Of course, these guys know a lot more about making money than I do. I only need to look at my bank account to work that out.

Also, I note there has been no clarification on this from people who actually know what is going on. It is quite likely that I am barking up the wrong tree and that Amazon/Stanza's strategy is freewheeling and positive.

That said, if they are getting involved in using format wars to boost Amazon's strategic position in the marketplace it seems like a very rickety strategy indeed. DRM is fine with me it if is aimed at preventing widespread piracy of books. But holding back on implementing Adobe Book DRM on Stanza seems not to be about that at all: DRM appears (and I stress "appears") to be being used in a very crude way to club consumers/publishers into reliance on Amazon (of course, there are other sides to the conflict too, Adobe etc., so it is wider than Amazon).

If the ebook reader market had been dominated by Kindles that might have worked but a coercive strategy is not going to work in the emerging ebook world because it is clear that Amazon is not going to be able to dominate ereaders in the way it might have hoped. Iphones and similar handheld multipurpose devices changed the game for a lot of people.

It is like herding sheep. If there had been one pen and one sheepdog, Amazon might have succeeded with its slow but sure Kindle strategy. But there are several pens and several sheepdogs. The shepherd with the largest pen and the largest number of sheepdogs is likely to have the best chance of winning.

Amazon needs to focus on making its pen free and easy to be in and getting as many people as possible in that pen asap. They are particularly messing up here in the international markets. The kindle platform, its very slow internationa roll out and their refusal to sell to non-kindle users seems to be stopping them from using iphone and other hand held platforms to get a secure footing in very large markets like Asia and Europe before a big rival organisation comes into confront them. My ever present thought is that if Apple came along with an free and relatively easy DRM/non-DRM policy on itunes ebooks and persuaded publishers that their paranoias about pirates (who are not going to buy anyway) are obstructing hundreds of thousands of sales to people who are just eager to get on with reading, then they would clean up .I buy music on itunes just because it is the easiest way to do it, not because of some coercive DRM strategy. I don't think about DRM because I am a legitimate consumer and I shouldn't have to think about DRM. I like Amazon. I like buying books from them. But they don't seem to want my custom.

Of course, I am rambling on about this without any hard statements from Amazon/Stanza so I am quite likely to be completely misunderstanding what they are up to.

Mobipocket is an eBook company which Amazon bought 2 years ago. It consists of an eBook Shop and an eBook file format.

Amazon used the DRM from Mobipocket but changed the file format so Mobipockt eBooks and Kindle eBooks are now incompatible. Kind of of changed - there is a inofficial converter tool and it only has to change one byte.

Anyway if you want to know what the future hold for LexCycle the go to the Mobipockt forums (factual posts are not censored there):

http://www.mobipocket.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=9

Look for post with Amazon, Kindle, iPhone or Nokia 5800 in the heading. On multipage postings read the last page to get the newest info.

As it seems the We are not planning any changes in the Stanza application or user experience as a result of the acquisition from the blog means: "You are not getting anything new either" - Because this is what happened over at Mobipocket.

Martin