The reader is currently in an open-beta status, so as always, expect some bugs and of course many improvements over the coming weeks and months.

To use the reader you will need to create an account on the Bookworm site, all your books will need to be uploaded there. At the moment there is no way to organise your books so if you upload more than a couple dozen, navigation may be a little cumbersome. Liza is working to improve this.

Unlike most other ePub readers, Bookworm allows for full use of stylesheets and images, which is especially critical for technical books which include HTML tables and code samples.

The layout for the books within your web browser is pleasant enough, although without an iPhone and am unable to try out the mobile version. I did try out the mobile version from within FireFox, the layout is minimal enough for it to render well on the small screen.

Liza mentions that the mobile optimisations are currently for the iPhone only, but she is working on other devices, next up will be for the Opera Mobile.

In Liza’s original blog post she gave a list of up-coming improvements, these were as follows;

Today, O’Reilly announced the availability of 30 eBook titles! The cost of the bundle is a little lower than the paper version and if you wish to pay a little more you can get the print book with the eBook bundle included!

Here is the full list of those thirty titles;

• Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide
• Subject to Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World
• Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management
• Wikipedia: The Missing Manual
• Facebook: The Missing Manual
• Windows Vista: The Missing Manual
• Designing Web Navigation
• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3ed
• The Art of Agile Development
• Process Improvement Essentials
• Enterprise SOA
• Applied Software Project Management
• Practical Development Environments
• Security and Usability
• We the Media
• Devices of the Soul
• Digital Identity
• Database Nation
• Spam Kings
• Open Sources
• Open Sources 2.0
• Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
• Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing
• The Cathedral & the Bazaar
• Mind Performance Hacks
• Statistics Hacks
• Smart Home Hacks
• Wikipedia Reader’s Guide: The Missing Manual
• Flex 3 Cookbook
• Painting the Web

At the moment they will only be providing twelve of these for the Amazon Kindle (highlighted in bold), the rest will be released over the coming weeks. At present the Kindle still has a number of formatting issues so it lacks support for tables and monospaced fonts, which are very important to the O’Reilly books, this means they have to convert all tables to image files.

We all hope that Amazon will fix these issues and more importantly, start supporting the ePub format natively on the Kindle

If you do decide to take the Print+Electronic option you will save yourself well over 50% of the eBook price. For example;

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
Electronic: $31.99
Print Book: $39.99
Print+Electronic: $51.99

This means your would get the eBook bundle for just $12…that’s a saving of 63%. On top of that you get three different eBook versions, all of which come with free updates…not bad!

This is the headline on the Lexcycle website for their new iPhone eBook reader, Stanza. They are touting this as the ‘premier electronic book reader for the iPhone and the iPod Touch’ which more importantly (at least for me) has the ability to read eBooks in the ePub format.

Stanza is still in beta at the moment so there will be a few bugs hanging around but hopefully lexcycle will go final soon. They have a demo video of Stanza running on the iPhone (Quicktime).

Okay, so now you have your Stanza/iPhone ePub reader, but where do you get your books from? This is the easy part…

Feedbooks.com have spent a lot of time working to make their catalogue available in the ePub format and according to the Feedbooks Stanza/iPhone help page;

Browsing and downloading books once you’ve installed Stanza is very intuitive, just select Online Catalog and Feedbooks to get books from our service

They even have some nice step-by-step pictures to help you along.

No commercial books are yet available in the ePub format so all the titles you will find at Feedbooks are in the public domain, these should however keep anyone going for a lifetime.

Right, all I need now is an iPhone or iPod Touch…

• ePub
• Mobipocket/Kindle
• PDF
• Sony Reader (PDF)
• iLiad

Hadrien, Feedbooks co-founder, posted that along with adding support for ePub and Mobipocket, the files will generate much faster and there is also an “API endpoint for developers to create applications (such as iNewsStand on the iLiad).”

He also notes;

The sweet part is probably for Kindle owners, or people using Mobipocket files on a wireless device. You can directly update your feeds/newspapers from your device. Create your own newspaper with your daily reading, click on the update link inside the file and you get your own newspaper every morning!

If you’re a Kindle owner and need more detailed instructions on how to set this up, visit the “Free RSS Feeds on your Kindle” link over on MobileRead.

The output of the feeds in the ePub format looks fine when using Digital Editions, but with no ePub ready mobile device to test on I had to try them out using the Sony Reader compatible PDF (yep, still no news on the Sony/Digital Editions firmware update for reading ePub files directly on the Sony Reader.) The output is simple but more than adequate for reading RSS news feeds.

Feedbooks will not be enabling images for this first release but I have to say, this is already looking like a really nice tool…especially if your reading device has WiFi capabilities.

New eBook Standard Now Available For Mass Market Audience

It’s a little unclear if the ePub versions have DRM restrictions, but as the site states;

DRM Adobe ebooks can be read only on Adobe Reader 7, Adobe Acrobat 7, or Adobe Digital Editions [...] We recommend Adobe Digital Editions for Adobe format eBooks, both pdf and ePub versions…

We must presume that they have DRM in place.

The market is still waiting for better ePub readers and until we get those it won’t matter how many ePub books they release. Let’s hope that the Sony Reader (PRS-505) receives its Digital Editions firmware update soon and that other dedicated readers, such as the Amazon Kindle and Cybook follow suit.

Yes, we still have a long way to go but it does look like we’re on the right track.

Although they are still working on the ePub versions, any PDF eBook you buy now will make you eligible for free access to the ePub version once it is released. For the moment this is only an experiment, but if It works out, they plan to release their whole catalogue in these formats (barring a few with copyright restrictions and some old ones that present at format-conversion challenge.)

This is not a snap decision, as Andrew explains;

While we would have liked to make these ebooks available sooner, we felt it was important to first contribute to building some of the tools needed for other publishers to follow our lead, such as enhancements to the open-source DocBook XSL stylesheets, which can now generate EPUB from DocBook XML source files.

The full list has not yet been released, but Andrew does provide us with a sample;

• iPhone: The Missing Manual
• Windows Vista: The Missing Manual
• Facebook: The Missing Manual
• Making Things Happen
• Open Sources 2.0
• The Art of Agile Development
• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3ed

Alas none of these are of interest to myself, but I’m eagerly awaiting to see what else they will have on offer.

One problem O’Reilly has is that the content they produce, “relies heavily on computer code and complex tables — two types of content that are not rendered well on most of today’s ebook readers.” The ‘code blocks’ they need to include rely on monospace fonts. Let’s hope the Kindle and other readers recieve the updates needed to make O’Reilly’s life much easier.

With these three formats, customers should be able to read the books with most current ebook software and devices, including Adobe Digital Editions, Kindle, Blackberries, and Sony Reader…

Today O’Reilly have thrown down the guantlet to all the other publishers, DRM-Free ePub books…wow!

As Jon Noring replied, the OPS 2.0 Specifiaction says that a OPS (ePub) Reading System must support the GIF, PNG, JPEG and SVG image formats.

These are pretty standard formats to be supported so I don’t see any problems with rendering these. But I do have some concerns regarding SVG - these of course stem form having absolutely no clue at all about the format!

Still, I am wondering if there will be any issues when rendering SVG, akin perhaps, to what we had during the browser wars.

Is there anyone out there who understands SVG and can shed some light on this matter?

I’m looking for interested parties to help test an experimental platform for reading ePub-formatted books via the web. There’s minimal effort involved: just upload one or more ePub documents and try it out. If you encounter bugs (which is likely at this stage) I may ask for you to forward the ePub file so I can test it internally.

This is great news and exactly the kind of activity we need to encourage the adoption of the ePub format. I wish Liza all the best and very much look forward to the seeing the reader go live.

To all you tech heads out there, please get in touch with Liza and start digging out those bugs!

You can contact Liza using liza@threepress.org.

(Thanks to Liza for giving permission to use her email address in this article)

DocBook is a very mature XML master format that although is used mainly for technical documents, can also be used for simpler documents and prose like books, which could make it a useful master format for any public domain eBook projects.

This release of the DocBook XSL is an experimental release and is being made available for testing purposes. Any developers out there should certainly check it out and if you find any issues, report them back to the DocBook project.

Feedbooks.com is a service that provides public domain eBooks for download in multiple formats, including of course ePub.

The device itself will be available later this year (September/October 2008) through a large French retailer (yet to be announced) and then via online ordering later in the year.

Hadrien mentioned that they are dedicating their resources to what they consider to be the ‘basic features’ that any dedicated reader should have.

• A 6″ E-Ink device (presumably the Vizplex display), based on Linux 2.6.
• Browsing for books via folders or metadata
• A real bookmarking system (similar to the Sony Reader)
• A simple, yet customizable UI

Hadrien didn’t give too many details away just yet, but he promised to provide screenshots and even videos closer to the time!

As the Feedbooks website provides books in the ePub format I very much hope that their reader will be able to reader ePub books natively.

One minor issue is that the reader does not create a TOC (Table of Contents) from the toc.nsx file contained in the ePub document. Let’s hope they don’t take too long to fix this.

Also in his talk, Görner announced that by the end of the year, the Mobipocket Reader will be available on the iPhone. I guess with the recent release of the iPhone SDK this should be no surprise, but great news nonetheless.

Acceptance of ePub is growing from strength to strength, with one more reader adding support for the format. Mobipocket Reader now covers many devices including the iPhone (end of 2008), Blackberry, Windows Mobile, PDA and a number of dedicated ePaper devices. Once the reader is updated across these devices, ePub support will be opened up to a whole new batch of users.

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.

The LibraryJournal.com quoted Steve Potash (IDPF President) in saying that, he hopes the new ePub standard will spark an “explosion of adoption from all corners and all markets.” Of course, we are all hoping for this happen!

For all you Sony Reader fans, you’ll be pleased to know that at the conference, Sony demonstrated a development version of the PRS-505 reading ePub books! Although the reader has to convert the files first, this does mean you can directly send ePub files to the device. There is still no release date, but at least we now know that this will be a reality.

Although not directly at the conference itself, there was some fantastic news in support of the ePub format that was timed to coincide with Digital Book 2008. The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has taken a step in not only supporting, but also recommending the adoption of the ePub standard by publishers.

The AAP’s letter of support for ePub discusses the adoption of ePub as a consumer format, as well as an intermediary master format for conversion to propriety, device specific, formats. They state that such a transition to the ePub standard could be completed by October 2008.

This letter has caused quite a stir among the community, which makes for interesting reading.

Here is AAP’s Letter for EPUB Support from Publishers and as always, TeleRead’s David Rothman is one of the first to gives his thoughts. Also over on TeleRead.org, Jon Noring digs up some clarification from AAP ’s Ed McCoyd, regarding the use of ePub as a consumer format.
Andrew Savikas over at the O’Reilly TOC blog provides us with his Snarky response to the AAP, but Adobe’s Bill McCoy step’s up to defend most of what the AAP say, which is then followed by Andrew’s response.
Peter Brantley, also from the O’Reilly TOC blog, adds his own thoughts to Andrew’s snarky comments.

In this post, Peter goes on to comment about the “emphasis on a replication of the print page” and his disagreement with it. I really don’t see why there is a problem with replicating the printed page, or at least including this information within the document markup. Are not page numbers a handy, ready-made bookmark, not to mention their usefulness for academics. The presence of page numbers within the source document should not mean a ‘small screen’ reader applications must implement page breaks when they encounter them.

I’ve linked to a lot of posts here but they are all well worth the read!

Adobe Digital Editions

The enhancements to their DRM means that users activate their DRM protection on a named basis, this allows you to move your protected eBooks/eDocuments across platforms and mobile devices, of course we’d rather not have any DRM (or at least just social DRM). There is also a limit of 6 desktop and 6 handheld devices that you can activate, which should be okay for most people in the short term (if TeleRead’s DRM Poll is anything to go by) but over a period of several years we are likely to need to activate more devices than this, particlarly if we have to re-format our OS. We shall have to see what the future holds for those needing to activate more devices.

DE 1.5 will also run on a Mac OSX Leopard (10.5) and has been localised to English, French and German.

It was reported that there were one of two glitches for some people when updating their current version of Adobe DE, with a fix here. According to the Adobe Forum though, this has now been resolved.

There is however one rather large flaw with DE 1.5 in that there is still no support for text justification. Peter Sorotokin, one of the DE developers, commented about this on MobileRead. He stated the reason is that “we need to pull new low-level line layout code which would support bidi, glyph composition, etc. and we are hesitant to add features to the current branch” - perhaps we will see this feature in version 2.0.

If you wish to try out the new Adobe DE 1.5 then you can grab it here; http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/

tei2epub is being developed by Liza Daly and is written in XSLT, although it does utilise a little Python. I know nothing about Python but from what I can make out this is mainly for creating the actual files and final .epub container (which is actually just a renamed .zip file).

This converter really interests me as I already have my own converter (pg2tei) for creating TEI documents from plain text files, as found on Project Gutenberg. I recently started teaching myself XSLT so will follow the development of this for sure!

I don’t have a Python processor installed so haven’t ran any files through this, though I have taken a quick look at the source code and it looks quite straight forward. I believe this uses the official stylesheets written by TEI, so the tei2epub converter should be quite simple to follow, even for those of us whose XSLT skills are not yet well developed.

If you’re interested in both TEI and ePub then this is certainly going to be useful to add to your toolkit.

At present the API is in public beta and currently only converts ’simple’ HTML files, it also lacks both image and CSS support. Still, don’t let this put you off, the potential here is great and is certainly another step in the right direction. As time goes by the API will certainly get better.

To show the kind of acceptence ePub is gaining this tool also caught the attention Keith Fahrlgren over at the O’Reilly Tools of Change Blog who certainly seems encouraged by this and feels that it is “the first step in lowering the barrier to entry to creating EPUB documents.”

Many other people around the net have shown a strong interest in the API, with most believing this is a first step in encouraging developers to create more ePub tools.

If you wish to try it out yourself go visit the BookGlutton ePup API page, there’s also some instructions there to help get you started.