Tag Archives: EPUB

Dear Amazon, Apple, B&N…

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As I’ve said elsewhere, this eBook format thing is crazy. Now that the industry has roughly settled on the EPUB format, however, it might be time to start thinking about other things. Like our readers.

I know that you, Dear Amazon, Apple and B&N, are positioning yourselves as the new gateway to those very readers. You’ve had some success. Enough success that we’re already learning about the next generation of “e-readers.” Our children. Some of them, according to a recent Bowker survey covered by Laura Hazard Owen, are using iPads and eReaders. That’s good news.

But it’s no time to declare victory; a closer look reveals that some daunting obstacles remain.

Market for 0-12 Year Olds

  • The eBook market for 0-12 year olds seems to have considerable upside. Kids in this demographic think eBooks are “fun and cool,” cost less and make them want to read more. Not only that, but parents are sharing their tablet and eReader devices with their children — and handing them down as they upgrade.
  • Caveat: Only 37 percent of children’s books are purchased new, while 34 percent are hand-me-downs. Almost ten percent are borrowed from the library.
  • Caveat: Parents want to see books identified by grade level. Right now, that’s hit and miss on your download sites. Mostly miss.

Market for 13-17 Year Olds

  • This demographic lags behind all others in eBook adoption. Only 8 percent prefer eBooks compared to 66 percent who prefer print. There’s lots of upside here. Well, sort of…
  • Caveat: “Teens like using social technology to discuss and share things with their friends, and e-books at this point are not a social technology.”
  • Caveat: Teens are increasingly on record that eBooks are too restrictive, with 14 percent saying so in 2011, compared to 6 percent in 2010. Those are not frighteningly negative numbers. Yet. But they’re trending in the wrong direction.

What’s to be done?

Dear Amazon, Apple and B&N

  • Please fix the eBook lending mess. I know it means working with traditional publishers. Big prizes will go to whoever fixes this first.
  • Add the ability to readily attach grade-level information to EPUB and MOBI files. This one should be obvious.
  • Add social networking functionality to your eBook reader apps. As I write this, Facebook has 845 million monthly active users. While the value of those users is still being assessed (we’ll know more post-IPO), that’s a big starting point for sharing. Go there. Get there. While you’re at it, think Google+, too.
  • Enable in-app book discussions, not just for teens, but book clubs too. I say this from the perspective of someone who’s recently been asked to speak to a book club about “Butcher, Baker,” 20 years past its initial publication. (Hey, those movies have a way of renewing interest in almost forgotten things.) I’m not a huge fan of Apple’s Ping, but it points to an opportunity outside the Facebook-Google+ realm.

eBook Chemotherapy

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Amazon recently announced KF8, which adds HTML5 interactivity to ebooks sold on the Kindle Fire (and later other Kindles). In a counterpunch, Apple recently announced the Apple iBooks format (.iba), which adds new levels of interactivity to ebooks produced for Apple’s iBookstore.

It’s not like they’ve abandoned their previous formats, however. They’ve simply added new ones. New ones that are… somewhat proprietary. I say somewhat, because the epub format is at the core of both. I can start with an epub formatted ebook, for example, and use KF8 to generate an Amazon-valid eBook in the .mobi format. An unzipped Apple iBook Author document (.iba) looks like this, with an epub sitting in the middle of the thing, big as life.

[Hint: to get this result, one must Export from iBooks Author, then change the .ibooks extension to .epub. From there, you can unzip the file.]

iBooks Author unzipped package file

There’s been a bit of back and forth between Daniel Glazman, co-chair of the W3C CSS Working Group, and John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, as to whether the new Apple format is a helpful development. (I hope they get to Amazon’s KF8, as well. Because, as I said elsewhere, this is a salvo in the eBook Store battle between Amazon and Apple.)

I think both writers have valid points. As Gruber notes, Apple has created a tool that adds considerable value to its own platform. The output, to say the least, is not only gorgeous but truly interactive. It takes eBooks to the next level. And iBooks Author is Apple-easy to use, of course. But there is one point that Glazman makes about the iBooks Author format that sticks the hardest:

[T]his is a bad strategy because publishers are fed up with formats. For one book, they have too many formats to export to. For each format, they have to use tools to convert (usually from MS Word) that are incomplete and all require manual reformatting or validation. Adding an extra format that is almost EPUB3 but is definitely not EPUB3 output by a software that is an isolated island and does not offer any extra help to reduce the publishing burden is representing a huge extra investment…

Yes, of course this format proliferation isn’t Apple’s fault per se. And, yes, Amazon is doing the same thing (neener, neener, children on a playground, anyone?). But a quick perusal of the Wiki page on eBook formats reveals… 17 different versions, twelve of which are still active. No, wait… Add KF8 and IBA and that makes fourteen… This is definitely the “worse” part of the format war. You will have to create multiple versions of your eBook if you want to sell everywhere.

And remember, too, that Apple considers the Multi-Touch books created by iBook Author as separate entities, requiring an additional contract (Source: iBookstore: Publisher User Guide 2.0, January 19, 2012). So even Apple acknowledges there’s extra work here.

The “better” part? Standards are definitely starting to coalesce around the epub format. The Kindle Fire, for example, is said to support epub as well as mobi. Indeed, epub is the most widely supported “vendor-independent XML-based e-book format,” with a wide variety of platforms supported, from iOS, to Barnes & Noble’s Nook, to the Sony Reader, to a bunch of others.

Overall, though, I would say this is like chemotherapy. It’s supposed to make things better, but right now it really feels bad.

Kindle Format 8 (KF8) Update

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Amazon has just released an updated version of its Kindle eBook creation toolset. Let it be said, it’s a grand accomplishment. KF8 adds over 150 new formatting capabilities, including drop caps, numbered lists, fixed layouts, nested tables, callouts, sidebars and Scalable Vector Graphics. And, as Amazon notes:

Kindle Fire is the first Kindle device to support KF8 – in the coming months KF8 will be rolled out to our latest generation Kindle e-ink devices as well as our free Kindle reading apps.

Amazon simultaneously released an updated version of its Kindle Previewer, the app that lets content creators preview their Kindle-compatible eBook files.

In this installment, I’ll focus on the updates to the Kindle Previewer. The KF8 review awaits more in-depth experience with the tool (it’s still command-line, but Amazon supports epub to mobi conversion through current and previous versions of the Previewer app).

KINDLE FIRE PREVIEWER (FIRST IMPRESSIONS)

Pros:

  • Supports color. The Kindle Fire Previewer supports color. The Kindle Previewer does not; if your ePub targets multiple platforms, and color is part of the mix, you’re in a bit of a bind with the old Previewer. Kindle Fire Previewer fixes that.
  • Renders text more faithfully. The Kindle Previewer has inconsistent text rendering, making it hard to tell whether it’s your file or the Previewer that has the problem. Kindle Fire Previewer fixes that.
  • Converts epub to mobi and KF8. This is the whole point of the new toolset, so this is a no duh.

Cons:

  • Previewer Window too long. The Kindle Fire Previewer app window is taller than its predecessor, because the Fire is, well, taller. There’s more on the page. On the Mac, though, that means that the bottom of the app window is obscured by the Dock.
  • App Window not resizable. This is a carry over from the older Kindle Previewer. But the default height of the old Previewer was less, because Kindle e-ink devices are smaller, so the obscuring the dock problem was not evident. Bottom line: you can’t fix this problem except by minimizing the Dock.
  • NOTE: All tests were conducted at a screen resolution of 1920 x 1200. We get it that the fixed size on the Previewer is a proxy for what the eBook will look like on various Kindles. But something got lost in translation. The Kindle Fire has a resolution of 1024 x 600. Come on; it should fit with room to spare.

Kindle Previewer With Dock

Kindle Previewer with Dock (Mac)

Kindle Previewer Without Dock

Kindle Previewer with Dock (Mac)

Another EPUB Win?

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The eBook format wars seem to have lost a major player when Sharp announced it was discontinuing its Galapagos tablet, which used their homegrown XMDF format. This reversal has caused at least one writer to speculate it will drive Japanese publishers and device makers toward EPUB3.

The historical blocker for EPUB in Japan was its anemic support of Japanese typesetting standards, including arcane character sets and vertical type. Sharp built XMDF to address those issues. But now, according to Hiroki Kamata, writing in the Ebook 2.0 Forum:

EPUB3 now adequately supports Japanese typesetting rules (much of the work accomplished by a team of Japanese engineers) and is also usable with web browsers supporting HTML5, as well as the Japanese typesetting extension already implemented by Apple’s Safari.

While the Japanese market is a tough one to crack by any measure, the prospect that EPUB will become viable in yet another market helps streamline the global eBook conversion process. More importantly, it can help stave off platform fragmentation. We can live with two eBook formats. Three is one road too many, even for a unique market like Japan.

Windows 8 eBooks

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Two months ago, I was wondering which eBook format Windows 8 will support. Perhaps it’s still too early to tell. After all, the Windows 8 team only recently got around to releasing Windows Media Center in its pre-beta builds. Windows Media Center is, arguably, more central to the Windows 8 media consumption story, given its focus on movies, music and TV. That doesn’t stop me from being curious.

After looking at how Windows Phone 7 handles eBooks, I’m wondering if that provides a clue toward what Windows 8 will do. The short answer appears to be that Microsoft may be content to let third parties handle this issue. A quick perusal of the Windows Phone store reveals support for both the EPUB and Amazon Kindle formats.

Again, the eBook format shoe may drop later in the Windows 8 build cycle. The unknown is whether Microsoft will replicate the Kindle Store or iBookstore experience on the Windows 8 Store. If they do, they’ll have to make a decision. If Windows Phone 7 is any indication, they won’t. This is one case where taking no decision feels like a good thing.