[kungtotte]

Really? People who are about to spend a good amount of hours reading a book thinks it's a bother to wait two minutes for a file to download? Using any kind of modern system you'll have a standard download location and a "Open with..." dialog with the default app for a given file type selected, and most epub-capable apps will remember the recently used files so you don't have to.

This smells more like a "we don't want to" instead of "we can't"...

[icebraining]

Seem reasonable to me. Most people probably don't have an ebook reader installed, and would struggle to find one and install it. The site could point to one, but that essentially means they become responsible for supporting it.

Personally, I'd also prefer an epub, but I'm not the average user.

[deng]

The average user will use whatever Amazon, Apple, Kobo et al. provide. Just like the average user is happy with Spotify and iTunes and has never heard of Bandcamp. If something like Bubblin wants to succeed, it needs to cater to those users who are not happy with the status quo.

[ndnxhs]

The average user prefers something that works on an ereader.

[icebraining]

I don't think that's true, few people read ebooks in ereaders: http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/01/book-reading-2016/pi_2...

[deng]

Maybe. But the people who have dedicated ereaders are usually those who read a lot and are passionate about quality ebooks. I'm sick of buying ebooks at Amazon, jumping through hoops only to get it onto my Kobo, and then find it has weird style sheets and plain wrong formatting, which I then have to fix via Calibre. This is just nuts. Combine this with the fact that only a tiny fraction of what I've paid went to the author, I would love if there was something like "Bandcamp for ebooks". I think this might very well work out, and I also think that many authors would jump onto this.

[magic_beans]

This is old data and I don't trust it.

[aflag]

Also, there could be one button to download the content and another to view it.