Publishing Infrastructure and Costs

Although most publishers will use a XML Master Format for storing the original book content, they still have to spend a lot of time, effort and costs in producing and maintaining all the different output formats they need to get their books in to the buyer’s hands. There are also no guarantees that all these different output formats will support the same kinds of features, which will mean even more resources (costs) will be needed to support these alternate formats.

Now, if the publishers only had work one eBook standard then they could spend more resources on improving their own tools to produce better output, which will ultimately give the user an even more enjoyable reading experience. Publisher will also have more resources available to give input back to the IDPF on improving the EPUB standard; bringing more and better features to the eBook world. Certainly a win-win situation for consumers and publishers. Without universal support for EPUB though, everyone will be forced to maintain multiple tool sets, which do nothing but increase costs.

I won’t bring DRM in to this conversation as it is actually independent to the eBook format itself and should not be used as an argument against embracing EPUB.

Independent Authors

One important issue Jason brought up in his ZDNet article was that of self publishing authors. By giving independent authors just one eBook format to think about they are able to spend less time producing eBooks files and more time writing content. They’ll have fewer headaches in getting their books out to the public because all vendors will accept EPUB. With just one eBook standard, more and more EPUB-ready word processors and tools will be developed. The more authors that get content on to Amazon’s self publishing system, the more money Amazon will make. Isn’t this what Amazon wants?

Until just a couple of years ago the publishing world was in turmoil with a multitude of eBook formats it had to support, yet the arrival of EPUB had a hugely positive impact which continues to be seen today.

Sure, EPUB itself is not perfect, but it is being continually improved and with the formation of the EPUB Working Group, there are huge improvements being made right now.

I still can’t make up my mind if Amazon will ever support EPUB but I do believe that it will be more and more difficult for them to refuse to do so. Let’s hope it’s sooner rather than later.

Post by www.epubbooks.com

Why Amazon Needs to Support the EPUB eBook Format

The EPUB format has been developed to allow your work to be properly tagged with as many genres as is necessary to describe the title correctly, allowing any eBook reading system to categorise your books appropriately.

If you’re creating your EPUB file manually then you’ll need to open the .OPF in your favourite text editor. Then inside the metadata tags you need to add your subject tags.

Here are some example genre entries;

<dc:subject>Fiction</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Comedy</dc:subject>
<dc:subject>Satire</dc:subject>

You can add as many subjects as you like, though it’s probably best to keep things focused–adding 50 tags will be just as bad as adding none.

The arbitrary keyword or phrase you use inside the subject tag has not been standardised by the IDPF, but I would recommend using the BISAC, LoC (Library of Congress) or other standardised system.

At this point you probably think there’s nothing more to be said on the topic, however…

eReaders Don’t Use All Provided Genres

When you send your EPUB out into the wild you’ll be somewhat disappointed to find that many eBook readers don’t display every genre you placed in the OPF file, if any at all.

There are no IDPF requirements stating that a reading system must use any or all of the subject tags for categorisation. If an eReader does use them, then you’ll find that they usually use just the first entry. In the example above, this would be Fiction. Still, we should take the time to add appropriate genres now as you can fully expect future eReaders will utilise them more fully.

So, along with choosing the correct genres to describe your work I would recommend you list them in an appropriate order, and with the understanding that at this time, only the first entry will likely be used to categorise your book.

Post by www.epubbooks.com

EPUB Creation: When Subject Matters

For almost any standard media in existence there is also an official logo, think DVD, CD, etc. This allows distributors and device manufacturers to display the logo and show that they are supporting that standard.

So in April this year the IDPF (those who created the standard) launched a logo competition, asking both members and non-members to submit their own design. In total 203 entries from 18 different countries were submitted and today the winner was finally announced.

Graphic designer and author, Ralph Burkhardt submitted the winning entry, summarising his entry with;

I wanted to create a sign and that is also recognizable as a possible file format graphic (e.g. icons). It should be easy understandable and recognizable.

You can read the full IDPF competition announcement on their website, where you can also find a link to the ZIP file which contains various different file formats, including an Illustrator EPS file.

My initial thoughts on the logo are that I like it. I guess the only complaint I would have is that the “ePUB” text might be better as bold face, as when the image is resized smaller, that text starts to fade away a little and becomes not so recognisable.

I truly hope all the eReader manufactures that fully support the EPUB format will now start to make use of the new logo. I’ll be implementing this into all the EPUB eBooks found here on epubBooks.com, which I hope to have live soon.

Post by www.epubbooks.com

Official EPUB Logo Released

We here in Europe can’t even pre-order an iPad yet so I won’t be able to do a full test for some time yet but I thought I’d see what happens when a DRM-Free EPUB file is added to iTunes….which turns out to be not a lot.

As you can see from the screenshot below, the EPUB book does get recognised as a Book with the title and author details being taken from the file’s meta data. One thing that concerns me is with the book Info dialogue and how the book’s meta details are presented as though it is a song; Artist, Composer, Track Number, etc. Let’s hope this gets fixed soon to show an appropriate information page.

I’m using the Swiss Family Robinson here as an example, which doesn’t include a book cover in the file, so this is the default icon you will have for any titles that don’t include covers–this will be most free public domain works you will find from around the internet.

Right-click on the book and a pop-up menu shows a “Play” item, though at present this does nothing; one has to presume that once iBooks is released we will be presented with an option to download from the App Store. Whether the iBooks app will be made available to iPhone and iPod Touch users is still speculation but my own guess is that it won’t happen until the iPad has seen its worldwide release–even then I’m sure it won’t be until sometime later.

Post by www.epubbooks.com

New iTunes 9.1 with EPUB Library Support

So, the iPad is an eReader – though it’s one that reads not only books and newspapers but web pages, emails and numerous other electronic documents. It can also do that stuff an iPhone and iPod Touch can do – running those thousands of third party applications from the iTunes App store. However, I want to focus this article on the book aspects, especially in relation to the EPUB eBook format.

There were rumours knocking around weeks before Apple’s announcement that they’d been discussing with publishers and newspapers to get their content for a new Apple device. Most of this content will be accessible from the upcoming Apple iBooks Store and there should be plenty to choose from as Apple have brought onboard big names such as Penguin, HarperCollins and Macmillan.

The new iBooks store will be integrated in true iTunes style and with a 3G iPad option; you won’t even have to worry about logging onto Wi-Fi hotspots.

From the videos knocking around the internet, the iBooks application seems to have typical viewing options (font sizes) and even that life-like page turn feature – though to be honest I still can’t figure out why this kind of thing is considered so cool. That whole drag a page, swipe your finger (Sony Touch) feature is fun for the first 10 minutes but quite frankly, I don’t sit there when reading a paper book being thrilled at the ingenuity of how a paper page turns, so why should it be any different with an eBook. Just let me tap the screen/press a button and give me the next page by the time I get my eyes to the top of the screen thankyouverymuch.

People have talked about the iPad as being a game changer or an E-Ink Killer (Kindle/Sony). Well, I’m not sure any of the current E-Ink developers believed they’d reached the pinnacle of electronic mobile reading – E-Ink eReaders were always going to evolve and become more multi-purpose – but there are still advantages of these over the iPad; power consumption and reading longevity are two.

E-Ink is extremely low power and thus allows usage of up to two weeks before a recharge is needed. Also, sitting for hours on end with no interruptions from IM’s and incoming email plus a very paper like screen are very pleasant experiences I can assure you.

We’ll have to wait until its released before we know the exact power consumption, but the iPad will probably give around ten hours of play, and that’s highly likely with anything and everything turned off and maybe even a low backlit screen.

Okay, so this isn’t an iPad review and much of that is all personal preference anyway. I guess the question you want form me is;

Does the iPad Support EPUB eBooks?

The quick answer is, yes.

The longer answer would also be yes, but there might well be some caveats here.

The Apple iPad native eBook format is EPUB. Steve Jobs said this himself at the announcement in San Francisco. This of course makes sense as many, if not most publishers have been working toward creating their content in this format, therefore Apple haven’t forced the providers to come up with yet another format.

EPUB is lucky in some respects; it came about at a time when eBooks started to become more main stream and this gave publishers the ability to worry [mostly] about just one eBook format. Beneficial for them and the end user.

It seems that there are really two questions regarding the iPad and the EPUB format.

One. What kind of DRM will it have?

The iPad EPUB eBooks will have DRM and it certainly won’t be the Adobe flavour. A recent announcement says that Apple is dusting off their old Fair Play DRM that was used for music in their iTunes stores until just a year or so ago. This means you will not be able to use these books on other eReaders – you buy from Apple, you use on Apple. At least that’s the way it seems at the present time. Once the iPad is out there perhaps we’ll see some solutions to get around that.

I don’t know enough about Apple’s Fair Play DRM to know if other vendors can implement it or whether this will affect their ability to use the Adobe DRM side-by-side with Apple’s.

Perhaps in the long term Apple will turn out to be instrumental in getting DRM off eBooks completely and a couple of years or three down the line this issue won’t matter any more. We can hope.

Two. Can you Download or Buy from Sources other than the iBooks Store?

Will I be able to browse the epubBooks.com website, click the download button and have my books open in the iBooks reading application?

This is a really big question and one which is still open. My gut feeling is that the answer will be no.

I’ve yet to hear if Apple will allow competing eBook apps to be ported to the iPad. Perhaps the eReader developers themselves know that answer, but the Apple TC’s will forbid them to talk, so everything is hush hush for the moment.

If apps such as Stanza are allowed onto the iPad then I think all the above questions will be answered in a positive light.

The iPad will be out there in a couple of months (you can order it now) so then we’ll know for certain the future of reading with the Apple iPad.

Apple iPad: Quick Facts

• Released Date: Late March 2010 and April 2010 for 3G option
• Price: Currently $499 for the 16GB model
• Memory: 16/32/64GB
• Multi-Touch 9.7 inch screen (1024×768)
• iBooks Store for books, magazines and newspapers
  • EPUB book format
  • Apple Fair Play DRM
• Various other electronic content
  • Video, Music, Games
  • Untold apps providing eMail, Calendars, Maps, Photos, etc.
• Wi-Fi & Bluetooth
• Pre-paid, no-contract, unlocked 3G connectivity (optional upgrade)
• External Keyboard Dock
  • Apple or other standard Bluetooth keyboards

Post by www.epubbooks.com

The Apple iPad and ePub Books

Bookeen is introducing a new eBook Reader called ORIZON, supporting ePub files (with or without DRM) of course. It comes with a 6 inch touchscreen display, WiFi and Bluetooth (Have fun! This is the first Reader in France with a wireless connection!) What else? An accelerometer, so you can read in landscape or portrait mode.

Weight : 226g for 12.25 x 18.5 x 0.75 cm and we know a few specifications like the resolution, 167 dpi and 16 levels of grey.

Bookeen says there will also be a new version of the Boo Reader software.

And about the Opus…just few new colours…

If your French is up to scratch you can read the full exclusive over at actualitte.com.

When I was at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair, Michaël Dahan from Bookeen did mention there would be a new 6 inch reader this year. I was very impressed with the Bookeen Opus when I reviewed it in November and said to myself at the time that if they had a 6 inch version this would be my choice of eReader.

For the last few months I’ve been using the Sony Reader Touch Edition and although I think there are many amazing features, that dark shiny touch screen really does bug me. The shininess I could live with, but I really do hope the Orizon’s screen brightness doesn’t suffer from the addition of the touch screen like the Sony does.

At the moment there are a multitude of eReaders coming onto the market (all supporting EPUB it seems :- ) but I get the feeling the Bookeen might be one step ahead of most of them.

Post by www.epubbooks.com

New ORIZON eBook reader with WiFi from Bookeen

EPUBReader is one of the more recent software ePub readers, released just two months ago by Michael Volz, and with the addition of some recent upgrades has grown into a very stable, nice looking ePub reader. The reader is actually an Add-on for the very popular Firefox web browser – for those still using Internet Exploer (IE) this is yet another good reason to change over to Firefox.

Once installed all you need to do is go to a website with some ePub files (why not try Some Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens) then click on the file download button. The book will open right in the reader (browser) for immediate enjoyment.

The software is still in heavy development so expect lots of improvements and often.

Reading from a computer monitor is not for everyone but for those who don’t mind, this could be a nice alternate to those bulky alternatives.

For more information visit the official website (www.epubread.com) or to install now go to the EPUBReader Add-on page at Mozilla.

Please note: this reader is only for non-DRM ePub books.

Post by www.epubbooks.com

Read ePub books in the Firefox Web Browser

There’s a lot of a misconception around the ePub format with the belief that it is not a very advance format to work with, this is certainly not the case. Being based on several web standards, ePub can do pretty much whatever those standards can do themselves.

In a recent blog post, Liza conducted an experiment to include a HTML5 <video> in an ePub file, which she accomplished by using out-of-island XML mark-up. Okay, so this is something of a hack, and very few ePub readers will render the content (although Bookworm does), but this just goes to show there’s some power in the ePub standard.

All you ePub developers out there might want to keep an eye on Lizas blog as she will be sharing lots of ePub tips throughout this month.

Post by www.epubbooks.com

Experiment: Advancing ePub with HTML5 Video’s

So how do you attract more pupils? One of the key ways is to use Value Added Scores which compare the pupil’s ability when they enter the school to that of when they leave. If a school is taking pupils with predicted C or D grades at GCSE and sending them out with A or B grades then that school becomes an attractive proposition for parents. The problem is how to achieve such a rise in grades.

One of the best methods is to offer more courses that cater to a pupil’s strengths. However this does lead to the problems of providing staff to teach them and a classroom to teach them in. The staff problem is relatively easy to overcome as most good teachers can teach most subjects to GCSE level.

The second problem of where to teach them is a challenging one. No school achieves one hundred percent utilization of their classrooms. At the same time no teacher wants to carry around all the textbooks required to teach their course around with them all day. So it would seem that the obvious answer is to give the pupils the textbooks so they can take them from lesson to lesson. The problem is of course that some pupils will forget them, causing the inevitable disruption to the start of the lesson as pupils are moved around so they can share. The other problem is the amount of weight a pupil would need to carry around with them.

So this leads to the proposition of using eBooks. This, along with the use of interactive whiteboards, makes the course mobile and so no longer tied to the room with textbooks in. This allows the school to better utilize the spare classrooms in any given period and therefore able to provide more courses for their pupils. This means that the school is able to target more suitable courses to a pupil.

From a pupils point of view they are unlikely to forget something that is required for every lesson. If they do then it would be possible to lend a pupil a spare device from the school’s library or boarding house and load it with the textbooks required for the day.

So, the use of eBooks could provide a practical solution to a private schools dilemma of having to offer more courses directed towards the “average” pupil to help them achieve better Value Added Scores without the need of more classrooms. Schools which are early adopters of this new technology also benefit from the added marketing value as being seen as innovative and “hi-tech”.

So it’s win-win for the eBook then? Well not quite, there are several issues which need to be overcome with eBooks, not least of which is the cost of the devices and licensing of books. I will discuss these issues in future articles.

[Andy is an IT professional within the British education system and has agreed to share his thoughts on how eBooks can benefit schools.  -- Mike Cook]

Post by www.epubbooks.com

Can eBooks Provide a Competitive Edge to Private Schools?

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.

Michaël talked about their user statistics; 35+ age group consisting of 60% female, 40% male and that digital reader users are mainly for “heavy” readers. Michaël also told us that Bookeen will be releasing their Gen4 6” reader mid-March 2010.

Willem told us that iRex will also be releasing a new reader in mid-2011 which will be full-colour! I presume this is the reading screen itself and not a secondary screen like that of the new Barnes & Noble “nook”.

Networking Events

On the Thursday evening there was the IDPF Networking event which I have to say was much busier than last year, just goes to show how much the digital market and support for ePub has grown over this last 12 months.

I also had the pleasure of meeting up with several members of the Linkedin Ebooks, Ebook Readers Group hosted by Dominique Raccah (Sourcebooks). Only a handful of people attended but all were great people and we even had the pleasure of Margaret A. Harrison and the charismatic Steve Potash from OverDrive attending.

eBook Digital Reader Reviews

One of my goals for Frankfurt this year was to do a good bit of smooching with those digital reader people to procure some for review purposes – the results we actually quite positive.

My first meeting was with Phil Wood from Interead, where I had my first hands-on moment with one of their COOL-ER’s – man is that thing light! I also spoke with Royal-Line, who will be bringing the NUTT reader to Europe, iRex, and I also stopped by the Bookeen stand to check out their new Cybook Opus. I have to say the Opus does seem to be a very cool device indeed.

Phil agreed to send me one of their COOL-ER’s, Royal-Line gave me one of their NUTT readers there and then and Bookeen said there might be a possibility of sending me an Opus – from what I saw of the Opus, I do hope this is possible.

Along with the Sony Touch Edition, which I received just last week (a self purchase unfortunately), I will have three (possibly four) new reader reviews on the site before the end of November.

Digital Content is on the Rise

Anyone who’s been around the eBook world during the last 12 months can certainly confirm that we’ve seen a great increase in the interest of eBooks and digital readers and this was certainly reflected at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair. There were more, bigger and better digital reader and content provider stands than ever.

All the talk round the net is that 2010 will be the year of the eBook – I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like at next year’s book fair, but I’m going to be there to experience it first hand!

Post by www.epubbooks.com

Frankfurt Book Fair 2009 and the rise of digital content

I was invited to Sweden by Publit, a company who have set themselves the task of making all the Swedish out-of-print books available as PoD (Print on Demand) titles. Considering that 95% of all Swedish books ever in existence are now out of print, this is a very worthy project, if perhaps somewhat daunting. Although Publit’s main business is PoD, they are making use of this opportunity to also provide these titles as ePub eBooks.

During my time in Sweden we discussed the many different areas of the eBook world, including DRM (of course), the processes involved in going from scanned document (TIFF/PDF/DOC) to an eBook Master format and onto ePub creation itself.

Now, the people at Publit are a group of very talented individuals with plenty of technical knowledge, yet there were aspects of ePub which has left them somewhat perplexed. There were two main points which I found interesting and have heard before around the web so I thought I would share them here.

“What flavours of ePub exist?” There is only one flavour of ePub, although it does currently support two different core formats; XHTML and DTBook (Daisy Talking Book). I won’t go further into what makes an ePub here as Jon Noring has already written an excellent article over at Teleread.org; ePub Demystified.

They were also asking if I thought “the next release of ePub would have more advanced features?” (meaning video and Flash media). The answer to this question is that video and Flash, along with audio, are already possible.

The ePub standard (OPS) can already use these types of media because the standard is built upon XHTML, a standard that already supports advanced media. The problem arises not from ePub but from the reading systems’ ability to render these advanced features.

ePub can do more than most people think; the main restriction is the reading system not the format.

I guess the question should be, when will the reading systems allow us to use more advanced media.

We also had a number of discussions on Master Formats (TEI, DTBook, DocBook, etc.) and which is the best to go for. That’s a difficult question but one thing that ties in with my recent thoughts is the question as to whether we can use the native DTBook format not only as the end user ePub format, but also as the eBook master. I will be looking into this further myself but if anyone has any thoughts on the use of DTBook then please share.

Post by www.epubbooks.com

An ePub Experience

I’m not totally convinced that having two screens will improve peoples reading experience, though perhaps the one book type that could benefit woud be the textbook. The ability to have the book on one screen and a web browser on the other, looking up a spelling, or word meaning over the internet would be quite handy too.

There is also speculation on what book format the device would use. Well, if this reader is based on the normal Asus netbooks I would say that every book format would be readable. Adobe DE? Mobipocket Reader? And why not, as Steve Jordan commented in his recent Teleread article, maybe we need eBook readers to support every format. If the Eee Reader is a Windows based system then that could be a reality, we’d even see Adobe Digital Editions on there, meaning ePub formated books will be readable to.

Steve Jobs talks again about dedicated readers, insisting that, “general-purpose devices will win the day”. Well, as usueful as it is to be able to read books on an iPhone/iPod Touch, the small screens just don’t hack it for me, so perhaps the Asus will be the first company that makes a viable general purpose device. The image above is not likely the real thing so it will be interesting to see what they come up with

Post by www.epubbooks.com

New Asus Eee Reader with Dual Screen

For those of you who have not already heard, Sony are releasing three new eBook Readers. They are all e-paper devices that can read ePub books. The Pocket Edition has a 5″ screen. The Touch Edition is 6″ like the PRS-505, but with a touch screen. The Daily Edition, which was announced just today, has a 7″ tall touch screen and wireless connectivity via AT&T. At the moment the Daily Edition looks like it will only be released in the U.S.

The costs of the readers over at Waterstones is £179.99 for the Pocket Edition and £249.99 for the Touch Edition. Keeping in form with the PRS-505 prices, these are yet again much more expensive than our U.S. counterparts can get them for; $199 (~£120) and $299 (~£180) respectively.

Waterstones does not have the Daily Edition reader for pre-order and I wouldn’t hold much hope either that it will be released in the UK this year; Sony would still need to find a mobile provider who would allow them to piggy-back on their cell service. The general assumption is that Amazon have been trying to arrange this on their Kindle for quite sometime, without success.

Post by www.epubbooks.com

New Sony Readers for Pre-order at Waterstones UK

For those of you who are not from the UK, Argos are a household name — if a Brit hasn’t bought from Argos, you know their neighbour has!

The BookSeller.com article also states that the COOL-ER book store has 3/4 million titles (although not all in the ePub format).

I don’t have a one of these readers myself – I can’t justify spending £189 when I already have a Sony 505 – but as it uses the Adobe Digital Editions, any ePub books you download from epubBooks.com or buy from one of the many book stores around, should render the same as they do on the Sony Reader.

For me, the importance of this Argos/COOL-ER deal shows that eBooks (including the ePub variety) and the digital readers for viewing them are finally entering the mainstream.

Post by www.epubbooks.com

New ePub eBook Reader to be sold in Argos…Cool!

The PSP will also be getting a Digital Reader in December with various comic book publishers onboard to offer content. Marvel will be providing Spider-Man, X-Men, and Fantastic Four comics to start, with Wolverine, Captain America, Iron Man, and the Hulk all to follow. Compatibility with other Sony readers and more digital comics publishers will be announced soon.

The initial focus will be on comics, but that paragraph also mentions “compatibility with other Sony readers”. Is that a reference to the Sony Reader? The Guardian also makes mention to the Sony Digital Reader annoucement but again nothing beyond the comics angle.

This annoucement comes just days after Sony announced that they will be dropping their propriety BBeB format and their eBook store will start selling ePub books exclusively (Adobe DRM flavour) by the end of 2009. I can’t imagine that Sony will not open their PSP reader for use with the Sony store.

With over 50 million PSP’s already sold and many, many more once the new PSP Go is released, this could be a huge boost for both the Sony eBook store and the ePub eBook format!

Sony could be making those few hundred thousand Kindle’s seem positively niche.

Post by www.epubbooks.com

Sony announce new PSP Digital Reader – ePub Support?