DRM is a totally separate issue from the proprietary format – I could rant at great length on either of them … but I’ll just leave it at the only reason Amazon chose the proprietary format is to lock customers into their device – there is no benefit to the customer at all.
Unless it has changed within the past couple of months, the Kindle can not read EPUB books. There are a huge number of EPUB format books available from my public library and from other sources. Pretty much every ebook reader can read the open format EPUB books, except the Kindle.
I don’t think anyone will argue that Amazon is not trying to lock users into their bookstore. But I find it astonishing that anyone believes that B&N is not trying to do exactly the same thing.
Amazon has not locked people “into their device” by choosing Mobi. Of the “many other sources” you speak of, I suspect that most are providing unencrypted, non-DRM EPUBs. You will find that many of these sources will provide the same books in Mobi format. I download books from non-Amazon sources onto my Kindle all the time. And if you have a source that provides non-DRM’d books in only one format, Calibre and other programs will easily convert to the other format. The fact that Kindle will not read EPUB format is a non-issue, as is the fact that Nook will not read Mobi format.
Amazon has locked people into their bookstore by wrapping a proprietary DRM around their commercial (non-free) Mobi offerings. But Barnes and Noble has locked Nook users into its bookstore by wrapping their own proprietary DRM around their commercial EPUB offerings. So they both get a hearty razzberry from me on that count. But let’s be fair and admit that they are both equally guilty on that count.
Now, public library offerings are another story entirely. Most libraries, as far as I can tell, subscribe to a common e-book service, Overdrive. Overdrive provides its books with an Adobe DRM wrapped around EPUB. The Nook does support this as well as the B&N DRM, so it is the one instance where you could legitimately say that Nook has content available that Kindle does not. (Personally, I’ve never thought that the selection provided by Overdrive was even worth the hassle of installing their reading software on my PC.)
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If book availability is a major consideration, by the way, I would recommend that any prospective purchaser sit down at a web browser and do an experiment. make a list of your 10 most recent book purchases and/or library checkouts. Then search both the Amazon and B&N bookstores and see how much of the stuff you actually read is carried at which store. Both Amazon and B&N tend to carry the best-sellers, but after that their respective acquisitions seem to vary quite a lot. For me, Amazon’s e-bookstore had about half of my recent purchases, B&N less than a quarter (even though they were all bought as “real books” from a B&N outlet).
I suspect that the results of this sort of test depends quite a lot on the individual’s reading tastes. After all, even after you weed out all the copies of public-domain material that both Amazon and B&N use to inflate their claims of e-bookstore size, they both clearly have huge collections. For every person for whom Amazon’s collection is a better match, there is probably another person for whom B&N’s fits better. (If not, somebody’s going out of business soon!)
So I think it’s worth doing this experiment on your own before making an e-reader purchase.
In the interest of full disclosure, I do own a Kindle but carry the B&N E-reader and Stanza on my smartphone and use those frequently. (I really hate getting stuck without reading material!) I also have had a long-standing professional interest in electronic document formats and was recently involved in a project to develop software to convert some older document formats to ebook form.
Anyway, I will repeat that my specific gripe here is not DRM – it is the use of a proprietary format for no reason other than to lock the customer to a certain provider & device.
I can buy EPUB books from any provider and read them on any ereader device except the Kindle. I can buy books in the Amazon format only from Amazon and can read them only on the Kindle.
That, to me, is anti-competitive, monopoly-seeking, Microsoftian, SteveJobsian … see how close I am to full blown rant mode.
That’s why the first step for me in choosing an ereader was to eliminate the Kindle from consideration. After that, they all looked pretty much alike … all use the same screen, just different sizes, and there is really no way to judge the differences in software without actually using one for a while.
And yes, I can buy EPUBs with DRM from anywhere and read them on the nook.
Barnes and Noble uses the Adobe DRM. I have purchased ebooks from Barnes and Noble and read them with adobe reader on my PC. The new Google ebook store has instructions for how to get ebooks with DRM. The Nook can use books from a greater number of sources than Kindle.
Provided the epub book doesn’t have DRM you can convert it to mobi with a free program such as Calibre and read it on the Kindle. It is still a DRM problem not a proprietary format one.
Pretty much anything but the kindle. Most libraries use the Adobe DRM. Your library will probably list the more popular readers that work with their books.