A recent post on the New Technologies Interest Group’s Blog, an Australian library blog, tells of the Kogan eBook Reader, a Linux-based ereader set to be released in Australia next week. One of its most notable aspects: it supports 16 different ebook formats, including open formats such as EPUB.
Amazon’s Kindle, the leading ereader, mainly uses its own proprietary, DRM-protected format called AZW (though it does support a few others, including text files and PDFs). But it doesn’t support EPUB, or some of the more uncommon formats that Kogan’s ereader supports.
Libraries are already wary of investing in expensive hardware like ereaders, and the lack of common, widely-used ebook formats doesn’t help. Proprietary formats, in particular, only live as long as the equipment on which they’re used, and no one wants to be stuck with the next Betamax.
It’s hard to tell if Kogan’s ereader will make inroads outside the Australian and open-source communities. But it will be interesting to see whether other small ereader companies follow its multiformat example.
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