George Kerscher, IDPF President, DAISY Consortium; Garth Conboy, IDPF Chairman, eBook Technologies; Michael Smith, IDPF Executive Director; Steve Potash, Moderator, Overdirve Approximately 600 people are attending the conference Kerscher: epub standard has gained huge uptake. Withing 5 years have potential to have equal sales to print book. Want to form more working groups to revise standards, do best practices, guidelines, etc. Vote completed on revision of standard and working on it now. Will start on July 15. Fourteen different revisions need to be done: rich media, international character sets. Conboy: Last year did epubcheck 1.0.5, 3000 downloads in...

From their website: The IDPF EPUB Logo Design Competition will accept design submissions for consideration for the official logo of the EPUB standard. .epub is a standard file format, developed by the IDPF, for reflowable digital books and publications. EPUB has been rapidly adopted as the standard interoperable distribution format for trade eBooks in North America and Europe. The winning designer will receive a $1000 USD cash prize and two pre-paid registrations to IDPF Digital Book 2010 at BEA. Subject to the requirements outlined below, the winning logo and design will be announced at IDPF Digital Book 2010...

The ebook market is growing faster as it grows larger. The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) on Friday reported U.S. wholesale ebook sales for January, 2010 were $31.9 million, up 261 percent from the same month a year earlier. To put this in perspective, I created the chart at left. The chart compiles annual ebook sales data from the Association of American Publishers. For 2010, I took the latest IDPF January data and annualized it. The data is collected from only 12-15 U.S. trade publishers. This means it dramatically understates what's really happening in ebooks, because thousands of large and small publishers, as...

There's an excellent review of the Nook by Lisa Gade that gives you almost more than you want to know. She went from hating it to giving it 4 stars - now that its had a couple of firmware upgrades. But the DRM situation is getting crazier every day. She includes a chart of the DRM compatibilities between the Nook, Sony Reader and Kindle, and, of course, nobody is compatible with anybody else. The Sony and Nook can read Epub, of course, but it's the DRMed Epub books that cause the trouble. The Nook can't read Sony...

George Kerscher, secretary general of the Daisy Consortium, will be the new president of the International Digital Publishing Forum. Blind, George has been a vigorous advocate of the ePub standard and measures to make e-books more usable by people with disabilities. Under him, standards efforts should accelerate. Here are the successful candidates for the seven open seats on the IDPF board: Matt Shatz – Random House, Inc. Andrew Savikas – O'Reilly Media Nick Bogaty – Adobe Systems, Inc. Garth Conboy – eBook Technologies, Inc. Malle Vallik...

Here are the AAP/IDPF figures for October. Note that they may actually be twice as high, or more, because data is taken from a fairly limited sample and retail dollar figures may be as much as double due to discounting. Quarters 2002 through Q3 2009 Quarters Revenues Quarters Revenues Q1 02 $1,556,499 Q1 06 $4,100,000 Q2 02 $1,258,989 Q2 06 $4,000,000 Q3 02 $1,329,548 Q3 06 $4,900,000 Q4 02 $1,649,144 Q4 06 $7,000,000 Q1 03 $1,794,544 Q1 07 $7,500,000 Q2 03 $1,842,502 Q2 07 $8,100,000 Q3 03 $1,789,455 Q3 07 $8,000,000 Q4 03 $1,917,384 Q4 07 $8,200,000 Q1 04 $1,794,130 Q1 08 $11,200,000 Q2 04 $1,887,900 Q2 08 $11,600,000 Q3 04 $2,460,343 Q3 08 $13,900,000 Q4 04 $3,477,130 Q4 08 $16,800,000 Q1 05 $3,161,049 Q1 09 $25,800,000 Q2 05 $3,182,499 Q2 09 $37,600,000 Q3 05 $2,310,291 Q3 09 $46,500,000 Q4 05 $2,175,131 October 2009 $18,500,000 Note that the October figures, alone, are more than the entire third or fourth quarter of 2008. ...

Twenty-one candidates are running for the eight open seat on the board of directors of the International Digital Publishing Forum. The voting ends on midnight Thursday, with the results announced Friday. Here’s the real news. Nicky Bogaty of Adobe Systems and George Kerscher of the Daisy Consortium, the two IDPF presidential candidates, have both pledged to speed up the standards-making process for ePub, which badly needs it. Read on for TeleRead’s detailed coverage of this important story. Nick writes in his platform statement that "bugs needed to be fixed and clarifications to the specs need to be made as well as strategic thought...

Ugh, it’s time to broach the topic again. Why the devil doesn’t the International Digital Publishing Forum have an ePub logo so its format standard can compete better against the Kindle’s proprietary approach? The IDPF said it would unveil a contest for the best logo design, but I haven't seen a follow-up. I’ve emailed Director Michael Smith for an explanation. How about it, Mike? You’re a nice guy, and I know you’re busy, but this has been going on for months and months. I could move on to Board President Steve Potash of OverDrive, but I’m still counting...

Now this makes a lot of sense, especially since the two are usually held fairly close together. It will also give the IDPF a much wider audience. Here's an excerpt from the press release: Officials at the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) and BookExpo America (BEA) have today announced a partnership which will bring the highly regarded IDPF Digital Book 2010 Conference to the Javits Center during BEA, May 25 – 27, 2010. The IDPF Digital Book Conference, which has consistently been sold-out in past years, has traditionally taken place in New York City a few weeks prior...

Just how will it take the International Digital Publishing Forum to crank up the promised ePub logo contest? Back in May 2009, the word was: In a few weeks. The logo suggestions you’re seeing, from Travis Alber (left), Steve Jordan (right) and Actua Litte (below), are not official. But why should we care? Well, Amazon so far refuses to let the Kindle render ePub natively. It’s been trying to hog the scene with its proprietary Kindle standard. For the rest of the world  to compete, a logo for the IPDF ePub standard will help immensely. We’re...

Kapan is publishing Stanza e-books for law and nursing students. But these “wrapped” ePub editions are just for iPhones and Touches. After a Kaplan news release---edited---I’ll discuss this. Your thoughts? - D.R. Five titles from Kaplan Publishing for law and nursing students will be available at the iTunes store via the Stanza e-reader. More titles will appear for students with access to iPhones or iPod Touches. Medicine will be among the fields included. This will happen through arrangements between Kaplan Publishing, LibreDigital (digital publishing service provider) and Amazon’s Lexcycle subsidiary (developer of Stanza). ...

Sony e-readers are the ones you’ll most likely see at your local discount store over the next few months. Which Sony would be best for you? First off, think about other brands, too, not just Sony, even if they’re not sold locally. And consider the ability to read the ePub standard---including the Adobe-DRM-tainted variety, if you want to enjoy bestsellers in E. See TeleRead’s DRM primer. If you’re still keen on a Sony Reader---which doesn’t come with all the gotcha of the Kindle, such as the risk of Orwellian book yanks---here are the options: --The PRS-300 Pocket Edition. The screen measures just five...