ePub Books Blog

Frankfurt Book Fair 2009 and the rise of digital content

I’ve had a crazy old time since I returned home from the Frankfurt Book Fair last week so this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down and write a little about my time there, and an interesting time it was.

I again had the pleasure of having lunch with IDPF Executive Director, Michael Smith. There was no real agenda, it was just a chance for us to have a good chin-wag about ePub, how things are moving for the format and such other things. This year the IDPF held three sessions but due to my day job duties in London I only managed to attend one of his sessions; missing what I’m sure was an extremely interesting ‘EPUB Update and Tweaks and Tricks for EPUB on Devices’ session presented by Keith Fahlgren from O’Reilly – I’m wholey dissapointed about that.

Still, I did manage to attend the ‘New and Updated eBook Reading Devices’ which was rather interesting.

For this session there were four speakers; Michaël Dahan (Bookeen), Neelan Choksi (Lexcycle Stanza), Willem Endhoven (iRex Technologies) and finally Richard Siegersma (ECO Reader). All the speakers had some interesting things to say but a couple of points stuck out.

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Digital Book 2008 review and the AAP’s letter of support

Two weeks ago the IDPF held their Digital Book 2008 conference at the McGraw-Hill auditorium in Manhattan, New York City. This was a one day conference held as part of the International Digital Publishing Forum’s (IDPF) spring education series, with the main focus being on the emerging global eBook market and adoption of the ePub digital publication standard.

Among the discussions were eBook standards, international digital publishing, the education market and new innovations. Publishers Weekly reported the main theme to come from the day was that the “Customer is King”. The internet has given eBook developers and publishers “unprecedented access to consumer feedback” which they need to listen to in order to grow the eBook market.
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Digital Book 2008 is being held today. Did you attend?

The one day IDPF Digital Book 2008 Conference is being held today in New York City, which is being sponsored by the likes of Adobe, OverDrive and Resetta.

Alas I did not have the opportunity to go myself but I will be on the lookout for any news or blog posts on the days events. Particularly on the seminars Publisher Experience and Workflow using the new IDPF “EPUB” Standard and eBook Reading Devices and Software.

If there is anyone out there who attended the conference and would like to share their thoughts on the day, for inclusion here on ePub Books, please contact me via the Contact page.

ePub within the industry is reving up!

ePub’s presence within the industry is hotting up, which is great news for all of us who are backing the ePub format to become the standard used for eBooks.

Philip Jones, managing editor of theBookseller.com, has written an excellent article on the current problems within the industry regarding the eBook format. He also notes that during a recent speech at the Publishers Association a.g.m, Simon Juden, CEO of the Publishers Association in the UK, is calling on the industry to resolve the current problem with the lack of a standard format.

You should drop by Philips blog and read his excellent article, A question of format, where he makes a very important point regarding the lack of ePub readers. Without a good array of readers how can we expect publishers to adopt the ePub format.

The two best options so far are the Abode Digital Editions and FBReader – why does Mobipocket still not support ePub natively?

Philip seems confident that the .epub format will become the standard for most publishers, but if the IDPF doesn’t push the ePub format in a big way, they could well loose out altogether! Would having an Official ePub Logo help? – A point often discussed by David Rothman from the TeleRead Blog.

All is not lost just yet, we’ve had some encouraging news from publishers recently. Hachette Group USA have already adopted ePub and a couple of weeks back Penguin UK announced they will be releasing all their titles in the .epub format from September 2008 onwards. Let’s just hope others follow suit soon.

Garth Conboy discusses the ePub moniker

During the last week or so there’s been lots of discussion around the internet regarding how we write the word “epub”. There have been many good reasons for choosing one style over another but if we take the TeleRead Poll as any kind of indication then “ePub” seems to be a favourite.

Of course what we’ve all been waiting for is someone from the IDPF to make an official comment.

Earlier today Garth Conboy, who co-chaired two IDPF groups that developed the standards encapsulated under the “EPUB” term and a current board member, made an interesting post to the EPub Community regarding this subject.

Garth states that “.epub was first used as the file extension for publications contained in an OCF container” and that the “term EPUB was created to mean an OPS/OPF publication contained in an OCF container. Trading one four-letter (almost) acronym for three three-letter acronyms.”

It seems that the IDPF have taken note of the discussions going on at TeleRead and the EPub Community and although the following is not an official statement, it is great to have feedback from someone on the inside.

Garth says,

There was a discussion of how the standard should be capitalized this morning on the IDPF Board of Directors call — perhaps driven by the discussion on this or the Teleread list. The IDPF certainly can’t dictate how others or the industry uses “e” “p” “u” “b” in that order, but it has decided how it will use the term.

The soon-to-be-created IDPF style guide will likely use “EPUB” to mean the standard (OPS/OPF in an OCF container) and also the class of documents/publications that so conform. The file extension will, of course, remain “.epub”. This is at least somewhat analogous to HTML documents having the .html or .htm extensions (yes, I know HTML is a true acronym, and EPUB isn’t).

Great news that the IDPF are now thinking about this and who knows, perhaps we’ll seen an official ePub logo in the near future too!

Garth’s personal choice is the same as mine here at epubbooks.com; he personally likes “the look of “ePub” better, and if there were someday to be a logo that denotes EPUB compliance or validity, I’d hope we do something around the camel-caps version.”

Digital Book 2008: Global eBook Market & EPUB

Digital Book 2008 is a one-day conference held in New York City on May 14th. The conference is hosted by the IDPF and is part of their spring educational series. This is considered the best opportunity of the year to network with the global publishing and online technology leaders in the digital books world.

If you wish to attend you must register, but be warned, the event has been sold out for the last five years!

At the top of the agenda will be the emerging global eBook market and adoption of the EPUB digital publication standard. Some of the highlights are;

• Publisher Experience and Workflow using the new IDPF “EPUB” Standard
• “EPUB” Update on eBook Reading Devices and Software
• Using Digital Book Technologies to Drive Sales and Create New Consumer Experiences
• eBooks in Education and Accessibility Initiatives

There are going to be some fantastic speakers including;

• Michael Smith (IDPF)
• Bill McCoy (Adobe Systems Incorporated)
• Peter Balis (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)
• Garth Conboy (eBook Technologies, Inc.)
• Leslie Hulse (HarperCollins Publishers)
• Neil DeYoung (Hachette Book Group USA)
• Willem Endhoven (iRex Technologies BV)
• Martin Görner (Mobipocket.com)

– I wish I could attend myself!