Like most of the world, we were disappointed to hear that Amazon isn’t going to commit to the epub standard for its new hardware device. Lack of standards will obviously hinder adoption among users and create strife with publishers.

We were, however, relieved that the new reader, called the Kindle, will have some kind of browser and wireless access, as well as a keyboard. Our information on this is fuzzy, but since BookGlutton is browser-based, it could be possible to read and discuss on the BG site via Amazon’s device. Cool.

Speaking of the epub standard, BookGlutton’s upload feature allows users to save out an epub format of their work. We’re still tweaking it, but we’d like people to be able to upload their work to variety of places, not just our site, so in addition to uploading it at BG you can download a fairly standards-compliant file and share it with others. The more exposure a writer gets, the better the chances of fame and fortune (or at least some decent feedback). Being writers ourselves we wanted to adhere to the standard and see if we could allow our users intermingle with Digital Editions, or anyone else who’s taking a crack at standards compliance.

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