I am a bit sad about this, and was always glad that the unavailability of the Kindle internationally, and restrictive international distribution deals, constrained the Kindle STD to American shores. Now we all get the opportunity to catch it.
Fortunately e-book standards have come a long way since 1999. E-pub has virtually no restrictions on layout and styling, within the constraints of reflow, which means some pretty neat books can be created.
There is even an emerging e-book designer skill set developing, we like to think we are in the vanguard here. There are some very exciting trade books being produced, suitable for on-the-go reading and reference and sometimes, with some content, the e-book is more valuable to the user than the print book.
Amazon - Sirloin to Mincemeat
Of course in its market wind-up Amazon did the con job and said to publishers send in your e-pubs and we will automatically convert them to Kindle - we have the technology! its supports the IDPF 1.0 and IDPF 2.0 epub format.
Now for those in the know, there have been many complaints about the nasty conversions Mobigen does. Realistically that is the nature of a free conversion utility. You get exactly what you pay for. If e-pub books are made well, they will never convert to Mobipocket (aka Kindle) using the lousy convertor. And they shouldn't for a lot of reasons.
