There’s plenty of evidence that e-books are taking off, yet there are format issues to resolve and some publishers are still running scared.

According to The Bookseller, Waterstones has sold over 350,000 e-books since launching its online store 15 months ago. Around 30 titles have sold over 1,000 copies each. The buyer responsible for e-books, Alex Ingram, insists that these sales haven’t been at the expense of print editions, yet it seems some people aren’t convinced.

The Bookseller also reports that several US publishers are delaying the availability of e-book editions of certain titles until the hardback editions have had a chance to sell. That can be read a number of ways, but it seems to me to be an acknowledgement that e-books are selling, but at lower margins. Does this spell the end of the hardback?

Which format?

It may be too early to tell. For one thing, there’s still some shaking out to do with regard to formats. Many new media formats have been through this process. There was VHS vs Betamax, of course. Even in the field of music, which is now ruled by digital downloads, iPod users originally had to acquiesce in using Apple’s proprietary, DRM-protected format. Apple has since backed away from that approach and is positively enthusiastic about DRM-free MP3s.

There are numerous e-book formats. They include the ubiquitous PDF, although that’s supported (and poorly at that) by only one version of the Kindle. Amazon is promoting its own format for e-books (based on .mobi), and is trying the same kind of rights-managed lock-in that Apple originally attempted with the iPod. That may be entirely the wrong direction.

Most e-book readers, the Kindle excepted, are capable of using the open-source ePub format (which is essentially HTML wrapped in some XML). It’s interesting that Sony – which has, somewhat notoriously, promoted proprietary, DRM-protected formats in the past – has switched to ePub for its Reader line of products.

Of course, it’s possible to add DRM to the ePub format. Abobe provides the tools to do this. An article at Computerworld suggests that Adobe feels it has positioned itself strongly to be the e-book publishing platform of the future. It might be right.