I haven’t read any more on the Asus since my last post about it. However, it recently paid for itself when I had a computer emergency. For three days that little thing was an absolute workhorse. It was a little slow and klunky, but it did the job and it kept me earning money. I NEVER expected to need it for that.

So for around $250, I have an emergency work computer, an e-book reader on which I can read ANY DAMN FORMAT I WANT, listen to music, surf the net, keep my data, and write.

And I should buy a Kindle/Sony/Nook/JetBook . . . why?

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Lately I’ve been reading a snowballing number of posts in the ebook community about adopting EPUB as the international (and pleasepleaseplease DRM-free) standard. This is great and I’m SOOO on board with that. What’s got me disturbed is that the subtext (and sometimes it’s not even that subtle) is that in order to adopt EPUB, publishers ought to ditch every other format, I assume, to force the issue of EPUB format adoption for everyone.

Are you serious?

As a consumer and producer of ebooks, let me tell you, this is simple crackpot evangelism. EPUB is the future; I do not disagree and I would love to see it come into its own and beat the competition.

HOWEVER

The competition exists for a reason and that’s because there are competing machines out there. Why in the world wouldn’t a producer find and exploit every digital outlet he could while they exist?

Now, I understand it’s perfectly reasonable for a producer of analog music to give up making vinyl records and 8-track tapes when there are few enough record players and 8-track players that it makes no sense to spend the time to do so. But if there is fairly equal money in each format, it would be foolish for the producer to give up producing even one of those formats.

In short, there is no way we would give up any one of the (now) 10 digital formats we publish in unless and until all devices can and will read one format and that the majority of the users of those devices are choosing one format:

AZW (Kindle)

EPUB (any device using Stanza or Adobe Digital Editions)

HTML (a lot of devices, plus any browser)

IMP (eBookWise)

LIT (Microsoft Reader)

LRF (Sony PRS)

MOBI/PRC (any device using Mobipocket)

PDB (Palm)

PDF (any device that reads PDF), and coming soon,

iApp for the iTunes store (iPhone/iTouch)

The fact of the matter is that once you’ve formatted for one of the above, you’ve formatted for over half the rest with minor tweaks. Yeah, it takes time to make each pretty for its own device, but it’s worth it as long as people feel they’ve gotten their money’s worth.

And every single one of those formats has a serious issue or 3 that consumers don’t like. However, each consumer still has the choice of the format with the least number of annoyances for him. Giving me 1 format (or, in the case of a book I really really really wanted to buy) 4 formats that are pure hell on me isn’t going to get me to adopt those formats; it’s only going to jolt me out of my impulse buy and now that I’m not BUYING paper books anymore, I’ll get it at the library.

So, Hachette Book Group. Thanks for saving me some money, ’cause I wasn’t strong enough to withstand the temptation if it had been in a format I could use.

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There’s a book I really really really want to read. However, it’s only available in e-format 2 ways: Serialized on the author’s blog (i.e., on the computer—no thanks) and via Kindle (no thanks). Now, I’m getting ready to email him and ask him if it’s available any other way, so we shall see.

There’s another book I really really really want to read. However, it’s only available in 4 formats (actually, 3 because 2 formats are identical in nature), none of which I can read on my ebook reader. The format I want is MS Reader (LIT). Why? Because I can break the DRM and put it on my ebook reader. Which, come to think of it, is probably why it’s not offered in that format.

Really, there’s enough GOOD stuff out there in more accessible formats to waste time having to read on the computer. After having had my eBookWise for a mere 7 months, I’ve gotten to where I WILL forgo a title (no matter how badly I want to read it) if I can’t get it in a format that is accessible to me. Otherwise, I’ll just go to the library, where it likely won’t be.

We’re really trying to put The Proviso in as many places as possible in as many formats as we can. It’s not just in the B10 Mediaworx bookstore (8 DRM-LESS formats bundled together in a zip), but at Amazon in both trade paperback and Kindle, at Barnes & Noble, at Books-A-Million, at Powell’s, and now at ebooksjustpublished (which takes you back to the B10 Mediaworx bookstore, but hey, it’s exposure).

Some time next week, The Proviso will be in the iTunes store as an iApp for iTouch/iPhone. Although we’ve formatted it into EPUB for those who’ve downloaded Stanza on their iTouch/iPhones, we really want to present as many options as possible to make it easy for every customer to read it the way they prefer to read it.

Because not being able to read a book I want to read the way I want to read it is beginning to weary me.

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So, update on the Sony ereader: Not impressed.

Besides no backlight (my all-time favorite feature), the text was grainy (grainier than my eBookWise’s dot-matrix-on-best-setting text).

That is all.

Er…no, it’s not. I still want Sony to kick Kindle’s ass. I think Amazon has an end-game in mind that’s going to come back to bite consumers in the tokhes.

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Jasmine or honeysuckle, if you’re offering. Lavender and gardenia make my nose itch.

THE JEWEL OF MEDINA by Sherry Jones

A resident of the Ivory Tower, who apparently called dibs on A’isha (child bride of Muhammed) as her personal and exclusive domain of study and forgot to send the memo, raised a ruckus about a book she didn’t like and managed to get Random House to pull it after the author had been paid her $100k advance and the presses were rolling. I say it’s an academic hatchet job.

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