Readers are the winners with the new IDPF eBook open standards

This is a first – the first in a series of blog articles written by Gigi’s friends, associates and the eBooks About staff. Contributors are welcome –please contact Gigi with ideas, articles and comments! I want your participation! This piece is by FOG (friend of Gigi) Karsten Molinaro. Check his profile!

eBook formats have always been confusing, and a sore point for eBook buyers. Other than Adobe PDF, there has never been anything remotely close to an industry standard eBook format.

I know of at least 20 mutually incompatible, propriety formats that have been used over the years, many of which are now defunct! The losers, of course, are eBook buyers who find the eBook they bought yesterday can no longer be read today, while paper books are timeless.

Adobe PDF

PDF is the most recognized "defacto open" format for eBooks. The problem is that anyone who wants to read a PDF document on screen displays (desktops and handheld devices) often finds that PDF is very limiting, and even frustrating.

PDF was developed to preserve formatting and make electronic documents look exactly like paper ones. It does this by "hard wiring" the text onto a fixed size page. Great for printing.

But what if the electronic display is of a much different size than the page (usually much smaller), which is oftentimes the case? And what if the end-user would like to adjust typography like the font size and the font itself, and have the content "retypeset" in an optimal way? With PDF this can't realistically be done.

The need for the format to "reflow" the text is an important one for eBook users. Is there such a reflowable, permanent, open standard that the eBook industry may embrace? One which is designed to provide for the important needs of both publishers and end-users?

EPUB to the Rescue

Fortunately, there finally is! The new International Digital Publishing Forum’s (IDPF), “EPUB standard”. The IDPF represents a wide range of stakeholders in the eBook industry and has recently released a set of fully open industry standards which underly EPUB. I'm proud to have been one of the primary technical contributors to this major effort.

EPUB, based upon well-developed open standards, including those used for web pages, now provides for the important needs of both publishers and eBook readers: permanence, open standards, reflowability, accessibility, and high typographic quality. The ultimate winners of this new standard will be you, the eBook reader.

Many publishers are eagerly embracing the EPUB standard, and are now reformatting their content in the new format. Even Adobe recognizes the limitation of PDF for eBook use. They have been a major player in the development of the new IDPF standards. In fact they have already released Digital Editions, which displays EPUB eBooks.

The Future

Admittedly, the copy protection (DRM) side of EPUB has yet to be shaken out. But we expect to see a large number of unencumbered EPUB eBooks released, and believe that the eBook industry will eventually forego the use encryption for most books, which is where we see the music industry now headed.

So when do we see EPUB eBooks being sold through eBooks About Everything?

No one can really know, yet. What we do know that the industry is quickly moving in that direction, and we hope that eBooks About will be able to offer EPUB titles in the near future. Gigi will most certainly let you know when it happens!

Adobe officially releases new eReader – Digital Editions

Finally out of Beta and officially released, Adobe Digital Editions 1.0 has been showing up in a lot of my alerts, blogs and publishing industry news. I downloaded the Beta about three months ago and spent several hours poking around. My first impressions were that I didn’t like the black on black screen because the buttons and sliders are very hard to find and use. And for some reason the pages didn’t seem as crisp or letters as clear as in previous versions. Of course, I tried to open one of my own eBooks in Digital Editions since I wasn’t really impressed with the Adobe selection. What I found out was that Digital Editions and my eBook files didn’t like each other. I checked with the company that provided the eBook files and they informed me that in fact, my eBooks could not be read by Digital Editions. To read the eBooks I would need to use the Acrobat 7.0 reader. So my first look at Digital Editions ended. Frankly, it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. I simply reloaded Acrobat Reader 7.0 and went back to work. The official announcement on Tuesday grabbed my attention. According to the Adobe “Digital Editions is a lightweight consumer-focused application for acquiring, reading, and managing eBooks and other publications, and is the centerpiece of Adobe's expanded digital publishing strategy.”

I, like many others, wonder if Adobe is offering this as the “Killer Ap” for eBooks; the eBook version of iTunes?

I was intrigued enough to try again. My second take is not much different from my first. The black is still too black and hard to navigate and the screen quality is somehow not up to par. Given my previous experience, I haven’t had the courage to try my existing eBook files yet. But I keep wondering is this the iTunes for eBooks? Well, for those who spent $300+ on a Sony eReader and have been dealing with the soon to be defunct Sony Connect store, maybe. At the very least it means that thousands of new (meaning different) titles will be available for their enjoyment once this is actually implemented. No timelines for that implementation have been announced. For the rest of us, I’d have to say that the exciting stuff is pretty much technical involving standards (yawn) and how easy it will be to publish new material (uh-huh!). The standards part: Digital Editions supports the new EPUB standard -- Harper Collins, Harlequin and others have promised to adopt it. Based on the EPUB standard support, as noted above, Sony has agreed to work with Adobe. Digital Editions supports the EPUB standard so any book produced in the EPUB format can be read on any device that supports the Adobe reader software. That is great. The not so great is that right now only MACs, Windows based computers and PDAs can use the software. There is no support for many of the mobile reading devices on the market -- specifically any Linux based eReader or any of the Smart Phones. So right now, reading on the go is still a challenge.

There is a temptation to go off on a rift about xml based publishing and reflowable text, but that is for another day. Suffice it to say, that the support for the standard does make for interesting possiblities for the future and for redefining the definition of a book.

The publishing part: Digital Editions is supposed to work seamlessly with Adobe InDesign that is InDesign CS3. That will mean for me (and most InDesign users) a $200.00 upgrade. For new users it is a $699.00 investment. I will do the upgrade and let you know the results as soon as I get a little time to download and install the upgrade.

So for the moment Digital Edition holds some good promise for publishers. It is still an open question how much it will benefit the consumer. Sometimes technology people get very involved with the idea that standards are important and new, accessible content is necessary. The thing they should never forget is that in the end, the consumer will make that decision. Is Digital Editions the “Killer Ap” for eBooks?

Only time will tell!