due to the companies making proprietary devices and using proprietary formats for the Kindle, Nook, e-pub etc it means there are formats that can be dropped if the company doesn't see enough profit, and thus what you've paid for is NOT readable - if you don't believe this, talk to people who have .lit books from the Microsoft Reader days.

I believe the companies should get into selling readers not private code translators. The e-books should be in basic html or something similar that can be read in any browser and the readers should be simple hand held light browsers. That way the books will be readable all over from just the one copy and always readable.

I write a lot of stories and at the moment I only make my books available as a printed book or a PDF file. I've recently learned that some of my books have been made available by one of my publishers as e-books via Amazon and B&N - but I don't like the way they no longer look like what I wrote due to the inability of those systems to handle basic formatting that any browser can to allow fro blocked text and three levels of headers. Now I shudder at the thought of how much people other than the readers may be digging into what my readers buy.

On that side I've reason to be concerned as I know one of my books has had copies bought by two different intelligence agencies due to the blurbs on them getting through their filters and triggering some alarms . That's what happens when you write a story about terrorism.

Thanks for the article and the fun way you presented it.