In an earlier post, I had lamented the large number of formats in the ebook business leading to users being unable to view their books on multiple devices, and forcing them to stay with one particular ebook provider. We had seen how the “ePub” format was the way to go as it was open standard and accessible. At that time, there were only a fraction of providers who used epub. A lot has changed since then.
I’m very excited to announce that Google Books now supports full downloads in the epub format! Previously they only had books in scanned PDF format or plain text. With the offerings in epub, they can preserve the full formatting and images of each book adding a great deal of value. The resulting books can be read on any device that supports the open standard with no device lock in.
The download facility is extended to all books which are not in copyright – it’s an amazing service and one that gives a fillip to the epub format. This puts Google Books on a direct collision course with Amazon and its Kindle which uses a proprietary lock in format.
Along with Google Books, Sony has also announced support for the epub format. And of course last but certainly not least, Project Gutenberg started offering its books in epub download format a little while back. It looks like only Amazon is holding out – but time will demonstrate how people will get frustrated with ebook DRM just like they have gotten frustrated with music DRM.
Of course unlike Project Gutenberg, the books available for epub download on Google Books are not proof read by a human. They are translations by OCR software and hence might contain errors. But this is something we can all live with as we’re getting almost a million books for free! Who can complain eh?
That's a fantastic news Bhagwad.