Linear as bent

Ebooks on the iPhone (pt 3)

April 29, 2009 at 12:34 pm Leave a comment

So it’s coming to this  – instead of agreeing on a standard format for ebooks, big corps are buying up longstanding applications  with the (possible) aim of  tieing those applications to their own outlets, and charging non-affiliates to use them.

Barnes & Noble own Mobipocket, Amazon has just bought Lexcycle who created Stanza – a popular ap for reading ebooks, including PDB or ereader files,  on the iPhone – when Amazon also has exclusive ownership of access to content on the Kindle, Apple have their own software or take a 30% cut for apps that want to be in their App Store. I think Amazon is buying up Lexcycle so it won’t have to pay a commission to an affiliate for readers who will, in future, buy ebooks from Amazon through Stanza (or worse, charge readers holding space).  So if you want to make it rich, don’t just own IP in hardware or software, create or control a marketplace and make money off tenants and force consumers to use your facilities (ala Paypal on eBay).

I’m still using Bookhelf on my iPhone because I hate to be obliged to use a 3rd party site just to transfer books between laptop and phone. The good news is, the next iTunes update will allow transfer of files between computer and phone without the need for a wireless server.

Entry filed under: Absurdities, e-books, It's bizness, Literary related news, Techie stuff. Tags: ebooks on iphone.