EPUB: The One eBook Standard to Rule them All

EPUB is a free, standardized format that almost every hardware eReader or desktop software understands. Amazon's Kindle, however, cannot read EPUB texts without using some intermediary software that converts these books into a format the Kindle can understand. While there are a few competing formats, EPUB has turned into the de facto standard for eBooks. Some vendors, like Sony, wrap a digital rights management (DRM) solution around these books, but others just publish completely open, non-DRMed versions of their books. The EPUB files from Google Books will not be locked down by a DRM solution.

It is important to note, however, that these EPUB files were run through an optical character recognition (OCR) system and weren't edited afterwards. While this software has greatly improved over the last few years, there are still quite a few mistakes in most books. This post on the Google Books blog explains the conversion process in more detail. The PDF versions of these books don't suffer from this problem, as they are just copies of the actual pages. This also means, however, that these PDF files are far larger and that users can't, for example, adjust the size of the books' fonts according to the size of their screens.

While it isn't quite clear what the specifics of Sony's DRM scheme will look like, the company did announce that it will use Adobe's Content Server to power its DRM solution. Adobe's server relies on a proprietary DRM solution. EPub is a very flexible format and allows developers to put a DRM-wrapper around eBooks. Publishers won't have to wrap DRM around their offerings. However, it is unlikely that a lot of book publishers (who are just as fearful of piracy as most music executives) will be able to resist this. In effect, this gives Adobe a lot of power in the eBook industry, as our friends at TeleRead point out in more detail.

Opening up the Store

Still, Sony should be lauded for adopting the ePub format and making its eBook store compatible with more devices from more manufacturers. All of Sony's eReaders, including the first-generation PRS-500, will be able to read these books, but what is far more important is that users will not be locked into having to buy a Sony device just to make use of the Sony eBook store. In addition, as other publishers adopt this format, Sony's own Reader will also be able to access books from a wider variety of stores.

Sony is clearly taking the eBook market very seriously. Just last week, it brought the prices for most of the books in its store down to $9.99 and announced two new eBook readers that look very promising.

Will Amazon React?

The question now, of course, is how Amazon will react to this. Amazon's Kindle ecosystem is almost completely closed - starting with the proprietary eBook format up to the Kindle's inability to display ePub-formatted books. In the press release, Steve Haber, the president of Sony's Digital Reading Business Division, argues that ePub is "quickly becoming the de facto standard for eBooks." If that is indeed the case, Amazon will have to adapt quickly if it doesn't want to be left behind.

With the Kindle, Amazon has created the current de facto standard for hardware eReaders, but the market is still young enough for others to be able to regain the lead again. The fact that Sony bothered to send out press releases about the fact that it now offers 1 million free books clearly shows that the competition in the eBook market is heating up.

Sadly, most eReaders are locked down with digital rights management software, so that users can't just transfer books from one device to another. Because of this, users are locked into one store once they buy an eReader, and the availability of books in the eReader's eBook store could easily sway customers in one direction or another. While Sony offers more free books than other companies, the average price in the Sony eBook store is generally higher than the standard $9.99 that Barnes & Noble and Amazon are charging.

It is worth noting that Google only scans these free books and doesn't edit them in any form, so that they often contain spelling errors.

If you own a Sony Reader and want to access these free eBooks, you can download the necessary software here. The PRS-500, one of Sony's first eReaders, however, is not compatible with the Google Books software.

OPML for eBooks

One way to think about this standard is as a kind of 'OPML for eBooks' - only instead of RSS feeds, OPDS features a catalog of eBooks, including optional links to book covers and short summaries. Instead of making users jump through all kinds of hoops, eBook applications could simply allow users to 'subscribe' to and search through these catalogs from within the application - and users could then download them right to their eBook readers without having to go to a browser or another application first.

In a perfect world, where every eBook vendor adopted this standard, users would be able to find and acquire books from any device, whether it be a Kindle, a Sony Reader, a Windows Mobile phone, or a Windows desktop. The Stanza reader, for example, already features support for various stores, and if Amazon adopted this standard, it could easily enable its users to access any other OPDS enabled store. The experience would probably not be as rich as on a dedicated app or website, but it would allow users to access eBooks from a wider range of vendors (which, of course, might not necessarily be in every vendor's interest).

Just a draft for now

The OPDS standard is currently in draft form, but the core elements of the standard are support for the EPUB standard and the Atom XML based catalog format. The exact specifications are available on the project's wiki, where you can also participate in the project.

In his post about this announcement, Adobe's Bill McCoy argues that he hopes that this standard will give consumers a seamless mechanism to get eBooks from various sources, with the ability to read the texts on multiple devices, "without lock-in to 'One Store to Rule Them All'" - which we take as a reference to Amazon's Kindle and Kindle Store (though thanks to this hack, reading ePub books on the Kindle has now become a bit easier).

McCoy also rightly argues that having a standard for eBook distribution and acquisition will allow vendors to reach more consumers across a wider range of platforms, which, in the end, can only be a good thing for the emerging eBook market.