Rumours are abound right now that Amazon is on the verge of providing support for EPUB ebooks on their Kindle eReader. What’s getting peoples tongues wagging is a post from an eReader blog* stating that Amazon is telling publishers to start providing them with titles in the EPUB format.

As vague as the details are from that post, there is some substance in the concept that Amazon are preparing to add EPUB support.

Back in April Amazon announced the introduction of their new Library Lending Program in co-operation with OverDrive, who [currently at least] deliver their ebook titles as EPUB files. The OverDrive blog also states, “[y]our existing collection of downloadable eBooks will be available to Kindle customers”. We also know that the Kindle Previewer software (for ebook developers) will import EPUB files, which internally converts them to MOBI.

Liz Castro, well-known ebook developer and author of EPUB: Straight to the Point, has her own thoughts on how the Kindle will support EPUB, believing that Amazon will just convert titles to their proprietary MOBI format for use on the older Kindles.

In my opinion, Amazon can do better than just convert the EPUB’s.

I’ll confess here that I don’t know much about the Kindle software system, but I would be surprised if they couldn’t run two different reading apps side-by-side. As for the hardware on the older Kindles; if they are capable of reading MOBI ebooks, there’s no real reason they can’t also read EPUB 2, perhaps even support the full EPUB3 spec.

Most, if not all, ebook developers will tell you that MOBI is an inferior ebook format to EPUB (not that this format doesn’t have its faults), add to that the features being developed for the upcoming EPUB3 and you have a strong case for why Amazon may decide to phase out their own ebook format.

If publishers and ebook developers are allowed to focus all their efforts on just one standard ebook format, then ebook production will take a great leap forward, which in turn will give the people on the streets better ebooks — at least in regard to features — and ultimately a better user experience.

* It’s unclear if this is a reputable source for such gossip, so I’ve made the decision not to link to this site. The article doesn’t really say alot but if you’re interested, a quick look on your fave search engine should bring them up.

In a recent ZDNET article, Jason Perlow described his hesitations for buying one of the new Amazon Kindle’s, which was due to its lack of EPUB support. Many responses to the article noted that the “average user” doesn’t care about the format of an eBook, only for the buying experience. I’m not going to argue on that point because in essence, they are right; the average user doesn’t care. Yet there are two real reasons why having one eBook standard is important, and these reasons will certainly impact the end user.

Publishing Infrastructure and Costs

Although most publishers will use a XML Master Format for storing the original book content, they still have to spend a lot of time, effort and costs in producing and maintaining all the different output formats they need to get their books in to the buyer’s hands. There are also no guarantees that all these different output formats will support the same kinds of features, which will mean even more resources (costs) will be needed to support these alternate formats.

Now, if the publishers only had work one eBook standard then they could spend more resources on improving their own tools to produce better output, which will ultimately give the user an even more enjoyable reading experience. Publisher will also have more resources available to give input back to the IDPF on improving the EPUB standard; bringing more and better features to the eBook world. Certainly a win-win situation for consumers and publishers. Without universal support for EPUB though, everyone will be forced to maintain multiple tool sets, which do nothing but increase costs.

I won’t bring DRM in to this conversation as it is actually independent to the eBook format itself and should not be used as an argument against embracing EPUB.

Independent Authors

One important issue Jason brought up in his ZDNet article was that of self publishing authors. By giving independent authors just one eBook format to think about they are able to spend less time producing eBooks files and more time writing content. They’ll have fewer headaches in getting their books out to the public because all vendors will accept EPUB. With just one eBook standard, more and more EPUB-ready word processors and tools will be developed. The more authors that get content on to Amazon’s self publishing system, the more money Amazon will make. Isn’t this what Amazon wants?

Until just a couple of years ago the publishing world was in turmoil with a multitude of eBook formats it had to support, yet the arrival of EPUB had a hugely positive impact which continues to be seen today.

Sure, EPUB itself is not perfect, but it is being continually improved and with the formation of the EPUB Working Group, there are huge improvements being made right now.

I still can’t make up my mind if Amazon will ever support EPUB but I do believe that it will be more and more difficult for them to refuse to do so. Let’s hope it’s sooner rather than later.

EPUB formatted books as an industry wide standard is what I, and many others want. But can we achieve this without Amazon’s adoption — at least with ePub support on their Kindle eBook reader.

It will certainly be a lot easier to have a standard eBook format if Amazon joined the ePub party. I’m reluctant to say it but all current indications show that Amazon will not adopt the ePub format in the near future – but perhaps there is hope.

Recently we have seen a flurry of publishers and eBook projects (including yours truly) adopting the ePub format and a number of these are pushing their titles onto the iPhone/iPod Touch platform via the Stanza eBook reader. Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg are the two big projects but we now have Pan Macmillan offering commercial Tasters and in the last few days BookGlutton announced that they have joined forces with Stanza. Interesting times ahead for sure.

With all this recent iPhone/eBook activity I am asking myself, where is Amazon? The Kindle is certainly making waves with big sale numbers but this is probably nothing compared to iPhone sales. This makes me wonder if Amazon will start making their titles available on this platform and if so, what format will they use. If they use their own eBook format (AZW), they would need to release a dedicated ‘Amazon eBook Reader’ — how many different iPhone reader applications will people accept?

Everyone around here knows that having one standard eBook format will better serve everyone. If Amazon opens their Kindle to the ePub format and strikes a deal with a company such as Lexcycle (Stanza) they could kill two birds with one stone. Hmm, perhaps an Amazon/Stranza union is a little too much wishful thinking.

Providing direct purchase and download would make Amazon a serious option for any iPhone or iPod Touch user, and vise versa.

So, can Amazon leverage the iPhone to further dominate the eBook market and can they continue to resist the ePub eBook format?

Disclaimer: The Amazon/ePub logo I created is intended just for fun.

Last month O’Reilly announced that they will be starting an experimental pilot and selling selected titles in an eBook bundle. The bundle includes a PDF, Kindle-compatible Mobipocket and of course an ePub formatted version.

Today, O’Reilly announced the availability of 30 eBook titles! The cost of the bundle is a little lower than the paper version and if you wish to pay a little more you can get the print book with the eBook bundle included!

Here is the full list of those thirty titles;

• Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide
• Subject to Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World
• Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management
• Wikipedia: The Missing Manual
• Facebook: The Missing Manual
• Windows Vista: The Missing Manual
• Designing Web Navigation
• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3ed
• The Art of Agile Development
• Process Improvement Essentials
• Enterprise SOA
• Applied Software Project Management
• Practical Development Environments
• Security and Usability
• We the Media
• Devices of the Soul
• Digital Identity
• Database Nation
• Spam Kings
• Open Sources
• Open Sources 2.0
• Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
• Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing
• The Cathedral & the Bazaar
• Mind Performance Hacks
• Statistics Hacks
• Smart Home Hacks
• Wikipedia Reader’s Guide: The Missing Manual
• Flex 3 Cookbook
• Painting the Web

At the moment they will only be providing twelve of these for the Amazon Kindle (highlighted in bold), the rest will be released over the coming weeks. At present the Kindle still has a number of formatting issues so it lacks support for tables and monospaced fonts, which are very important to the O’Reilly books, this means they have to convert all tables to image files.

We all hope that Amazon will fix these issues and more importantly, start supporting the ePub format natively on the Kindle

If you do decide to take the Print+Electronic option you will save yourself well over 50% of the eBook price. For example;

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
Electronic: $31.99
Print Book: $39.99
Print+Electronic: $51.99

This means your would get the eBook bundle for just $12…that’s a saving of 63%. On top of that you get three different eBook versions, all of which come with free updates…not bad!