This exclusivity drives business to iTunes and to Amazon’s Web site, and has little to do with the e-reader technology itself. That’s according to a new report by the European and International Booksellers Federation.
The Federation is concerned that consumers locked into Amazon’s Kindle or Apple’s iPad won’t be able to buy new e-books from smaller, privately owned digital booksellers. The Federation hopes that publishers and makers of e-readers can resolve this problem by embracing the EPUB 3 e-book standard—something neither Amazon nor Apple use.
The next step would be to create a more flexible digital rights management system. Current DRM restrictions are why your e-books remain for the most part locked into your e-reader. Which means that as great as e-books are, there’s one common, age-old information transmittance system at which they’re lousy: you still cannot easily lend your e-books to a friend.
—Larry Greenemeier
