Format Wars: Why Formats Matter

Format Wars: When WordStar was King is a nice article at Teleread that illustrates the problem of proprietary formats in ebooks by comparing what has happened with word processing formats.

There was a time when WordStar word processor was king. I remember it well because I used it and another early word processor, PerfectWriter on my first computer a KayPro II. WordStar quickly won the popularity race partly because they were quick to port to MS-DOS. Then Word Perfect became big only to be replaced by MS Word.

Now look at this from the ebook perspective: Rocket eBook used to be one standard, but it is dying slowly along with the aging Rocket Ebook hardware readers. How long before those books are unreadable? DRM schemes change, what happens if eReader or Mobipocket should go out of business?

Ebooks need to have a non-proprietary format so that collections do not become unreadable each decade.