Monday, August 15, 2011

Microsoft to retire MS Reader, their ebook format - The Digital Reader

Microsoft to retire MS Reader, their ebook format - The Digital Reader:
"MSReader was one of the early Big 3 ebook formats, along with Mobipocket and Palm. The first apps were released in 2000, and at that time it was the most typography rich ebook format. It stayed the rich-format ebook format up until Epub was released.

To be honest, I suspect that the only thing keeping the format going all these years was that the DRM had been broken way back when. Seriously, hard-core ebook users used to buy this format because we knew we could convert it from LIT to whatever format we preferred. That’s certainly why I bought MSReader format, and in fact that’s the only reason I ever heard discussed as a reason to buy it."

While this is good news I doubt that we not suffer a proliferation of ebook formats and dilution of the ebook market, notwithstanding the standardization on ePub we see today.

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