Sony Ditching Proprietary eBook Format! Huzza!

This is awesome news for eReader users and publishers! It’s one less format to support/worry about, and frankly it was one we hadn’t even started to look at. But we should, so consider this an update! LRF Format coming soon, probably later today, for all currently released titles! (Thanks Calibre!)

Over on the MobileRead forums, they’ve created a list of compatible ePub readers, great work.

I’m really glad there’s some consolidation shaking out (finally). I’m really shocked it was Sony of all company’s that backed down on proprietary. I mean, it’s Sony, I don’t think they’ve ever released hardware that didn’t have an accompanying proprietary memory stick, or file format. ATRAC anyone?

This is big. ePub is a great format, i’ve not complaints about it. I’d love to see Amazon put their pipe down long enough to see the forest for the trees. The Kindle is (sadly because I own one) approaching flash in the pan status. Amazon’s own practices are going to marginalize it as a device.

As publishers, we’re happy to support as many formats as our readers require, but to be honest, the fewer the better since the desparity in each format 1. makes supporting many very hard and 2. it makes the offers very different from one to the next.

Have you checked out our latest releases? You should.