The Sad State of E-Books in Canada

 

I enjoy reading, although I don’t spend enough time doing it. Mostly I read mainstream fiction, crime thrillers by James Patterson, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Lee Child, Dan Brown, etc. I also enjoy young adult books such as Hunger Games & Divergent. And yes, I even read the entire Harry Potter series.

As someone who was raised with technology I like gadgets, and so I have moved my reading to e-books. I haven’t read a dead-tree book in probably 3 years (although I bought one from Costco recently that I’m looking forward to starting). I started with the Sony Reader in the photo above, but it’s been long retired and I now use my iPad mini for most of my e-reading activity.

You’d think, living in one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, our options for purchasing e-books in Canada would be vast. You’d think we’d have our choice of dozens of online book stores from which to buy. You’d think.

With the demise of the Sony Reader Store (which really wasn’t a big loss), there are a paltry three retailers for buying e-books in Canada. Ok, if you consider independent books there are a lot more, but I mean to buy books from mainstream authors and publishers. Our choices our Kobo, Amazon or Apple.

I have never purchased a book from Apple. Even though I use an iPad for reading today, I don’t like the idea of my books being locked into a single vendors device. I don’t like that buying books from Apple will prevent me from reading those books if I choose to buy an Android tablet in the future. That restriction means I will probably  never buy a book from the Apple bookstore.

Although the use a proprietary format (just like Apple), I have bought a few books from Amazon. Their format locks you into their Kindle Readers, or the Kindle app run on another device, but at least the Kindle app is available for just about any device on the market. I’d still prefer not to be locked into this, but it’s something I can live with.

Until recently, my e-book retailer of choice has been Kobo Books. Their books are/were in e-book format, an open standard that is widely supported by many e-readers and e-reading apps. With Kobo I can/could buy a book with confidence that I could load it into my reader software of choice, and knowing that if I changed platforms I could take my books with me.

But Kobo is changing. They have introduced a new, proprietary book format called kepub. In reality, this format is just an epub with a Kobo wrapper on it, attempting to lock you into the Kobo ecosystem. The format is only supported on Kobo Readers or with the Kobo Reader app. You no longer have you choice of reading applications for the books you purchase from Kobo. And between you and me, I’ve used the Kobo Reader app and I think it’s awful. The only thing worse is the Kobo Reader app for the Mac (I haven’t used or even seen the Windows version). If you use a Sony Reader, or reader from another manufacturer, you’re out of luck.

Not all books purchased from Kobo are in this format. Some are still in the epub format, but many new releases seem to be coming as kepub now. But here’s the really bad thing. Kobo doesn’t tell you which format the book is in before you buy it. Even after you buy the book, you only know it’s a kepub because there’s no button to download the book. If there’s a download button, it’s epub. No button, it’s kepub. The first time I bought one of these books, I almost phoned customer support because I couldn’t figure out how to download my book. The only way to download a kepub format book is by starting the Kobo app on your computer or tablet, and it will download it for you.

There is actually a clue on the Kobo website to determine the format of the book, but it’s subtle and may not last. Kobo does not have a reader app for Blackberry. So if you are looking at book on the Kobo website and want to know if it is in kepub format, scroll to the very bottom of the page and see if Blackberry is in the list of supported devices. If it’s not, then the book is in kepub format. Of course, this will only work for as long as Kobo continues to ignore Blackberry.

This is a pretty sad state of affairs for e-books in Canada. Only 3 mainstream retailers, each using their own proprietary format locking you into their systems, and diminishing the portability of the books if you choose to change platforms. And these are the same retailers that bitch and complain when people circumvent their locks and controls (which is now illegal under bill C-11). I choose to buy my books legally, but with the actions of the retailers, I’m starting to feel like a chump for doing so.

If anyone knows of other legal sources to purchase books in Canada from mainstream authors, a retailer that still distributes books in epub format, I would love to know about them.