Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

I got into an interesting discussion with a guy who's boosting the "next" ebook format, which is named EPUB3. It includes the ability for authors or publishers to include little programs in their books, tracking reader behaviour and 'phoning home' with information about the reader, their location and other data. I think this is an insidious invasion of privacy, and a potential danger for people in countries with repressive regimes such as China, so that people who read our books would be 'outed' to their governments. As you can probably tell, I'm agin' it. Any other opinions?

Apple will probably force it on us because it could be used for better DRM. (Which would be when I pulled my books off of ibooks. I already don't like being forced to use DRM).

Hear hear. It's hard enough selling books without putting hooks and bars on them.

Jennifer wrote: "Apple will probably force it on us because it could be used for better DRM. (Which would be when I pulled my books off of ibooks. I already don't like being forced to use DRM)."

Who is forcing you to use DMR? On Amazon they give you a choice, and Smashwords, which distributes to iTunes, they don't have it, so you do have a choice.

Richard 2060 wrote: "I got into an interesting discussion with a guy who's boosting the "next" ebook format, which is named EPUB3. It includes the ability for authors or publishers to include little programs in their b..."

If there is any truth about this, I think it's a horrible idea. It opens up a can of worms that might only benefit hackers. I hope I'm wrong. :/

Nope. Apple adds it to all ebooks distributed through iTunes. Kobo used to do the same thing but thankfully stopped a while ago.

Richard 2060 wrote: "I got into an interesting discussion with a guy who's boosting the "next" ebook format, which is named EPUB3. It includes the ability for authors or publishers to include little programs in their b..."

I really don't like that idea, neither as a reader or as an author. I think it is a bad idea from all perspective I can think of. And I agree Richard, this is an invasion of privacy.

The bloke that's boosting it on Twitter is an Andrew Rhomberg, @arhomberg of a firm called Jellybooks. He might have a better argument.

I agree. This sounds terrible, if that is indeed what it does. Pretty much every "innovation" of recent years has been used to invade our privacy, whatever the original intent. As you say, this is especially worrisome for people under repressive regimes.

If this comes to fruition, I hope the market (we, that is) reject it. Enough is enough!

I suppose it might give a boost to paper book sales though? [snark off]