New Digital Publishing Standards
Talk AltPublishing
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1Domokos
Several years ago I registered Read An E-Book Week with Chase's Calendar of Events in an effort to promote reading of digital material.
It's been a tought slog for e-books. Yes, a few e-publishers are managing to hang on - notably Hard Shell Word Factory. The inablity of e-reader manufacturers to set a standard for publication has been one of the biggest stumbling blocks. This propriatory platform had killed a few good efforts. And price may be a factor although I find the prices at Fictionwise to be reasonable.
Happily the platform problem may have been resolved! I'm quoting here:
New York, NY (October 30th, 2006) – The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the standards and trade association for digital publishing, announced today the release of a new technical standard to facilitate digital content creation, distribution and use by consumers. In addition to the Open eBook Publication Structure (OEBPS), an XML standard for authoring digital books, the IDPF has now released a new standard for packaging a digital publication, including the contents of the publication, metadata, signatures, encryption, rights and other information into one standard file.
If publishers and reader manufacturers finally get their act together (they've refought the Beta/VHS battle) maybe e-books will finally reach their potential.
It's been a tought slog for e-books. Yes, a few e-publishers are managing to hang on - notably Hard Shell Word Factory. The inablity of e-reader manufacturers to set a standard for publication has been one of the biggest stumbling blocks. This propriatory platform had killed a few good efforts. And price may be a factor although I find the prices at Fictionwise to be reasonable.
Happily the platform problem may have been resolved! I'm quoting here:
New York, NY (October 30th, 2006) – The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the standards and trade association for digital publishing, announced today the release of a new technical standard to facilitate digital content creation, distribution and use by consumers. In addition to the Open eBook Publication Structure (OEBPS), an XML standard for authoring digital books, the IDPF has now released a new standard for packaging a digital publication, including the contents of the publication, metadata, signatures, encryption, rights and other information into one standard file.
If publishers and reader manufacturers finally get their act together (they've refought the Beta/VHS battle) maybe e-books will finally reach their potential.
2SimonW11
I want to pin all the hang ups on ebooks to one problem, but the those hangups are so varied that the only problem that comesto mind is muddled thinking.
E-books cannot at present match books for typography. For a start the displays vary too much. yet adobe spent ages on a version of adobe reader for PDAs. It was horrendous. can you imagine reproduceing the typography of Godel, Escher, Bach on a PDA it just wont work. Yet publisher used this format and wondered at the small sales. They were selling only to people who had a bloody big monitor.
Similarily with Microsoft reader. Microsoft as always tryto leverage their market share.and this meant that they only offered it to people using one of their OS systems but they have far from majority market share away from desktops.
INdeed I suspect cant even run my MSreader on my tablet and that runs windows.It is about the size of a book with an 8.4 inches screen (about thesize of a paperbac0 kso the max resolution is probably less than MS reader needsto run.You just dont need alot of dots on a screen that size.
Still it happily produces something almost identical in Size and layout to a paper back book using something like mobipocket or ereader or evwen a simple HTMl converter like Yreader.
once again publisher found themselves selling to a fraction of the market.
They were selling a new product that seemed delibrately designed not to appeal
to early adopters.
On the other hand I have bought MSreader Products to read on my Tablet and my PDA. but When people are buying products because they are easy to crack there is something wrong. Ereader and mobipocket are far better products.
What the ebook market wants is not a software standard but a hardware standard. Something portable cheap and that holds a charge for a long time. and has good high res display. Given that a software standard will emerge.
E-books cannot at present match books for typography. For a start the displays vary too much. yet adobe spent ages on a version of adobe reader for PDAs. It was horrendous. can you imagine reproduceing the typography of Godel, Escher, Bach on a PDA it just wont work. Yet publisher used this format and wondered at the small sales. They were selling only to people who had a bloody big monitor.
Similarily with Microsoft reader. Microsoft as always tryto leverage their market share.and this meant that they only offered it to people using one of their OS systems but they have far from majority market share away from desktops.
INdeed I suspect cant even run my MSreader on my tablet and that runs windows.It is about the size of a book with an 8.4 inches screen (about thesize of a paperbac0 kso the max resolution is probably less than MS reader needsto run.You just dont need alot of dots on a screen that size.
Still it happily produces something almost identical in Size and layout to a paper back book using something like mobipocket or ereader or evwen a simple HTMl converter like Yreader.
once again publisher found themselves selling to a fraction of the market.
They were selling a new product that seemed delibrately designed not to appeal
to early adopters.
On the other hand I have bought MSreader Products to read on my Tablet and my PDA. but When people are buying products because they are easy to crack there is something wrong. Ereader and mobipocket are far better products.
What the ebook market wants is not a software standard but a hardware standard. Something portable cheap and that holds a charge for a long time. and has good high res display. Given that a software standard will emerge.
