Switched On: Making book with ePUB
By Ross Rubin 
posted Oct 25th 2009 12:30PM
posted Oct 25th 2009 12:30PM
First, unlike PlaysForSure, which was playing catch-up to the already dominant iPod, ePUB is appearing relatively early in the market; it need not break anyone's "stranglehold." Second, after attracting the support of Sony, the format achieved a significant coup with the support of Barnes & Noble, which noted last week that it was "excited" to be supporting the format in its forthcoming Nook e-reader.
Like Sony did and like Amazon would have to, Barnes & Noble moved to embrace ePUB after pursuing its own proprietary file format. Even more impressively, the bricks-and-clicks bookseller is embracing ePUB while innovating in rights management; Nook users can lend each books out once each for 14 days. The Nook is also well-positioned not only because of very competitive hardware, but because of Barnes & Noble's nationwide retail footprint and multichannel presence, and because of the close connection the retailer has to readers -- combining many of the advantages that Sony and and Amazon have enjoyed up to this point. ePUB is also supported by Google for
Even though ePUB should enjoy prevalence, it may have limited relevance. |
On the other hand, even though ePUB should enjoy prevalence, it may have limited relevance. This is because of another shift in device dynamics since the 2001 debut of the iPod -- wireless broadband access. Integrated, free 3G connectivity first appeared on the Kindle. Amazon could justify subsidizing access since the Kindle store was the only practical source for content for the device and because the device had little value without books purchased from Amazon. To a greater extend than the iPod, the Kindle is a digital vending machine.
But Sony and Barnes & Noble's support for ePUB does not mean that either will subsidize wireless connections to buy ebooks from rival booksellers. ePUB content will have to be sideloaded, and assuming we see the most popular "short-tail" content available at the Sony and B&N digital bookstores, there will be little reason for most consumers to look elsewhere. ePUB's impact will be blunted since Barnes & Noble, seeking to reinforce its brand and experience, will make its own reader client available on a broad range of devices anyway.
Amazon has already improved its support of PDF (ePUB's technical cousin) with the Kindle DX, and already allows sideloaded content, so it would not be too surprising to see the Kindle vendor add ePUB to the device. That would be a win for astute consumers aware of digital rights management and even provide added value to the Kindle in terms of tapping into a broader array of books such as the public domain library offered by Google Books and potentially digitally lent books from public libraries. It may also help Amazon in its textbook ambitions, as the retailer would need more buy-in from institutions such as colleges and boards of education that are far more likely to be concerned with having the assurance of an open format. Just as millions of consumers bought billions of songs from Apple despite a closed DRM system, though, Amazon could happily continue to sell books incompatible with ePUB.
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
why do we need a format for books? why cant we just use the pdf format? anyhow its good that the industry is consolidating around this format, it would be a pain in the kisser if there was alot of book formats to juggle.
PDFs aren't easily reformatted for different page (i.e., display) sizes. Try looking at a PDF formatted for 8.5x11 on a smartphone ebook reader and you'll see what I mean.
PDF is completely inappropriate for books, for the following reasons:
* It can't be reflowed (in general at least - there are some special PDFs that can)
* You can't change the font or font size.
* PDF rendering software is slower and more complicated then ePub.
Of course there are some things epub can't do that PDF can, and PDF support is pretty much a must for an ebook reader.
There is a DRMed PDF format that some E-book readers support (such as Sony's Reader).
Publishers won't release an E-book without some level of security. They need assurances that e-books won't become like MP3s, where most people illegally download music rather then actually buy them. If this is the case, most publishers would rather stick to traditional print copies where piracy is hard.
But ePUB is open, its simple (XHTML and ZIP), and the DRM is entirely up to the publisher. There is so specified DRM for ePUB, this is open to publisher to use what they want or not use one at all (ePUB is in a ZIP file, and it only requires a rights.xml file in ne of the root directories).
More importantly with ePUB, its transferable between devices. I could buy my ePUB at Barnes&Noble's reader and later use it on a Sony Reader; as long as the e-book supports ePUB (which all players aside from Kindle will).
While the above people answered why PDF wasn't "it" already, you're on the right track with this question! Let me explain.
An ubiquitous, well-supported format that is NOT LOCKED TO SPECIFIC HARDWARE is what e-Books need. Originally it was Sony LRF vs. Amazon AZW (Mobi). You wanted a book for your Sony, you HAD TO buy from the Sony store. You (still) want to buy a book for the Kindle, you HAVE TO buy from Amazon.
That's like saying if B&N is the ONLY place to buy paperbacks. Amazon is the ONLY place to buy Hadrcovers. That's totally ludicrous, and it's the single biggest problem in the e-Reader world. We need an all-encompassing format so you can buy your hardware of choice, and just get your books from ANY bookstore... just like you do now with any book store.
ePUB is set to solve these problems. That's its biggest benefit. If every e-Book supports this (Kindle, c'mon!), it will majorly help the adoption of e-Readers as we go on.
-Pie
What ever format makes the entire O'Reilly library available is the one I'll buy into.
Ugh, so many typos in that article.
And I really don't see how ePUB is related to the PlayForSure initiative. At all.
Wow, really? At all? You don't see what two digital media formats with DRM that are meant to work across different manufacturer's devices have in common?
At least Amazon's AZW format is just based off the MOBI format, and the Kindle can read a pretty good variety of non-Amazon formats quite well.
I'd still love to see it support PDF natively, instead of requiring a conversion before transfer, but with programs like Calibre out there, it's not a big deal. PDF turns to MOBI pretty well, as long as it's not full of charts.
PDF is not a good solution since it is really for fixed layouts. Ebooks need reflowable formatting due to them coming in all shapes and sizes. ePub is a great step, but there are still alot of different formats: ePub, lit, mobi, lrf, lrx, html, txt, etc
So what's wrong with html then?
ePub is html (xhtml flavor) packeged in a zipfile so that it can contain images, too. Some vendors put this into a DRM wrapper to prevent copying of commerical works.
The MOBI/AZW format used by Kindle is also based on html inside a package file.
Most ereaders can read html either directly or with a minor conversion. (Kindle will read html directly if you rename it to TXT).
i can lend out my real books for as long as i want already, thanks
This is just like the iPod/iTunes model. The Kindle is about the books sales revenue not Kindle unit sales. The integrity of the revenue pipeline (much like iTunes) is the bedrock of their business model here.
Does the author really entertain the idea that Amazon *might* support the ePub format for the sake of consumers? For the sake of consumers, really?
I love my Kindle, but e-book pricing is not yet cheap enough. Given the fact that there is no paper, no storage in real space, and lots of other savings, ebooks are too expensive.
Ah, but the profit margins make it attractive to the supply chain. (Can you ship me 1000 ebooks please.)
I agree.
I just did a quick scan of the e-books available for the Nook and the ones I checked were all $9.99. That's about $3 more than the paperback version for each of those books. I won't buy in until the e-books are at least on par with paperback, though they really should be cheaper.
Hey, you know what you should do now? Proof read.
It's horribly ironic when a article concerning books and publishers and the like can't be bothered to write with a correct syntax.
Hey, you know what you should do now? Proof read.
You used the word "a" instead of "an". It's "an article" NOT "a article".
Take your own advice man. Take your own advice....now, isn't that ironic?
I think you mean "an" article.
Also, I did not know articles could write. I thought authors and bloggers did that.
Speaking of irony...
What's really funny is that it's "proofread", not "proof read", so you're both wrong. If you don't believe me, go to http://www.merriam-webster.com/ and type it in. You will find that your search is auto-corrected.
And before anyone feels the need to correct the placement of my commas outside the quotation marks, I should preëmpt you by pointing out that while you would strictly speaking be correct as far as American standard usage goes, it is common British usage to put punctuation outside the quotation marks unless the punctuation belongs to the quote itself. The American usage lacks precision and creates confusion in many circumstances, so I make a personal choice in favor of accuracy over an artificial standard of "correctness".
And for those who think that preëmpt is spelled without an umlaut, I refer you to this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis
The issue for be is not the ePub compatibility, that SHOULD be a given. [why the Kindle isn't an option for me]
The issue is that I need to know that the books I'm buying will work on OTHER ereader devices.
With the kindle, I have no guarantee of that at all.
The nook is a Kindle-killer-- It just looks so much better
Really nice design and easy to use. Thanks
Seriously? ePUB and PDF, cousins? Not even in the same family.
As mentioned, PDF is a document format, for when you need things to appear the same everywhere, for printing onto paper, etc.
ePUB is a ebook format (and based around HTML) that has absolutely nothing to do with PDF. NO, ePUB was not developed by Adobe as claimed in the article. It was established by the International Digital Publishing Forum, based on the older Open E-book standard. (Seriously, would it kill you to maybe consider looking at the Wikipedia entry?) All Adobe did is add one type of DRM to ePUB, but developers are free to use any DRM they want at this point.
+1
An epub? Im heading over there for a beer!
Sadly, you can only get ebeer at the ePub.
and it costs more then real beer.
and after drinking pints of it, you'll be peeing e-ink *shudders*
ePUB is a complete mistake - I recently purchased an Issac Asimov's book Foundation for 8 dollars in ePUB format. When I downloaded it to my computer,I found out it's impossible to read it with anything else other than adobe's own program. It's impossible to open it on Linux,on Android,Windows Mobile and Blackberry. Of course it's not the format's fault - it's because the DRM used on the book,that prevents everything you should be able to do as a legal buyer of the book. But at least you can remove the DRM from other ebook formats - you can't from the ePub files though! I ended up downloading a non-DRMed copy off torrent network,so I can read it on my blackberry. Shame on you, DRM-ed ePub!
THE FOUNDATIONS SERIES IS THE BEST BOOK SERIES EVER.
The DRM most assuredly CAN be removed from Adobe Digital Edition ePUB files. Google smarter, not harder!
Yeah, google "adept drm removal"
Yeah, google "adept drm removal"
You are totally wrong there are readers for those formats in Android "fbreader" and shortcovers are two,
about the pc there are more than adobe editions, you can download the sony sofware free without the sonny reader, for other readers
take a look at this link http://www.jedisaber.com/ebooks/Readers.asp , for linux there are versiosn of fbreader and azardi , also stanza for iphone, not to say that all big book houses are moving on that direction
Wow, not really into e readers. I love to read, but i just havn't found the money to buy one. I guess if i stopped buying thirty dollar books every other week, i could get one. ;-8
ePub is a decent step for mediocre-quality book display. Typography quality is poor, but it reflects the current immature state of the technology and market.
Many people who are more perfectionist make properly sized and typeset PDFs for their devices with appropriate typefaces that will display on current e-ink screens, rather than whatever stock font is installed on the device.
Like most other ebook formats, ePub is basically readable. It's a pretty far cry from being comparable to any competently typeset book, but it gives users who don't care whatsoever about that the option to resize the text for themselves. For some people, that is worth the tradeoff.
ePub is not really a "format" but a mark-up. It has little or no typographic, line breaking, or paragraph breaking information. The typography and look comes from the rendering engine. So ePub cannot be blamed for the poor typography. It is actually possible to create first class typographic output on the fly from ePub. So we should embrace ePub which is an open standard, but pressure eBook readers to render it better.
I think that's what he's saying though, that since often font and that sort of stuff is a major decision in printed books, that it should support embedded fonts, that sort or stuff to give a more exact view on all readers while still being able to reflow to different device sizes.
Some problems with the article:
"The ePUB standard, developed by Adobe"
It was the IDPF (http:://www.idpf.org - you can find the specs there as well) that developed ePub. While Adobe is a member of the IDPF, there are plenty of other people involved, and I wouldn't want to see their contributions minimized.
"ePUB content will have to be sideloaded,"
Both Sony and B&N have announced they will be deprecating their own formats (BBeB and eReader respectively) in favor of using ePub - so you will be able to purchase ePub based eBooks directly from either the Sony or B&N stores.
Also the Nook will have WiFi in addition to 3G support, and given the Android roots even if the WiFi access is initially limited, I'm sure the limitations will be removed by someone after the release.
"PDF (ePUB's technical cousin)"
As other people have mentioned, while you can have eBooks in both format, they serve different needs. You should use PDF when you a complex document where having the layout perfectly reproduced in important. ePub (with its HTML roots) allows for a better experience with reflowing content to allow for smaller devices (or changing font sizes).
Where I work, we're planning to offer ebook versions of some material; it will be in epub. There's clearly a need for a standard format and, so far, epub is it. So yes, it's a good step (at least as compared to having no standard format at all).
* Making A book with ePUB.
Maybe the author is overlooking the fact that Adobe already have a monopoly on digital print from PDF to PSD.
Adobe already own the market in creation now they want to take over the distribution format as well, why doesn't the author question whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for consumers ?
Books work with multiple forms of paper, can be sold by anyone, are unencrypted by default, can be sold or loans to anyone, can be found used for cheaper, and when the day comes that the copyright expires someone else can copy the book to publish it at marginal cost.
Or, I can buy a device that does less than books, while costing more and being less convenient. This is a solution in search of a problem. I wish them the best of luck.
You can't change the font size on books, nor can you carry more books without increased weight and size. My Kindle is an awesome gadget, and a year and a half later, I still read something on it every day.
Has anyone actually confirmed that the bn.com and Sony stores will be interoperable with Sony and BN devices, respectively?
Come on guys, at least get your facts straight. Your very first sentence is just flat out incorrect. How difficult is it to do some research on this?
DRM is not popular jet but maybe it will be in the future?
To be more popular it should offer MORE than only to prohibit access or identifies the end user.
What does MORE mean? Let's see at YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv1LpAKXIO4
Regards,