Likewise, a flexible digital publication format is much better for the industry—and for readers—than a rigid, limited one.

To be more precise, a flexible format is more likely to be embraced, due to business pressures.

The IDPF’s new open standard e-book format, ePUB, is rapidly proving its flexibility. And ePUB’s flexibility is, of course, intentional by design.

A little history of ePUB’s predecessor as a consumer standard

Five years, two months and eight days ago, I published the reviewed eBookWeb article: “OEBPS: The Universal Consumer eBook Format?” My article delved into some of the requirements an e-book format must meet to be potentially embraced by the digital publishing industry as the consumer standard. From the requirements analysis, I concluded that IDPF’s OEBPS specification met these requirements and could become, when the time is ripe, the industry standard.

And indeed we are now seeing a groundswell of interest in ePUB by publishers and application developers. The primary reason is its flexibility in a number of areas, some of which are only now being recognized. I’ll delve into a couple of them in this article. [Note 1]

Flexibility #1: End-use

Obviously, a publisher is not going to spend money formatting its content into ePUB just for the heck of it. Pubishers do so only if the ePUB-formatted content will be useful in their business—that there will be a positive return on their investment. That’s Business 101. Of course, they prefer that ePUB be re-usable in the future, and not be just another “format of the moment.” Using the jargon of digital publishing professionals, they want their content to be “repurposeable”.

There is a misconception still floating around that ePUB is limited for use as an intermediary format. That is, ePUB is optimized only for format conversion by publishers and distributors/retailers.

In actuality, ePUB was designed from the ground-up to be optimal as both an intermediate format, and for direct rendering by consumers—full repurposeability. This explains the particular design of its XML-based framework, and the publication feature set it supports. [Note 2]

And, logically-speaking, one cannot really differentiate between the two. Even “direct rendering” requires internal conversion (in this case at the user-end) to present the content to the reader.

What we must not do is limit our thinking of ePUB conversion only to publishers and distributors/retailers (thus the end-user will never see or own an ePUB), but understand that ePUB allows end-users to also participate in conversion as their particular needs require, now and into the distant future.

For example, if I were a developer building an automated ePUB to “HappyBook” format converter so that the content could be viewed on “HappyBook” reading systems, then who mandates that only publishers or distributors/retailers can use my converter? The converter could also be incorporated into the “HappyBook” reading system to allow the consumer, who owns ePUB e-books, to natively read them on their “HappyBook.” Or, I could make my converter directly available to end-users, who will be able to manually convert their ePUB to the “HappyBook” format. [Note 3]

As reported here in TeleRead, a great demonstration of ePUB’s flexibility in empowering the end-user is bookworm, by Liza Daly at threepress. bookworm allows the user to read their ePUB e-books on their web browser. Simple, yet powerful.

And Opera, who I’m advising on ePUB (I plan to write more about this in the future), has made significant progress on a widget to natively render ePUB in their browser. (Hopefully native ePUB rendering will be included in their browser for mobile devices.)

Flexibility #2: Specialized applications (“verticals”) and accessibility

ePUB is not only designed as a general “trade” e-book format (which I define to be a format for simple, rigidly narrative/linear books like novels), but to also be used for other types of books and publications which have greater complexity and non-linearity. For example, ePUB supports graphics, including SVG, embedded fonts, and may include specialized markup such as MathML. Full hypertext support, plus the feature called auxiliary content, allows supporting more non-linear texts and documents. (I hope that future versions of ePUB will support fully non-linear content, such as web site structures—it could easily do so since ePUB is based on XHTML and CSS.)

With regards to accessibility, ePUB was designed from the ground-up to be accessible. Accessibility experts, such as George Kerscher, participated from the very beginning in 1999, and they have been a constant presence in the working group, making sure the rest of us understand their needs. Interestingly, the more accessible the format, the better the format is for the sighted (a topic I hope to write about in the future.)

For OPS 2.0 and OPF 2.0 (which underlie ePUB), the accessibility community played an even greater role, and as a result I am happy to report that OPS now supports DAISY’s Digital Talking Book document format (which has ties to NIMAS), and requires (because of my efforts) inclusion of the DAISY NCX (navigation control file) in all OPS 2.0 Publications (i.e., ePUB).

To make it clear that I don’t speak for IDPF and DAISY in any official capacity, I see it a distinct possibility that IDPF and DAISY will formally merge their efforts—it came pretty close to a de facto merger for authoring OPS 2.0 and in developing epubcheck. I hope this happens since, as noted above, the more accessible-friendly the format, the better the format is for everyone.

Publishers are now finally seeing the advantage to them of using high-quality, structural and semantic markup in their publications.

Jon Noring’s digital publishing bio

The way some have discussed ePub, if Indiana Jones were to explore the deep caverns of ePub, he would probably find something exotic and other-worldly, maybe even the remnants of a long-lost civilization. [note 1]

In reality, though, the opposite is true. ePub is internally quite recognizable and familiar, very similar to traditional web content that we all know and love.

ePub and web content share a number of important commonalities:

1. ePub represents the textual content of the publication using standard, ordinary XHTML 1.1. So may web content. [note 2] [note 3]

2. ePub styles the XHTML documents with CSS. So does web content. It is expected that ePub reading systems will interpret the CSS pretty much as web browsers do.

3. ePub may include JPEG and PNG images. So does web content. ePub may even include multimedia – the same multimedia that we love to view and listen as we surf the Internet with our web browser.

So what is the main difference between ePub and “web content”?

The answer to this question, given in the next section, puts ePub into proper perspective, making it much less mysterious, and a lot more familiar. But to answer in brief: there’s very little difference between the two where it really matters.

It also suggests a next-generation successor to ePub that is much more compatible with the “web paradigm”, while offering the advantages the current ePub offers for both the digital publishing industry and the reading experience. A merger of the two “worlds”, benefitting both and compatible with each other, is certainly possible – and intriguing to explore.

I see today’s web browsers evolving to be the center of this merger – to be the platform for reading all types of digital publications. Today’s “wall of separation” between the web browser and “e-book readers” is, in reality, quite artificial, and in some ways even unfortunate.

Techese Alert: what follows will be somewhat technical, but hopefully non-technical folk will be able to understand the general points.

The primary difference: How the content is “stitched together”

Most web sites (which can and should be thought of as a type of online “digital publication”) are comprised of multiple HTML content documents. ePub may also comprise multiple XHTML content documents.

The fundamental difference between the two “formats” (yes Martha, there is an implied “web site format”) is the mechanism of how the content documents are “stitched together” or organized into a coherent whole. That is, how does the user agent (browser; reading system) know which content document to display next when multiple documents represent the “publication”?

There are two ways to instruct a user agent as to what content document to display next:

1. Internal Reference (IR)

   This is the “web browser model” where all the documents are linked together using hypertext links hard-coded within content. No need to explain this any further – it’s how the whole Web is put together!

2. Document Organization Template (DOT)

   This is the method used by ePub. A separate file, not part of the publication content, contains information which “sews together” or organizes the publication’s content documents. In the case of ePub, the document organization is accomplished using the <spine> element in the OPF “Package” document. (ePub also allows hard links for the reader to optionally jump to other content.)

   In general, we could term any externally-designated means of organizing content documents a “document organization template” or DOT for short. [note 4]

   The user agent will use the DOT information to either create a seamless reading experience, and/or build the links for the end-user to actuate. With a DOT, it is possible to construct an entire book using a number of independent content documents, yet to the reader the book could be seamlessly presented just like it is one document (depending upon the sophistication of the reading system), without the reader needing to actuate a link.

Obviously, there are advantages and disadvantages to each method, and variations on each (ePub is not the final word on the DOT approach), which I won’t delve into here. [note 5]

What does this mean? (The bigger picture…)

From the discussion above we can make a few diverse observations:

1. ePub itself is essentially a flavor of a more general class of digital publication frameworks where a DOT is used to “stitch” together multiple XML documents (such as XHTML, Digital Talking Book, etc.), all styled using CSS. Hard links may also be added within documents to allow the user to optionally move to a new document.

   The OpenReader format developed a few short years ago is an example of a quite similar DOT-based framework whose DOT is more powerful than that of ePub. Our analysis showed that if one were to build either an OpenReader or an ePub reading system, the jump required to read the other format would be very, very small.

   Thus, competing “formats” that use some sort of DOT to organize XHTML content documents (styled with CSS) are quite compatible with each other. It is actually not correct to call them incompatible or that they contribute to the Tower of eBabel since the same reading application for one can be adapted with relative ease for another, and inter-conversion is possible.

2. Plug-ins for current web browsers to handle ePub and similar DOT-based frameworks should not be difficult to develop. Future web browsers may even natively incorporate the ability to seamlessly present ePub and similar DOT-based framework publications.

   The simplest approach to leverage today’s web browsers for reading ePub Publications, and which avoids the plug-in route, is a straightforward ePub to “web site” converter. This allows the end-user to be able to read their ePub Publication on any device they own which has a web browser. (I’ve thought about such a converter and will be happy to talk to anyone interested in developing this tool. This could be a collaborative open source project.)

3. As noted in the previous section, we may contemplate merging the “web paradigm” with the “DOT paradigm”, thus supporting both, and getting the advantages of both.

   For example, I see a new generalized DOT standard which future web browsers and specialized digital publishing reading systems can use to organize and present documents to the user. This generalized DOT should be able to handle much more non-linear publications than the quite limited (read: mostly linear) DOT used in ePub.

   Of course, I don’t see DOT as a replacement to Internal Referencing used today on the web, but rather as an option to use when suitable – both could be used simultaneously, as OpenReader demonstrated.

Summary

It is important that we not erect an artificial wall between ePub and web content. Certainly they are different in some ways, particularly how the content is organized. But they share many more similarities than differences.

It is my hope that we will begin to focus on the similarities, and enterprising individuals in the developer community will start building ePub reading systems based on leveraging existing web browsers. This is not to say effort should not be put into building powerful, stand-alone ePub reading systems which optimize the e-book reading experience and take full advantage of the feature-set in ePub.

Anything which promotes the direct reading of ePub Publications on a variety of devices will help ePub to more quickly reach critical mass in the digital publication community. The winners will be both publishers and consumers.

I’ve long since given up massively collecting the “old 78’s”, and today have only kept a few favorites. One favorite I kept, a quite rare classic jazz recording from late 1928, is shown to the right. [note 1] My experience collecting older sound recordings has given me some unique perspectives as it relates to media, e-books, copyright, conversion, archiving, formats, etc.

In a seemingly unrelated story (yes, I will tie all this together to e-books!), last weekend I was looking at my family’s fairly large VHS movie collection, wondering what to do with it. I’ll probably just give it away since who will buy it? I reflected that a lot of money was spent over the years to acquire these analog video tapes, and now they sit on the shelf, gathering dust, taking up space, never to be viewed again by my family.

Nor will I digitize these video tapes (because of the time and cost to do it right, and because they are of limited NTSC-grade fidelity) since we have moved on to DVD and probably soon will switch to high definition. So instead of converting these analog VHS movies, we’ll probably spend more $$$ to simply replace some of them with high definition digital versions – essentially buying the same movies twice.

Sound familiar?

Tie to e-books: Obsolescence

What do these two small tidbits in my life have to do with e-books and digital publishing? And what about ePub? Lots, really.

The common thread that runs through my two stories is media obsolescence:

1. Obsolescence (as it relates to difficulty of playback and transfer) of the artifact containing the audio/video recordings, and

2. Obsolescence (lower fidelity) of the underlying audio/video information.

With e-books as digital files which we can download (or can trivially retrieve from CD-ROM and DVD-ROM), we solve the type 1 obsolescence since we don’t have to carry the digital bits on any particular, difficult-to-transfer artifact. Transferring them with “no loss” is as easy as typing “copy” – no need to spend hundreds or thousands on special equipment to “transfer” the publication.

The second type of obsolescence, though, requires a little more discussion, delving into some of the themes I wrote about in a 2003 TeleRead article: OEBPS: The Universal Consumer eBook Format?

“Flexibility” and “High-Fidelity” are important as affirmed by AAP

Very recently the AAP, whose membership includes all the major American publishers, released an open letter with a strong endorsement of IDPF’s ePub. The following two points in AAP’s letter are germane to this article:

1. AAP sees retailers selling ePub directly to consumers (refer to AAP’s clarification on this point), as well as selling derivative formats converted from ePub. Publishers understand the great flexibility that ePub provides.

2. AAP uses the phrase “high-fidelity” to describe ePub. This mention means presentation quality is important to AAP, and thus should be important to everyone else in the e-book industry. It also acknowledges that indeed ePub is “high-fidelity.”

It is clear that publishers consider “flexibility” and “high-fidelity” in e-book formats important, for themselves, for the rest of the industry, and for consumers. And ePub is a format that meets these requirements.

The case for ePub as a consumer format, and its similarity to web content

A couple e-book commentators have slammed using ePub as a consumer format, arguing that it is not “digested” enough (my phrase) to be read on limited resource handheld devices (maybe “dumbed down” is a better phrase?) In their view ePub should only be used as a “master” that the consumer never buys nor handles, and from which the publisher/wholesaler/retailer converts to proprietary formats.

What they really are advocating is that the consumer should only purchase a digested “low fidelity” format optimized for their particular handheld device, a device that is most likely here today and gone tomorrow. (Just like low fidelity 78 RPM records and VHS were “digested” and tied to their particular playback devices – where are they today?) If the consumer gets a different handheld device, they will need to buy the book again in a different, proprietary format. [note 2]

As just noted, AAP itself rejects this limited view of ePub and is supportive of repurposeable, high-fidelity ePub being sold directly to, and read by, consumers.

After all, there now exist ePub reading systems (for example, Adobe’s Digital Editions), and since the specs underlying ePub are completely open and unencumbered, anyone can build their own ePub reading system (or “user agent”.) End-user flexibility in using the e-book is important to AAP.

(Not to mention the possibility with DRM-free ePub that end-users could use tools to convert ePub to some other temporary format as they need, whenever they need it. This possibility has not been discussed.)

Furthermore, today’s “limited hardware” is actually quite close to being able to directly render ePub (filtered to lower fidelity as needed by the device) since ePub is essentially close to a packaged web site. The hard work in rendering ePub is parsing XHTML, decorating the “parsed tree” with CSS (techies here know what I mean by this) and splashing the character glyphs on the screen, which is exactly what web browsers have to do.

Many handheld devices today include web browsers. In essence, when web browsers become ubiquitous in most handhelds, then directly rendering ePub on all these handhelds will be very easy to support. That is, if the handheld can display web pages, it has the requisite horsepower to natively display ePub.

With AAP’s strong endorsement, and the release of thousands of books in the ePub format in the near future, I see more interest in modifying web browsers (and it won’t take much) to directly read ePub, as well as specialized ePub readers. Let a thousand flowers bloom!

DRM: The monkey wrench in the gears

Obviously, DRM throws a huge monkey wrench into the end-user convertibility of DRM-protected ePub. But then DRM throws a monkey wrench into all format discussions, so what’s new?

It is hard to predict if the e-book industry, as it matures, will fully embrace DRM encryption, or will decide to forego using it (or only use what Bill McCoy at Adobe calls “social DRM”, where the book copy is unencrypted but identifies the individual buyer.) It does appear the music industry may drop heavy-duty DRM. I hope the major publishers will do likewise.

As I wrote about a while back, I believe DRM encryption is not needed by publishers to maximize their profits and maintain sufficient control over the use of their content. “Social DRM”, combined with digital signatures, is probably more than adequate protection for published e-books and other types of digital publications.

Summary

I see ePub (and its compatible successors) being the reflowable, high-fidelity e-book format that consumers need to only buy once, and have confidence the format will not become obsolete anytime soon. And ePub is designed for convertibility – when a new, high-fidelity, open format replaces ePub in the future, conversion of ePub to that new format, without loss of information, will be possible.

Even if today not all handhelds have the required horsepower to directly render ePub, they soon will, mainly because there’s strong consumer demand for handheld devices to include web browsing capability (even if rudimentary.) ePub is essentially close to a “web site” packaged in an ordinary ZIP file, an important fact which a lot of people strangely seem to miss.

If I have the choice of buying a digested, low fidelity, proprietary e-book format which can only be read on a particular device, or a high-fidelity, open, repurposeable format that can be read on all devices (both natively and converted as needed to other formats), now and into the future, which would I choose? Which would you choose?

I do not want to buy the same book over and over again in order to read it in some needed proprietary format, and to always be stuck reading my e-books in “low fidelity” whenever I have a device capable of higher-quality presentation.

For something like five or six years, I’ve been able to style XML elements with CSS and have the text displayed just the way I want.

That is, in the XMetaL XML editor* and in browsers.

Not in an e-reader, however. All the e-readers specify the vocabulary you’re permitted to use in your e-book**.

There’s a difference between a reader and a browser, between a reader and an editor.

The reader has library functions, bookmarks, annotations. It collects multiple files into a single package; browsers and editors don’t have the same orientation. They just won’t do.

As it happens, I’ve worked with XML since 1999 and I have lots and lots of XML files I need to look at. I’m not particularly happy with my reading choices and I hate converting a file to XHTML just so I can view it in the distraction-free confines of FBReader or MS Reader.

Last week I ran across OpenBerg Lector again, and I took a fresh look at it. Lector has separated from the original effort to make YAEBVBOX (yet another e-book vocabulary based on XHTML), and it has a fairly clear goal: to enable a (human) reader to open an e-book package in Firefox and read the e-book there.

It took a day or two for me to realize that. In the past, I’ve envisioned browsers being used to treat texts on the web more like an e-book, and Lector’s being a Firefox add-on clouded my perception.

However, Lector won’t just read XHTML files. In fact, its main format is OEBPS — Lector will read OEB package files in a single-file publications (stored in .obz zip files) and handily display the content files therein.***

Once I realized that Lector was built to be an e-reader that lets Mozilla’s Gecko do its rendering, it dawned on me that at last an e-reader had arrived that would accept arbitrary XML.

I grabbed some XML files (structured, as any XML ought to be, by the nature of the content and not by some pre-ordained presentation of a scientific article that spawned HTML), wrote some CSS for the elements used, and created a package file, tossing it all into a .obz archive.

When I opened this file (yes, using File | Open File…) in Firefox, it correctly utilized Lector’s scripts to display my three XML files, moving smoothly between one and the next by pressing PageDown at the bottom and PageUp at the top.

I’ve just begun exploring what Lector can do. The first effort to replace scrolling with pages is underway. I believe the annotation, highlighting, bookmarking and so on will be delegated to other extensions. By building on the Firefox framework, Lector surpasses other e-readers by providing such features as MathML, SVG and use-your-own-XML.

That’s a lot to recommend it, and of course an example of the ‘prairielight’ e-readers I projected earlier. Lector has now set the bar that other e-readers will have to to meet.

__________
* And possibly other XML editors that I haven’t owned.

** Don’t point out the unfulfilled potential of the “extended” vocabulary permitted in OEBPS 1.0; I never heard of any reading system that implemented it.

*** I’ve never encountered a book in the “Cabinet Comic Books” format (.cbz, .cbr), but that too is handled by Lector.

As someone who’s made my living as a freelance writer and written a couple books, I’ve thought about copyright and the rights of a creator. These concerns are pretty low in my current thinking.

As a technologist, I’ve thought about including motion, sound, color and interactivity to take advantage of the content being delivered by a computer. Following the development of Sophie, I’ve come to accept the need for creators to make rich-media texts, no longer thinking of this as an after-creation/publisher activity.

As a reader, I’ve thought about getting ahold of what I want to read and removing the barriers to what Bill Hill calls ludic reading. What kind of device do I want to hold in my hand and what do I want to see on it? In this time, I’ve mostly been using FBReader on the Nokia 770, N800 and N810 internet tablets, and I am consequently dependent upon a flexible and color-capable device, unlike the majority of what the market seems to be offering up right now.

As someone who has worked in book publishing for the last fifteen years, I’ve thought about how to forego copyright as a mechanism for economic protection and still provide incentives for publishers and writers (and jobs for editors). A viable business model — gosh, it sounds more and more like the search for the holy grail.

I’m no true prognosticator, but I think we can see the outline of the next generation of e-readers now.

Bowing to Sophie’s makers, I believe the new e-books will contain far richer media than at present. And by this I don’t mean “including video and audio” but just what Sophie‘s makers do: including anything an author might devise when provided with full programming capability.

Like FBReader and Openberg Lector, the next-gen e-reader will accept a whole slew of formats. And as the OpenReader and OEBF formats champion, the most useful formats will deliver a single file that itself contains one or more maps to multiple files inside it. And we’ll be able to escape the “html with a slight makeover” straitjacket we’ve lived with since day one of e-reading.

And as FBReader and Lector insist, the next-gen e-reader will be multi-platform.

All of which lead me to expect that the triumvirate of AJAXed development platforms — Mozilla’s Prism, Adobe’s AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight (I call them “Prairielight”) — will provide us with many new e-readers.

For one thing, with any of these platforms, a small team will be able to create a formidable, flexible, cross-platform e-reader. Heck, I’m no programmer and I have conjured up a respectable application based on XUL and Javascript. They build on the internet technologies already widespread — I mean the browsers’ rendering engines and Flash, HTML, Javascript, XML and CSS — and will benefit directly by new innovations the web brings.

I guess I’m counting on people expecting their e-reader to have the same capabilities as their web browser. In that case, why not just build on top of the browser/rendering engine?

Besides, prairielight apps should make it easy to allow authors to program their own interactive aspects.

For that matter, we might see halfway-authoring tools that basically allow authors to build one-off e-readers, designed solely for their e-books and requiring a prairielight installation to read and not some specific next-gen e-reader.

So some textbooks could build in interactive questioning that would send the results to a local network server in the school. And language textbooks would build in timed review, evaluating your responses and flashing recent vocabulary you’ve had problems with more often than older, easier terms.

That’s already something you can do with AJAX and prairielight now and wouldn’t require programmers to learn new skills to make their e-books really electronic.

The big word here is “strives.” David M is still wrestling with Mobipocket hassles, for example, despite the months of work he has already put into the site.

Alas, David appears to be burning in a Dantesque Format Hell, beyond his other woes (I still can’t find Babbitt—database problems?).

Here’s a screenshot from a typical Mobipocket book as now offered by David. In most cases, at least in Mobipocket Desktop 6.0, you won’t see a full page. And that’s sad since I miss David’s Blackmask site and, as a reader, am rooting for his forthcoming “five-figure” formal launch of Munseys to go well.

Wacky jihad against .epub

David’s bizarre little jihad against .epub, then, which now has shown up in a wacky opinion piece in The Register, is all the more disappointing considering how much .epub could eventually simplify life at Munseys. He shrugs off .epub as just a wicked conspiracy to diminish competition in the e-book business and pave the way for sales of Adobe software.

Who knows what David is thinking? I’m surprised, however, that the Reg would publish his rant without mentioning a pesky little detail—namely that David in effect makes his living in part as a format converter.

Like an oil company zealot writing on global warming

Relevant? This is something for the reader to decide; but David’s column appeared without the slightest direct hint of his role in the e-book business, just a little link to Munseys at the bottom. Having David hold forth on e-book standards is a little like asking an anti-solar nut at an oil company to comment on alternative energy or global warming. Consider how he tarred .epub by at least implying that it “would support .pdf.” While Adobe’s Digital Editions can read both .epub and .pdf, that’s hardly a requirement for other .epub-capable readers. Time for David to take Syllogisms 101?

More importantly, .epub could help sites such as Munseys to focus less on technology and more on content and commerce. That’s what open standards will make possible, along with a greater selection of books for readers. It’s time to raze the Tower of eBabel forever.

I’ll make David an exception since I like his site, glitches notwithstanding, but otherwise a chute should goes straight from every floor in the Tower right down to Format Hell for any resident who resists .epub.

Even translation houses—the real ones, not just site-specific conversion operations like David M’s—will come out ahead. Big publishers wanting to farm out technical details will be able to throw them a lot more business, now that e-books are on the way to having a stable, trusty format optimized for the medium.

Wealth of conversion tools in time

Small publishers wanting to do the job themselves, moreover, will hardly be left stranded. Over at Book Glutton, a tiny new startup whose coffers aren’t exactly Google sized, Aaron Miller has coincidentally just written to the TeleBlog: “Because OEBPS is based on open standards, many…people will be creating conversion tools. The building blocks have already been around for some time, on many platforms and in many programming languages.

“Unlike proprietary formats, there’s no extensive sleuthing or building from scratch to have a basic conversion tool. The real challenge comes in creating .epubs that work across systems. Systems need to be fairly fault-tolerant of the standard, especially this early in the game, or people will give up on it pretty quickly. Fortunately the standard is fairly thorough about how to provide fallback mechanisms and handle unknown or unsupported types of content.”

Significantly, Aaron has found that the popular .rtf format, which OpenOffice among others can deal with, is a great format from which to convert to .epub.

Clearly, then, .epub tools will be be on the way, and I’m amazed that David M would shrug off the format in part just because the freeware and low-cost solutions don’t exist to augment Adobe’s pricey InDesign.

Open source FBReader already .epub capable to an extent

Meanwhile, one of my favorite freeware readers, the open source FBReader, which I constantly use on my little Nokia linux handheld, can already read .epub files. The reliability is far from perfect, and FBReader will need to address issues such as CSS. But you can bet that improvements will be along.

So why isn’t David Moynihan, identified as David Leach in papers in a copyright suit related to his ill-chosen and failed fight with Conde Nast, doing a happy jig in celebration of .epub?

Might he just might be a little worried about competition from other commercial and public domain sites that will take advantage of the new simplicity in satisfying the needs of pub domain lovers and other readers?

David M’s Adobe conspiracy angle

Now back to David’s Adobe conspiracy angle. The real story is that, while Adobe would probably love to control the .pub standard by itself, other companies within the IDPF have been around to watch out for their own interests. Even Jon Noring, founder of the OpenReader Consortium, which has often played mongoose with the IDPF as the cobra, has participated in the IDPF’s standards process.

The TeleBlog weighed in, too, on Jon’s side—hardly a surprise since I was a cofounder of the consortium and wanted a standard more encompassing than the one the IDPF finally emerged with (I’m no longer active in OpenReader, preferring to focus on influencing the IDPF).

But even I would laugh at the notion of the final .epub standards being just for Adobe. They reflect the needs of many companies.

Not perfect, but…

The IDPF standards are not perfect, and as a nonXML programmer but a reader and writer, I’m going to keep pushing for wrinkles such as an annotations standard and reliable interbook linking.

What’s more, I want IDPF to come out as soon as possible with a logo to help assure the standards-compliance of nonDRMed e-books displaying it. A universal logo covering all books could follow. Along with the logo, there should be open source authentification software to foster compliance, and neutral third party experts need to be able to vet it.

If those conditions are followed, then David’s anti-.epub rant will seem even more risible.

Right at your side, David, side if the IDPF lets us down

Yes, if the IDPF disappoints us and ends up as no more than an Adobe tool, then I’ll be right at David’s side, and meanwhile I would encourage constructive criticism of the IDPF standard, which Robert Nagle and I will eagerly publish here. Hello, Tamas? Keep up your healthy skepticism: The TeleBlog is open to you as a place to express it, whether in comments or full postings.

But for now, I personally see good faith on the IDPF’s part. Look, there’s a difference between a standards crusade and a jihad. To know when to back off, OpenReader having failed to draw enough interest from prospective implementers, is what distinguishes the two. So I’ll root for .epub while at the same time doing my best and encouraging others to scrutinize the standards-setting process.

Thanks for the credit, Dude

Oh, well, it was nice of David in his Register article to credit Jon and me with spurring the IDPF to take standards again for real. Duke, you made my day!

Now get back to work on your Mobi problems (may the beginning of this post soon be obsolete!) and prepare for the coming of .epub.

Detail: I’m pleased to give Munseys some further publicity even though David Moynihan, for now, hates my guts. Here at the TeleBlog, Robert Nagle and I try not to play link-love or link-hate games at the expense of readers. Despite David’s current format Hell with Mobi, we’ll try to mention interesting titles when they show up on Munsey’s.

Unfortunately, due to eBookWeb going defunct (a casualty of the “E-book Dark Ages” that resulted after the dotcom collapse), that article has essentially disappeared from the Internet.

So I am reposting the eBookWeb article here, not only for preservation purposes, but because its themes are stil very relevant today as will be briefly explained in this foreword.

DeLorean jokes

When I wrote that article, e-books were considered a lot like the DeLorean automobile — weird and impractical — the butt of many jokes. The DeLorean even played a prominently silly role in the movie trilogy Back To The Future.

But times have changed! Just as Google News is full of articles about an entrepreneur reviving the gull-wing-doored, stainless steel automobile to an enthusiastic public, so too e-books are finally being noticed and bought by an enthusiastic public. E-book sales are growing at a fast rate.

My 2003 article had three, closely related themes:

1. If e-books are to succeed in the marketplace, they need to be as easy to use by the public as music CDs. We need a universal, open standard e-book format. The industry will not thrive and grow when there are more than a dozen incompatible, proprietary formats competing with each other for the public’s attention.

2. The universal, open standard e-book format can’t be just anything, but needs to fulfill all the critical requirements of both publishers and end-users.

3. A viable candidate for such a universal e-book standard is an OEBPS Publication distributed in a container of some sort, such as a zip file.

The first theme is obvious, at least to many of us who have been around the e-book industry since the 1990’s (I started publishing e-books in 1993.) This theme needs no further explanation.

The second theme is likewise obvious although rarely discussed: no standard can be forced on the marketplace, but must sufficiently meet the critical needs of the important players before it can be embraced. In the case of e-books, the most important players are the publishers and end-users.

As far as I know, my 2003 article is the first, and I think still the only, published discussion of the requirements for a universal e-book format. As such, it is still quite relevant today. Adobe’s Peter Sorotkin, in a recent blog article talking about Adobe Digital Editions, informally presents a few semi-general requirements, but that blog article is nowhere near as comprehensive as the eBookWeb article. (To be fair, it was not Peter’s intent to make his blog article into a comprehensive “requirements” discussion anyway.)

For the third theme (which I’ll let the reposted eBookWeb article explain in detail), I am happy to report that 2007 has proven the 2003 recommendation to be on target. The IDPF recently developed the open standard EPUB format which almost exactly follows my recommendation. EPUB is an OEBPS (now called OPS) Publication in a zip-based container.

Since I’ve been involved with the IDPF standards work since 1999, as well as the now-in-cold-storage OpenReader project which was catalyzed by the eBookWeb article, I have good reason to believe it was the eBookWeb article that set the wheels in motion leading to IDPF finally developing and releasing the EPUB format.

What now follows is the original 2003 eBookWeb article. In a few places I’ve added comments (in […]), and updated links where I could, but otherwise the article remains faithful to the original, warts and all.

OEBPS: The Universal Consumer eBook Format?

by Jon Noring

Originally published 20 May 2003 at eBookWeb

Introduction

Looking at the ebook landscape today, I am troubled by the large and growing number of essentially incompatible, proprietary consumer e-book formats and associated ebook reading applications and hardware. And I don’t believe I am alone here. Publishers, both large and small, are now overwhelmed by the need to supply their content to end-users in these formats, many of which do not integrate well into their publishing workflow. They probably say to themselves “Oh no, not another one,” every time a new ebook-capable reading device is marketed which supports a new (and usually proprietary) ebook format. When will it ever end?Likewise, end-users are equally confused by the myriad formats, and chagrined by the incompatibility between them, making it more difficult to use multiple devices, OS, and reading software of their choice. End-users clearly do not wish to be tied to any one hardware or software platform for the e-books they purchase—they want their e-books to be optimally readable on the systems of their choice, now and into the future.This brings up the obvious question: Is a single, universal consumer e-book format possible, one which meets nearly all the needs of both publishers and end-users?

This article presents a vision for such a universal consumer e-book format, to outline the important requirements, and demonstrate that, yes, there now exists just such a format meeting these requirements: The Open eBook Publication Structure (OEBPS). [Note that OEBPS 1.2 will very soon be officially replaced by OPS 2.0.]

Admittedly this article is long, somewhat technical and undoubtedly quite dry (I’ve done my best to keep tech-talk to a minimum), but the importance of this topic requires a level of analysis going beyond the usual level of a brief and flashy news article. In addition, this article is primarily directed towards those in the ebook industry interested in this topic: publishers, retailers, ebook hardware and software developers, librarians/archivists, accessibility advocates, and a few other important e-book industry stakeholder groups. Nevertheless, end-users — those who buy and read e-books — should find this article to be of interest, and hopefully understandable.

Seven Requirements for a Universal Consumer eBook Format

It is important to first present the necessary requirements the universal ebook format must fulfill. These requirements are derived from the general needs of publishers and end-users outlined above (and balanced where they may conflict), along with the known needs of other stakeholders in the e-book universe (e.g., archivists), and various other obvious needs. I do not claim this list to be complete or the final word, but, from my perspective as a long-time e-book industry participant, this list appears to be fairly comprehensive and adequate for the purpose of this analysis.

These requirements will only be summarized since fully explaining and justifying just any one of these requirements is a full article in itself. However, I believe both publishers and end-users will readily see the necessity and logic behind these requirements, especially when viewed as a coherent whole (and not focusing on any particular requirement, oblivious to the others.)

• Typographic Richness: The format must have adequate internal structural resolution and presentation richness to allow (as the presentation system is capable) very high typographic quality presentation, up to the level we have come to expect for paper books. This must include the capability to include technical typography and more complex vector graphics for specific needs. Of course, the ability to include various types of multimedia (images, video, and sound) is necessary.

• Adaptability: The format must allow optimum visual presentation by any hardware the end-user may possess, from very small screens of limited resolution and typographic capability (such as PDAs), to large, very high resolution screens capable of high typographic quality presentation. In addition, the format must allow end-users some latitude of control over the presentation parameters for personal needs and reading preferences, such as font size and other typographic settings. Enlarging the font size is especially critical for those with limitations in visual acuity (an Accessibility requirement, see next.) A corollary of this requirement is that the format must be fully reflowable (essentially “retypesettable on the fly”) in response to differing presentation hardware and end-user settings.

• Accessibility: The format must be capable of high-quality presentation of the content in non-visual ways, such as text-to-speech and tactile (Braille).

• International: The format must be capable of representing any language and glyph set in use today. The format is not universal unless it is truly international!

• XML Compatibility: Publishing tools and publishing workflows are rapidly and inexorably moving towards XML, and the universal ebook format must be compatible in some way with an XML-based publishing workflow.

• DRM Capability: Although end-users prefer not to purchase ebooks protected with DRM (Digital Rights Management), publishers are certainly interested in the DRM capability of the universal ebook format. Thus, the universal ebook format must allow inclusion of DRM protection technologies as needed.

• Truly Open Standard (TOS): The format itself must be a “truly open standard”. A “truly open standard” is defined here to mean:

  • Fully published,

  • No licensing encumbrances (freely usable by all),

  • All component standards utilized by the standard are likewise “truly open standards”, and

  • Developed and maintained by a non-profit, independent (of any one company), industrial/trade organization representing a full cross-section of the various (and oftentimes competing) stakeholder groups.

  This is an especially important requirement (for various reasons, some of which are not readily apparent), and a future article on the necessity of this requirement is being contemplated.

OEBPS Meets All the Requirements (and More!)

As will be shown below, an e-book format which embeds a native OEBPS Publication (soon to be defined) meets all of these requirements. In addition, the OEBPS Specification provides several other advantages and features which bring out the full potential and power of e-books. (Unfortunately, space does not permit me to describe most of these other benefits — maybe a topic for a follow-up article.)

Obviously, before showing how OEBPS fulfills these requirements, a short tutorial on the vital essence of OEBPS, relevant to this article, is necessary. Those interested in learning more about OEBPS are encouraged to first read the OEBPS Specification FAQ, and then those with a technical bent (it will help to have a basic understanding of XML, XHTML and CSS) may wish to study the current online version of the OEBPS 1.2 Specification.

The OEBPS Specification is maintained by the Open eBook Forum [now IDPF as previously noted], a non-profit and independent ebook standards and trade organization representing a large number of companies and organizations with quite diverse (and oftentimes competing) interests in the ebook universe. The current membership of OeBF [now called IDPF] is given here.

In my words, a general one-sentence summary description of OEBPS is:

“The OEBPS Specification specifies a coherent, ebook-optimized framework for organizing XML documents containing book content into a powerful ebook representation of the work.”

Although seemingly abstract and admittedly a mouthful of prose, this pithy summary carries with it the vital essence of the power of OEBPS. The word framework is especially important, because without an overarching framework it is not possible to adequately represent the richness and specific intricacies of book publications using a simple collection of independent hypertext-linked XML documents.

Three distinct quantities in the OEBPS universe must be defined (they are relevant to this article): OEBPS Publication, OEBPS Package, and OEBPS Document. An OEBPS Publication is the complete set of files comprising an ebook publication conforming to the OEBPS Specification. An OEBPS Publication must include one OEBPS Package document (which is an XML document, not part of the book content itself, describing the Publication’s organizational framework), and at least one OEBPS Document (which is an XML document containing part or all of the book’s actual content.) Other auxiliary files, such as images, style sheets, etc., may also be present in the OEBPS Publication.

Now some mistakenly believe that OEBPS Documents are simply HTML files. This is not wholly correct. If the OEBPS Documents are restricted solely to HTML markup they are more correctly described as XHTML documents (XHTML is W3C’s XML-conforming version of HTML, the latest version is XHTML 1.1.) But an OEBPS Document is not restricted to only XHTML — it may be “Extended” by using non-HTML elements and attributes (“tags”) for richer content markup, and does so in a way which today’s XML-standards, CSS-aware browsers (such as IE6, Opera 7, Mozilla 1.3, and Netscape 7) will understand. An OEBPS Document may contain islands of specialized markup such as MathML (for high-quality representation of mathematical expressions, important for ebooks) and SVG (for vector graphics.) Even with this extensibility feature, a big advantage of OEBPS is that one may build high-quality OEBPS Publications leveraging well-known HTML markup practice and tools. Interestingly, a web site (which uses vanilla XHTML 1.1 pages — ignore JavaScript, Flash, and the other “dancing bears” stuff) can trivially be converted into an OEBPS Publication, showing that the XHTML and OEBPS worlds are not far apart. Publishers who now author ebooks in XHTML will find it trivially easy to upgrade to OEBPS.

With this short tutorial out of the way, let’s now look at how a native OEBPS Publication (“native” refers to the OEBPS Publication being available to the end-user’s ebook presentation system in its native, unaltered state) meets the seven requirements of a universal consumer e-book format:

• Typographic Richness: Since OEBPS intelligently organizes book publications, and supports a substantial subset of the CSS2 Specification, it is possible to author OEBPS Publications with a high degree of typographic richness. And by using (as needed) MathML and SVG, it is possible to represent quite complex typographic layouts yet still allow substantial Adaptability (Requirement #2).Interestingly, the desktop version of Microsoft’s first generation ebook presentation system, MS Reader, foreshadows how OEBPS rendering engines can use OEBPS’ richness for high-quality typographic presentation. The proprietary ebook format for MS Reader, LIT, is (under-the-hood) essentially an OEBPS Publication that is only minimally digested.

• Adaptability: Since OEBPS Documents are XML documents and essentially renderable in today’s XML-standards web browsers (as previously noted), it is clear that native OEBPS Publications are fully adaptable and reflowable to a large range of presentation hardware, from small PDA-size screens to large, high resolution desktop and laptop screens.To further illustrate this, in today’s web browsers, users can alter several aspects of web page presentation (such as font size, font family, window size, etc., — Opera 7 is especially flexible in this regard.) Likewise, those familiar with Microsoft Reader know that when the font size is changed, the whole e-book is optimally retypeset “on the fly.” (Microsoft Reader also demonstrates the adaptability of OEBPS in that the identical LIT document is nicely readable on both the desktop and PocketPC versions of MS Reader.)

• Accessibility: Since OEBPS places all ebook content into XML documents, OEBPS Publications are naturally highly accessible. In addition, OEBPS implements a few other features which further aid accessibility.

• International: By default, since OEBPS requires all OEBPS Documents to be XML (the XML specification requires XML processors to process UTF-8 and UTF-16 encodings of the Unicode character coding system), the documents are capable of representing all the currently used international character sets. Additional CSS2 properties further enhance internationalization.

• XML Compatibility: Obviously, OEBPS is compatible with XML-based publishing workflows since OEBPS itself specifies XML for all book content. Publishers can directly author OEBPS Publications and use them as the “source” format for both direct distribution and for repurposing, or they can use a commercial integrated XML-based publishing workflow product and output as OEBPS.

• DRM Capability: It is DRM-capable (this will be further discussed in a following section.)

• Truly Open Standard (TOS): Without going into the details (but it should be obvious), the OEBPS Specification is a truly open standard, meeting all four of the defined TOS requirements previously noted.

A Small Issue, But Not a Real Problem

The savvy reader, familiar with ebook formats, will realize by now that a native OEBPS Publication is not a single file, but rather comprises a set of multiple files. Obviously, a native OEBPS Publication cannot be distributed by itself — publishers, distributors, retailers, and end-users require an ebook Publication to be in a single, distributable file. In addition, OEBPS does not itself provide a means for DRM encryption.

Thus, it is necessary to wrap (archive) a native OEBPS Publication into a single compressed binary file (such as using gzip) with optional DRM encryption of the contents. Unfortunately, OeBF has not yet developed such an OEBPS “wrapper” standard, and may not in the immediate future. [Note, IDPF recently published the OCF 1.0 Specification, which is a zip-based container of OEBPS/OPS Publications.]

Nevertheless, this is essentially a non-problem. The coding required of an OEBPS presentation system to unwrap an archive and access the native OEBPS Publication contained inside borders on the trivial. Thus, even if we have multiple wrapper standards, so long as they are TOS and all wrap pure native OEBPS Publications, this is essentially a non-issue. That is, it is not the wrapper which ultimately defines the ebook format, but what is inside the wrapper which truly defines the ebook format.

(A few of us are now informally discussing development of an open standards OEBPS Publication wrapper with optional DRM capability, and hopefully this article will catalyze its formal development.)

The DRM Aspect

Many publishers and self-published authors require their published content to be distributed with DRM protection. It is certainly possible to build into the native OEBPS Publication wrapper a DRM protection system. Microsoft LIT, as previously mentioned, is an excellent example proving this assertion since LIT is a DRM-protected wrapper of essentially an OEBPS Publication. No more need be said on this.

One argument that proprietary e-book format advocates will undoubtedly mention in rebuttal to this proposal is that proprietariness of the DRM wrapper is necessary for publication security. On the face of it, this argument appears compelling, but in reality it is a pipe dream.

Two notable examples prove that such “security by obscurity” will not work: Adobe PDF and Microsoft LIT. The DRM protections built into both of these ebook formats have recently been cracked (and the details published online), and tools are now being distributed (which are illegal in the U.S., a violation of DMCA) allowing anyone to bypass the DRM protection of PDF and LIT ebooks in their possession. No matter how Adobe and Microsoft continue to upgrade their DRM systems in response to cracking, the new systems will likely be cracked again and again because the ebooks are designed to be read on generally open hardware and OS platforms which by their nature are “open” (allowing many means by which the content can be digitally accessed.) So much for security by obscurity.

It is also noted that pending accessibility legislation may require (explicitly or implicitly) DRM standards to be published and non-proprietary, so as to allow full access to the ebook content by those with disabilities using third-party tools.

In addition, publishers will someday want the ability to digitally interlink their Publications (including with those of other publishers) so authorized linking systems must be able to bypass the DRM protection and access the internal OEBPS Publication to effect linking. Proprietary DRM solutions work against this. (Obviously, if all e-books, e-journals, and e-magazines use the same native OEBPS internal format, then universal digital linking between them will certainly become readily possible.)

And, finally, publishers and authors have a need, and a right, to be able to independently evaluate the robustness of DRM technologies used to protect their content. Only when the DRM technologies are TOS can this need be fully met. Publishers should never trust the “Trust us, our DRM is secure” promises of those touting proprietary or non-TOS DRM and content formats, especially when used on essentially open hardware and OS.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Even if a few of your are now intrigued regarding the assertion that OEBPS is a viable (and I believe outstanding) universal consumer ebook format (suitably wrapped of course), the question naturally arises: Where do we go from here?

Complicating the answer is the obvious “Catch-22” (or “chicken-egg”) situation where we currently have no native OEBPS ebooks being distributed, and no viable OEBPS presentation system on the market. In addition, various OEBPS authoring and verification tools have not yet been developed and marketed. (Note: there are two little-known, essentially experimental, Java-based OEBPS presentation systems deserving honorable mention: ION System’s eMonocle, and GlobalMentor’s Mentoract Reader. However, they do not appear to be ready for primetime, and are not presently being actively marketed for general ebook use in the ebook industry.)

First of all, those who want to see OEBPS as a universal consumer ebook format need to speak up. These include authors, publishers, librarians/archivists, open source advocates, accessibility activists, and most importantly end-users — those who buy and read ebooks. This article hopefully will catalyze activism in this area.

Second, those now developing commercial ebook-capable hardware (whether dedicated e-book readers or multipurpose devices) and commercial ebook presentation software for general OS, and who are considering developing their own proprietary e-book format to add to the gazillion others out there, should seriously reconsider and design their systems to render native OEBPS Publications. At first glance this might go against their business models, but in my estimation they are much more likely to succeed by hitching their wagon to native OEBPS and encourage other competitive reading systems to do the same, so as to make OEBPS, and thus the format their system supports, the dominant format standard for distributed e-books.

Third, open source advocates should understand the importance of developing cross-platform, open source licensed ebook presentation software for all the current mainstream OS out there: Windows, Mac, and Linux (and embedded versions thereof.) Obviously, the ebook format must be TOS, and OEBPS is an obvious choice. (There is one known open source project developing a multi-platform OEBPS presentation system using the Mozilla Gecko codebase: OpenBERG, a spin-off inspired from the open source OEBPS browser advocacy group, LiberGNU.)

It is important to mention to both commercial and open source developers that a native OEBPS Publication presentation system is tantalizingly close to an XML-standards, CSS-aware browser. The differences are actually quite minor. In many ways it will be easier to build an OEBPS presentation system than a web browser since a lot of the functional web-oriented baggage web browsers are expected to include will not be needed by OEBPS presentation systems. Additionally, while web browsers are still expected to handle “crappy”, malformed HTML, OEBPS Documents are well-formed XML, with other constraints on the document structure lending them to easier and more standardized processing and rendering. (There will be the expectation, however, that OEBPS ebooks must be presented in a more book-like fashion, such as how MS Reader renders LIT documents, so any OEBPS presentation system should, by default, render the content into a series of discrete pages with no scrolling within each page. A future article is being contemplated to detail the features and functionality a native OEBPS presentation system should possess.)

Thus, current rendering codebases, both open source (such as Gecko) and commercial (such as Opera’s blazingly fast, very compact, XML-standards, cross-platform codebase — my pick for the best one out there) can readily be adapted to build high-quality, cross-platform OEBPS e-book presentation systems.

Postscript

It is anticipated (and hoped) this article will generate vigorous discussion, with many counterpoints and alternative conclusions. This discussion is very much needed to move the e-book industry to the next stage in its development. Certainly, some of the points and assertions made in this article may eventually be proven to be incorrect, off base, maybe even silly. The important thing is not proving whether I am right or wrong, but what is the best for the long-term growth and viability of the e-book industry — that should be our focus and motivation in discussing this important issue. The seven requirements for a universal consumer e-book format can certainly serve as a starting point for framing the discussion; the requirements themselves are not claimed to be etched in stone, and certainly can be improved as we better understand the intricacies of this issue.

Of course, as part of this discussion, I hope that the fitness of OEBPS in being a viable universal consumer e-book format will be seriously discussed.

As a final comment, the e-book industry must not put its head in the sand and ignore the issue of a universal consumer e-book format. It will not go away on its own. One can certainly take a Free Market approach to the issue, to just let the chips fall where they may. But the question needs to be asked: Is what is good for one, the best for all? With respect to the ebook industry, I believe the answer to this is “not necessarily.”

(End of 2003 eBookWeb article)

Jon Noring is VP of Development for DigitalPulp Publishing

Learn what .epub, OPS and the other basics mean, and how the IDPF format is more than just a vehicle for DRM; this is optional. Standardized e-book formats help everyone, DRMers and DRM-haters alike, by allowing sophisticated typographical niceties and other advantages—especially useful for scientific, technical and mathematical publishing. Should we prefer a Tower of eBabel? Instead, now that IDPF is on the way to dealing with core format issues, we should encourage the group to carry out promises to work toward interoperable DRM if publishers keep insisting on DRM. Of course, I hope they don’t. Consider how EMI’s retreat from DRM has improved music sales. The best DRM is none—or at least nothing more than social DRM, where identifying information would appear in the books you bought. Again, however, don’t confuse DRM with the issue of core-format standards.

What prompted Nick’s note

Nick’s note was prompted, at least indirectly, by the following observation from if:book’s Dan Visel: “One of the major reasons that we haven’t spent much time covering the efforts of the IDPF is that it’s devoted to standards that satisfy producers rather than consumers; many producers are concerned with locking down their products as thoroughly as possible. It may be a reasonable position from their perspective, but it’s resulted in products that aren’t particularly useful to consumers. Digital Editions looks like it might be a big piece in the puzzle for DRM-focused producers. Unfortunately, readers are being neglected.” I agree with Dan on the evils of DRM, as well as all the inconvenience that various flavors of PDF and other proprietary formats have inflicted on those of us who love to read books off a screen. What’s more, just as with OpenReader, I’ve raised questions about the IDPF’s standard-setting process and “purity” questions. Still, I hope Dan will take time to separate the DRM issue from the standards ones and also keep in mind that OpenReader didn’t exactly draw an avalanche of support from potential funders and Open Source programmers. The IDPF standard, moreover, while flawed, is hardly proprietary and has drawn widespread support from publishers. It’s time to get behind the standard and work to improve it.

Anyone can build creation tools for the new IPDF format—which in fact Jon Noring‘s BookX project would do for small publishers interested in the IDPF standard or many others. Open source advocates, especially those with with PHP skills, would do well to check in with Jon rather than just writing off the IPDF’s standards as a nefarious tool for the DRM interests. Or they can start their own projects.

Where I would agree with if:book: The typographical issues that Dan has with Digital Editions. But in fairness to DE, I sense that it’s mainly for recreational reading at the popular level. Mobipocket, my favorite from among the proprietary systems, is hardly a typographical role model either. I’m more interested in the actual words and in convenience and good ergonomics for recreational readers than I am in perfect typography for them. Others are welcome to disagree.

////////////////////////////////////

Nick’s note to the if:book blog

After responding to a reference to this post on Peter Brantley’s (Digital Library Federation) email list, he convinced me to repost here.

A brief note prior to addressing this. I am always highly skeptical of general comments and arguments about digital media being “locked down” without specific examples of how or why this is so. In the case of DRM systems this is correct; it’s the purpose of DRM after all. In the case of .epub it is totally incorrect. Here’s why:

1. .epub is the file extension which applies to two standards, OPS and OCF. OPS (Open Publication Structure) is the markup (either XHTML or DTBook) and navigation (like chapters etc.) of a digital book. OCF (Open Container Format) is a zip file which holds the markup of the book, images, style sheets etc. and has directories in it so publishers can send along metadata and other information about their eBook through distribution. It is simply a means of combining all of these various things that comprise an eBook into one file.

While software can certainly wrap .epub in DRM, there is absolutely nothing in the specs which requires or mandates DRM. In fact, you can download sample .epub files at http://www.idpf.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=5, change the file extension to “.zip”, open the zip file, and have full access to the markup, images etc. of the digital book. We chose ZIP for .epub largely because ZIP applications were so prevalent and…open.

2. Prior to software implementation of .epub, there was no possibility of interoperability between software which had implemented proprietary formats. Now, for example, a consumer can take an unencrypted .epub file and open in it Digital Editions and also open it in eBook Technologies’, Mobipocket’s, Osoft’s etc. software and it should render. This seems like a good thing for consumers.

3. Authoring software is being developed to easily produce .epub files. Adobe InDesign CS3 is an example. The continued creation of authoring tools by conversion houses and other software companies will make it quite a bit easier and cheaper for publishers to produce digital books. This is good for publishers. And, since it will be significantly cheaper to produce digital books, publishers will most likely produce more selection for consumers. This seems good for consumers.

4. From an intellectual property standpoint (which the author doesn’t address), the specs are totally open and free to use. The IDPF does not require you to be a member or pay in any way to use the specs to develop software or produce eBooks. Pretty good for everyone.

There was much compromise in the production of these specifications between publishers, software companies, accessibility advocates etc. and they aren’t perfect. The result for the industry, however, is undoubtedly good. Arguments that they favor producers over customers or are in some way locked down just aren’t correct.

-Nick

–
Nick Bogaty
Executive Director
International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)
nbogaty@idpf.org
www.idpf.org

They valiantly tried to come up with a hardware-software combo to help users survive the Tower of eBabel among major e-book formats.

In the end Laurent and Michaël failed. But it was a good fight and not their fault that they lost, even if they made some mistakes along the way.

Retracing L&M’s footsteps

Yesterday, tinkering with my used $155 tablet, the DT 375 (photo), also Windows CE-based, I was retracing the Bookeen duo’s footsteps in a sense. I managed to get an unsupported version of Microsoft Reader going with nice, sharp letters on the screen thanks to ClearType, albeit without DRM-related “features.” Unfortunately I lacked time for the Rube Goldbergish activation procedure. See the invaluable DT375.com site for more on the tablet’s use with Reader, while keeping in mind that I haven’t independently confirmed the findings there.

Earlier I was able to read another DRMish format, Mobipocket, again thanks to a link from DT375.com, and I found that Mobi nicely digested Snow Crash and The Diamond Age in a “protection”-tainted format that lawful users must suffer.

But Palm/eReader remained AWOL, because I couldn’t find a CE version that worked, regardless of a promising possibility on the eBookMall site. And PDF? I couldn’t read DRMed files, only the nonencrypted kind, via a bundled Microsoft PDF Viewer and the added Foxit Reader for Win CE 4.2.

The DT-uBook combo

Just like the Cybook, however, the DT 375 gets along beautifully with the uBook reader, which handles ASCII, HTML, TXT, RTF, nonDRMed PDB and nonencrypted PRC. uBook is the software—cost $15—that allowed the DT to display Moby Dick so well in the just-run photo.

Besides serving as an e-reading program, uBook lets me optimize the amount of bolding and control other variables to give me much-better-looking letters than otherwise. (Hint, hint to the dotReader folks and even to the majors: please don’t release at least the deluxe versions of future e-readers without these options for experienced users—-go beyond just the usual subpixel font rendering.)

So, yes, between uBook and Mobi and the rest, the DT 375 gives you some interesting software possibilities. I can even set up a button on the DT for “Page Forward” and “Page Back” (look for the button options within Win CE’s Control Panel). The button is at the bottom of the screen because of the way I’ve set up uBook and Mobipocket. Normally it would be off to the right side. You can also use your mouse wheel to change pages with uBook, Mobi and Microsoft Reader (although not Foxit). Or you can tap the screen. Remember, however: not all software will offer all options. For example—I need to check—I don’t think the old Microsoft Reader allows switches between portrait and landscape modes. Still, uBook and Mobipocket are far more fun for me anyway (even if the latter lacks a ClearType-quality display on the DT 375).

E-book machine in disguise

As far as I’m concerned, with the button in the proper place(s) for me, I’m using a dedicated e-book-reading machine. If you’re a technically sophisticated e-book-lover and miss the Cybook and want a CE device similar to it—although not exactly, since the DT’s screen is about eight inches, while the Cybook’s is 10 and there are other differences galore—then the DT375 would be worth a good look. It works beautifully for downloading books from public domain sites such as Project Gutenberg and Manybooks.neet.

Moreover, it’s closer than the Cybook to being a grown-up computer or at least an early adolescent; you get a full assortment of usable CE software. You can even use a mouse or keyboard with it. I’m don’t know about both at once, although presumably a USB hub would address that issue. So would the optional dock, which didn’t come with the uBid deal.

Far more important: The DT, the Cybook and the Tower of eBabel angle

Along the way last night, another conclusion emerged—of far greater importance to e-bookdom as a whole. I was reminded, in line with my thoughts earlier in this post, that it wasn’t just initially high hardware costs and competition from E Ink machines that killed off the Cybook.

No, it was also the Tower of eBabel and the people at Palm/eReader and Microsoft who didn’t make it practical for Laurent to license their proprietary software on his CE machine. And now Microsoft wants to shun the IDPF’s standard and bully hardware people and others again? This Windowscentric approach is a step backwards. I remember nostalgically when Microsoft’s original e-book guys—now retired—said they favored nonproprietary format standards and didn’t want early adopters to suffer VHS-vs.-Beta-style difficulties. Those were the days, my friend, and they did end.

No more Bookeen-style victims please, Bill

Simply put, Bill Gates needs to return to the original strategy of Dick Brass and Steve Stone and make certain that Microsoft’s next generation of e-reading software supports the IDPF standards.

I don’t want to see little hardware companies—in the Bookeen/Cybook vein—suffer once again at the hands of a software conglomerate. Mr. Andrew Carnegie II surely can do better if he truly believes in technology as a spreader of knowledge. If Microsoft really wants people to trust it over the long term, it might even play catch-up and do a modern version of the Microsoft Reader for all the CE releases. Come on; we’re talking about a company with a market cap approaching 300 billion—yes, nearing a third of a trillion. If Gates really is that much of a penny-pincher, then he should focus on better software rather than destructive e-format competition with the IDPF.

The IDPF isn’t my favorite organization, and the standard isn’t optimal, one reason why OpenReader is useful as a concept format. But as a format for real-world use, the IDPF standard is the way to go at this point—at least if we don’t want gems like the Cybook to be lost in the Tower of eBabel.

Needless to say, the same thoughts would apply to eReader. I’ll welcome any indication that its owners will back the IDPF standard in real life and in a timely way.

As for Adobe, it’s already in the standards fold and in fact helped get the IDPF initiative underway, having been prodded by the existence of the OpenReader Consortium, which I cofounded. I’d rather that OpenReader have won by being the actual standard, but the IDPF approach is far, far better than no standard at all (just so people are vigilant against creeping Flashism and the rest).

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Meanwhile here are a few other DT-related odds and ends:

–Exact version of CE is Microsoft Windows CE .NET 4.2. Full specs are here. I fact, I’ll repo them below, as I may have done earlier.

–One of the biggest weaknesses of the tablet is as a Web browser. The Internet Explorer version supplied will not do justice to big, cluttered pages if you use it on the DT, even one with 128M of DRAM, twice the basic 64M. My DT choked on my personal Yahoo page; the whole machine froze. What’s more, I couldn’t reach the Washington Post‘s password-protected pages. I regard the difficulties as perhaps a Post problem, too, not just a DT problem or maybe a Microsoft flaw. Hello, Melinda Gates? Aren’t you on the board of the Washington Post Company? If it’s one cozy world, possibly you can make the best of fate and help both Microsoft and the Post by encouraging them to check out the glitch. (Whimsy alert.)

–If you do a hard reset, you may lose access to software you installed, so keep backups. While Mobipocket and uBook remained on my machine after a reset, I no longer saw the icons. Perhaps I’m overlooking something in CE. At any rate, try to avoid visiting Web sites that might lock up your machine and force you to do a full boot. DT375.com offers a free program called Soft Reset, which might reduce your chances of needing a hard reset although it comes with risks of its own. Perhaps old CE hands and other techies will weigh in with either (1) more suggestions in the same vein or (2) the news that I’ve overlooked something obvious, which I just might have.

–You can easily use the virtual pop-up keyboard built into the DT 375 for searching through e-books with Mobi, uBook or Microsoft Reader. Just press a button and the keyboard appears. The negative is that, when you’re filling out a Web form, the keyboard sometimes covers up the form, and you can’t move it out of the way.

–I’m happy that Amazon’s Mobipocket unit responded a little earlier than I’d expected to my request for permission to delete a hardware device so I could add my latest version of Mobi on the DT to the list of approved gizmos for the company’s DRM purposes. But I still find Mobi’s four-device limit to be excruciating and hope that the company will rethink its DRM. Mobipocket has the best ergonomics of all the e-reading software I’ve seen—one reason I spend so much time beating up on the accompanying DRM. I believe in redemption, and maybe some friendly reminders will help.

–At around two pounds according to the uBid specs, the DT is heavier than an E Ink machine like the Sony Reader, but it’s lighter than the typical Tablet PC. What’s more, I like not having to worry about the noise and fragility of a hard drive. Not that you can drop the DT on the floor and expect it to survive. If you take it to bed and move around a lot, maybe you can have an old pillow resting on the floor nearby, just in case the DT slides off.

–Don’t expect tech support from the seller of the machine, whatever it is (the uBid page doesn’t identify the vendor).

Note: I regard the Cybook that Laurent sent me to be a long-term loaner (as opposed to a gift). It’s available for OpenReader-related development. In time I’ll consult with him about its fate. One possibility, if he approves, is to make it available to a public library or to an individual librarian or library student keen on participating in a major way in the LibraryCity project. Anyone interested? No promises! I’m just exploring possibilities. I know of one donation candidate even now.

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Specs from uBid

Features and Benefits
Part Number- DT375
Processor- Intel PXA250 400MHz XScale
Operating System- Microsoft Windows CE .NET 4.2
Software- Windows Media Player, Java Virtual Machine, Acrobat PDF and Microsoft Office Suite Viewers
Memory (RAM)- 64 MB Flash Memory and 128 MB SDRAM
Display- Brilliant 8.4″ TFT Active Touchscreen Color Matrix LCD at 800 x 600 SVGA resolution
Audio- Full 16-bit audio with stereo; Headphone jack; built-in stereo speakers and microphone
Technical Features-1 CompactFlashTM slot, 1 PC Card slot, USB port, Programmable 4-way navigation button and multiple hard buttons
Video- 800 x 600 SVGA resolution
Wireless Network Support- Professional PC Wireless Network Support – Bluetooth, and wireless WAN options available
Input-I ntegrated touch screen display with “on screen” soft keyboard support; Display rotation
Dimensions- 7.9″ H x 9.6″ W x 0.8 D
Weight- 1.9 lbs.
AC Adapter- Included
Battery- Included
Stylus -Included
Functions that are available (Built In):
-Browse the Internet (Requires a modem or network adapter)
-Send and receive Email (Requires a modem or network adapter)
-Remotely control a PC with Windows XP Professional installed (Remote Desktop Connection)
-Play and record audio files
-Play video files with Media Player 9
-View pictures
-View Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files
-Word processing with WordPad
The elegant combination of the Intel Xscale processor, Microsoft Windows CE .NET operating system, full color screen, wireless networking support, together with Citrix ICA and Microsoft RDP client/server computing protocols – makes the DT375 a superior and compelling solution for mobile network connectivity and information access.
The system offers access to the Internet, Intranet, server and web-based business applications. The DT375 is enhanced by a comprehensive layer of applications and features – e.g., Internet Explorer browser, terminal emulation and protocols, information management and synchronization utilities, device management, inking, handwriting recognition, on- screen keyboard – to result in a compelling wireless and mobile computing tool.

Warranty
30 Days

Standard Notice
This unit is Refurbished and in 100% functional condition. The unit/lcd may have minor scratches and/or blemishes.

Package Contents
This unit includes a carrying case, AC Adapter, extra battery, CF 56K Modem Card, and 64 MB CF Card. This unit has a 30 day warranty.

Ship Restrictions
US Only.

Speak now or forever hold your peace!

Thus, it is important that anyone planning to use OPS 2.0 in any manner — from authoring to presentation — should go over the OPS 2.0 draft spec (and the auxiliary OPF 2.0 draft spec) and provide feedback. Your feedback is easy to provide: post your reply to Nick Bogaty’s IDPF forum announcement. A few people, including yours truly, have already provided feedback to this forum topic. (Note, if you do provide feedback, click on the “post reply” button, not the “new topic” button.)

Importantly note you need not be an IDPF member for your input to be considered. All input will be considered on an equal basis.

Once the OPS 2.0 spec is finalized and approved by the IDPF membership (which it likely will), it will be etched in stone, and future changes or improvements to the spec will be somewhat restricted to maintain compatibility. This is all the more reason to provide feedback if you are concerned about any aspect of OPS 2.0.

Why should anyone care about the “epub” open standard?

The obvious question is if epub has any chance of becoming an important (or even the dominant) reflowable e-book standard in the marketplace?

In my estimation it has a great chance. First, the OPS 2.0 spec (which, as noted previously, forms the underlying framework for epub) is an update to OEBPS 1.2. Almost exactly four years ago I argued that OEBPS is an excellent framework upon which to build a next-generation e-book format enabling a rich reading experience. (I believe OpenReader, a similar and next-generation XML-based framework, is superior, but OPS 2.0 is, from my perspective, reasonably acceptable — something I will address in a long-promised blog article.)

Second, I see a critical mass of interest both by application developers and by publishers. This has always been the fundamental requirement for any format to succeed in the marketplace.

On the application (reading system) side we notably have Adobe and OSoft which plan to soon release epub-capable reading systems: Adobe’s Digital Editions, and OSoft’s dotReader. In addition, it appears like others (maybe even Sony?) will support tools to auto-convert the quite rich epub format into many of the currently used e-book formats (I see it relatively easy to auto-generate LIT and Mobipocket from epub.)

Thus, for both these reasons publishers are expected to recast a lot of their publications into the new epub format. (OPS 2.0 was designed to make it relatively easy to upgrade most existing OEBPS 1.0.1 and 1.2 Publications into OPS 2.0, thereby reducing the burden on publishers who already have a lot of existing OEBPS content.)

The author of this article, Jon Noring, is VP of Development for DigitalPulp Publishing, a member of IDPF. He also technically contributed to the development of OPS 2.0 as well as all prior versions of OEBPS.

Thanks to the greater ease of reading e-newspapers on the Fujitsu than on my PDA, I’ll ax my Sunday subscription to the paper edition of the Washington Post (99 cents a week for new subscribers in my 22304 ZIP code in Alexandria, VA). A lesson for the book industry, too? When people go E in one medium, it’s at least a hint they’ll do the same in another. The more people forsake dead-tree newspapers for the Web, the wider the audience for e-books. Meanwhile I’d love to hear from people at the Post or other newspapers in response to what I’ll write below.

What I would buy from the Post

Unlike many people on the Net, I would pay the Post a reasonable amount for archival access if need be, a full-service mobile edition, and a truly customizable RSS feed, so that in one swoop I could get all the headlines I wanted—in fact, even full stories. I’d welcome a Post version of the Times Reader, too, if the same software also worked with the Times and other papers, ideally based on a standard like OpenReader or the IDPF‘s. Although you can subscribe to a downloadable Post digital edition, it is outrageously clunky compared to the Times Reader. A digital package for the Post, encompassing all these goodies, should cost no more than the $50 a year that the New York Times is charging for Times Select, which comes with premium content—except that Reader-style software should be free. For now, I’ll just use Firefox to read in the Post.

Here’s a little background. I’ve been subscribing to the Post for decades and, for the sake of nostalgia, maintained a Sunday subscription after I killed off the weekday one. But even with a less-than-perfect Post, it’s so more efficient to go through RSS headlines and not have to worry about throwing out the oft-irrelevant ad inserts and other sections that I never read in the first place. Just to give the whole story, I did approach the Post on behalf of OpenReader and its supposed first implementer (I’m no longer evangelizing), but I’d feel the same way with or without OR involved.

Digital revenue vs. the P kind

Meanwhile, I’d heartily recommend that the good people at the Post check out More Flawed Newspaper Logic in Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog. He’s vice president and executive publisher in the Professional/Trade division of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and I’m sure he has the book industry in mind, too, not just the newspaper business, when he talks of the need for new business models. Yesterday he pointed to the following words that Walter Hussman, publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:

“The Inland Cost and Revenue Study shows that newspapers will generate between $500 and $900 in revenue per subscriber per year. But a newspaper’s Web site typically generates $5 to $10 per unique visitor per year. It may be that newspaper Web sites as an advertising medium, and free news, just can’t generate the revenue to sustain a valued news operation.”

Blacksmith era fading away

Yes,” says Joe Wikert, “we all know that the subscriber model was a lot more lucrative to the newspapers than the freeloading website visitor model. I’m pretty sure that if someone could have prevented the combustion engine and automobile industries from launching, the horse transportation industry would have remained lucrative as well. That didn’t happen though, and like the blacksmiths of many years ago, the newspaper industry needs to acknowledge reality and move on.”

Anyone at L Street or another newspaper want to follow up with a reply to Joe W. and me? And when you do, please don’t write me off as just an early adopter. As shown by the OLPC project and Ubuntu‘s new embedded Linux initiative, tablet technology is going to get cheaper and cheaper, so that five years from now I may be able to buy a much-better tablet new for well under $100. Will the Post and other newspapers be ready when millions do then what I’m doing now? Along the way, the press should start thinking about about new opportunities, such as multimedia e-books pegged to the news and maybe even including ads. Or are newspapers too worried about preserving their buggy-whip side?

Evolution, not revolution

Granted, as a poverty-beat reporter eons ago at another paper, I, of all people, am aware that not everyone has computer skills or the necessary hardware or the inclination to read from a computer. And displays, yes, do have a way to go. So, no, I’m not calling for immediate dismantlement of the Post’s expensive presses. Beyond that, I’m fully aware of the fortune that the Post has invested in its online operation, one of the best and most popular on the Web.

Just the same, I find it vexing that the Post can’t at least pave the way for change by caring about little details such as a better organized, more complete mobile edition and easier-to-use RSS options, not to mention full archival access (reasonably priced if “free” isn’t possible—not the current $3 per article or whatever the charge is). Here’s hoping that the Post and similar publications can make it. In an era of big, obnoxious government, we need big newspapers as a countermeasure, aside from the fact that so many blogs start out with facts that the MSM digs up. Rather than dreaming of huge amounts of link money from Google—sorry, Mr. Hussman, that just isn’t going to cut it, given all the smart publishers who love the traffic that Google brings—newspapers should do a better job of adjusting to the needs of online readers and consider innovative offerings such as newsy e-books.

At present our e-book is only downloadable from IDPF’s web site, but will soon be available through DPP’s site. In addition, I’ve posted a message to the public IDPF Standards Forum summarizing, in gory detail, which features of OPS 2.0 are and are not supported (OPS 2.0 is the backbone specification underlying “epub” — currently OPS 2.0 is in the final Member and Public Review stage.)

There are currently two ways to read our epub:

1. Adobe Digital Editions (currently in beta), or

2. Use your browser to view the XML documents (which are XHTML 1.1) contained inside the epub.

For browser viewing (which will be nowhere near optimal compared to Adobe DE), extract the files using any zip application and view the “*.xml” files in the “OPS” folder. The main content document is the file “myantonia.xml”. For best results, use a current version of Firefox, Opera or IE, and keep the present folder structure so the links work and referenced CSS style sheets and images are used.

OSoft’s dotReader will also soon support “epub”.

DPP plans to issue and distribute most of the e-books it directly publishes for authors in the epub format once the OPS 2.0 standard is elevated to the final “Recommended” status. (Note: at David Rothman’s request I plan to post an article discussing the upcoming OPS 2.0 standard, as well as discuss the current status and future of OpenReader.)

Other publishers are welcome to “decompile” this epub publication and use it as an aid to learn the OPS 2.0 specification and as a template to build your own epub publications.

Happy reading!

The author of this article, Jon Noring, is VP of Development for DigitalPulp Publishing. He also contributed to the development of OPS 2.0.

Badware has infested the OpenReader site, and it’s down to protect visitors. Earlier I suspended my efforts for OpenReader for unrelated reasons, but I hope that founder Jon Noring can get the site cleaned up and online again. Any security-savvy volunteers ready to help him?

The bigger picture: OpenReader badly needs to end up in the hands of librarians or others with an interest in getting the IDPF to do standards for real—that could be a new mission for the group. Hello, Peter Brantley and friends?

“After years of hype, e-books may yet be the next big thing. Even with decent handsets (like the Sony’s Reader…) and stabler standards, however, it’s a technology tainted by a history of aggressive DRM. Of all the things you’d expect to have gone mobile by now, the humble book still lags behind news, magazines, music and video. If digital takeup is any guide to health, literature is the sick man of media.

“The why of that has many faces, but DRM plays its part. Taking a historically commonplace form of expression, freely portable in its traditional format, and turning it into an ephemeral, hardware-specific, proprietary service? Well, it must have been an interesting job ad: ‘Hand-wringing villains required for commercial appropriation of timeless cultural institutions: apply within.’”

What to do? Could a formula be found through which publishers could spread glad tidings about e-fiction and e-nonfiction alike?

Search engines: Important—but just one kind of tool

Publishers talk about the use of Amazon and search engines as ways for consumers to find books, and in fact, Evan Schnittman, a bizdev-and-rights VP for the U.S. end of the venerable Oxford University Press, has nicely laid out the benefits of services such as Google Book Search and Windows Live. See parts I and II of his essay. The goal is to make 100 percent of a book searchable through the engines—to weave it into the skein of the Internet.

Turbocharged searching alone, however, won’t be enough to spread word about books of interest to buyers. What about a personal touch, too? Can a search engine alone create a best-seller, for example, or help the world discover a promising new novelist? Might there still be room left for human- rather than just Google-powered initiatives?

Humans and the T word

Far more than techies and other civilians realize, the book world is built on trust and personal relationships—one reason why it annoyed me endlessly when the OSoft downplayed the OpenReader standard it had promised to support aggressively. Don’t think trust counts in book publishing and other media? Try contacting a book editor for the New York Times or getting yourself on the Today Show. Well-established imprints such as the centuries-old Oxford would be foolish to toss out the peoplish approach when e-books do catch on in a major way (same for good small publishers).

That’s why I’m so intrigued by Oxford’s OUPblog, moderated by Rebecca Ford, who earlier gained a handy mix of journalistic and Web experience at Creative Loafing’s alternative newspaper for Atlanta. Check out a Publishers Weekly piece on her blog work.

Why Rebecca’s book-promo blog is special

Most publishers lack blogs, and the existing efforts are often just repositories for impersonal press release material or else are just plain amateurish. Rebecca, however, rather than hiding behind an corporate facade, has made herself part of the OUPblog, complete with an editor’s desk feature. She’s using the old relationship-oriented approach in a new setting. Just as significantly, Rebecca:

1. Stocks the site with lots and lots of content from authors and others, including Evan Schnittman. She encourages them to create the items in the first place. The posts have a good information-to-hype ratio, with timeliness counting—as in the case of “Passover and Mom” or an item pegged to National Autism Week. The less hype, of course, the more chance a blogger will want to link. In fact, Rebecca tries to think of herself as an information source more than a promoter. Regardless, the intended effect is the same—more interest in Oxford books, especially compared to what the usual press releases alone would generate. Although Oxford is nonfiction oriented, some of the same concepts could apply to the promotion of novelists, who theoretically could not just do linked audios and video but also contribute essays on nonfiction topics related to their novels. In the end, whether the book is fiction or nonfiction, we’re actually talking about several forms of credibility—the book’s, the author’s, the publisher’s, Rebecca’s own in the case of Oxford, and, of course, the believability of the independent blogger making the recommendation of the post or the actual book. And, yes, unlike promo people at some large houses, Rebecca won’t hesitate to send out review copies to reach niche audiences.

2. Writes handcrafted notes to appropriate bloggers to ask if they’d like to link to posts. Hey, that’s how I learned of the Schnittman essay. Rebecca is building long-term relationships.

3. Pitches carefully—only to bloggers with an interest in the specific posts and, of course, the books themselves. A post needn’t promote an individual title, by the way.

4. Has regular topic-oriented features such as Medical Monday and Oxford etymologist. What’s more, Rebecca has just started a classics club with Alice in Wonderland as the first book under discussion.

5. And last but very definitely not least, has a well-organized home page for the blog with subjects stripped across the top—so visitors can head immediately toward the posts of most interest to them. In the case of fiction, the site theoretically could organize posts by genres and authors within them, as well as by topics and geographical locations of the writers and their novels’ settings. In the future, hometown bloggers and book reviewers could subscribe to RSS feeds based on searches that combined the desired criteria. But even that could never replace the personal touch that Rebecca offers—joined in time, I’d hope, by other Oxford University Press people, once the results of her work are better known.

Blog’s unique visitor count up from 2K to 25K per month

Rebecca at this point does not know the amount of extra sales revenue she has created as blog moderator, but she told Publishers Weekly that the site now averages 25,000 unique visitors per month, compared to 2,000 when she took over. The entire Oxford University Press site, not just the blog, has a daily reach of .01 percent of Net users reported via Alexa, and in a sense that’s good news—for it indicates a substantial upside potential. I can see the Oxford blog scaling up through the addition of more content, including pointers to first chapters (am I overlooking something?), and more help for Rebecca

Granted, just a faction of book-buyers read blogs, but I suspect that’ll grow. What’s more, the media are trying out blog-style approaches, increasingly, and Rebecca will be ready for them. So, while her traffic is far from Amazon.com-sized, and while this approach is hardly a panacea, it’s one more tool for book marketing online and a great way to help popularize both E and P in the future.

Details: I think novels and other long texts meant for sustained reading in e-book form—”immersive reading,” as the experts would say—are going to be more important than Evan Schnittman apparently does. It’s just a matter of better displays and other tech and more Net-oriented humans being born. That said, his essay raises a number of excellent questions in areas such as ownership of books and access to them under the Google model. As I see it, alas, hardly anything is “forever” on the Net. That’s one reason why I fret not just about DRM but about the possibility of the E-Book Museum model becoming the only digital one for most publishers.

Related: Book Widgets and Book Selling 2.0, by Casey Podolsky, technology VP for Oxford University Press’s Academic and USA Divisions. The Flash-based widgets, used by Random House and HarperCollins, can allow “search inside the book” features to appear within any site. Be interesting to see what Oxford might do in that area. While blogs like Oxford’s have their place, it’s important for publishers to try other tools such as widgets. Here’s to many approaches!

Meanwhile you can see a HarperCollins widget in action below. Find it easy to read text? I don’t. Too much scrolling. It isn’t as crisp as a regular HTML page displayed on my screen, and the movement through the book is a bit sluggish. If nothing else, I’d like to see a fast-read option, so that the widget was less faithful to the actual appearance of the book but made better use of screen real estate and used heavier fonts. Two columns maybe? Anyone have other impressions?