accepted), the ePub movement needs to get in gear if its going to make ePub a viable, accepted universal format.