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.epub tips for small publishers: Add your own thoughts!
October 9, 2007 | 4:15 pm
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By David Rothman
Linda Houle over at L&L Dreamspell, a small Houston-area publisher doing both E and P, wants to offer books in the IDPF’s .epub format—not just Mobipocket and the other standard suspects.
Smart move, Linda. When we raze the Tower of eBabel of conflicting e-formats, life will be happier for publishers and readers alike. The .epub standard has won support among major companies, and if expectations hold up, the Sony Reader and the Cybook Gen3 will come with .epub capabilities in the near future. So will the future E Ink machines from eBook Technologies, Inc., whose people go back in e-books to the late 1990s and played a major role in development of the .epub standard.
An experimental open source .epub-capable program, FBReader, already exists for the iLiad E Ink machine. What’s more, ideally, the Amazon Kindle will be able to deal with .epub as well in the near future—by if nothing else letting you convert the format into the Kindle’s own. Fingers crossed.
Fill in the blanks—with your own .epub recs
So, TeleBlog techies, for possible pick-up in my E-Book Report blog for Publishers Weekly online, what’s your advice in plain English on .epub creation procedures and software for publishers like L&L Dreamspell? And what is the best software for Linda and her L&L partner, Lisa Renee Smith, to recommend to their human readers?
Here are a few preliminary thoughts on e-book creation choices, followed by those on reading programs such as Adobe Digital Editions and FBReader. Help me fill in the blanks in the advice below for small publishers, and speak up if you disagree!
Creation possibility #1: Adobe InDesign CS3
If you’ve got the budget, consider Adobe InDesign CS3, discussed in the blog of Adobe’s Bill McCoy as well as in a Publishing Report 2007 and a link-rich Wikipedia item.
This could be a great solution as long as you pay attention to the caveats below. For books with fancy formats, InDesign CS3 could offer some nice capabilities, and beyond that, it can work with other Adobe products such as DreamWeaver, in addition to importing the usual Word-style formats. Retail price is $699 (an educational version for noncommercial uses can be found for much less) , and you may need to hire a consultant to blend InDesign in with your existing production operations.
No matter what the company involved, Adobe or Joe’s E-Book Creator, I hope that the e-book world will be on the lookout for company-specific features that make their way into output. Tamas and Jon and others, what’s your latest take on the .epub purity of InDesign files and on related matters? And Bill, speak up on this issue, too, if you’d like–and tell us about the positives of CS3.
Meanwhile readers should note that in mentioning InDesign CS3 first, I’m not saying it’s right for you. Needs will vary! Adobe just happens to have the first package out there, that’s all–it’s already a real product.
Creation possibility #2: Alliances with new sites such as Feedbooks
A French startup called Feedbooks is offering public domain books and Creative Commons works in .epub, among other formats. The service is experimental, but if I were a small publisher, I’d catch up with Feedbooks and see about a possible alliance. Why should you play techie if others can do the job more cheaply?
Another small company, DigitalPulp Publishing, plans .epub creation services in the future but does not know when.
I’m also curious if BookGlutton might want to venture into this area; hello Aaron?
Finally I know of at least one other .epub-aware start-up—not yet ready to announce its plans.
Keep in mind that some or most of these services could give you books in formats besides .epub. I encourage all startups to share with us a description of their format-related services.
Creation possibility #3: Use of existing format translation services such as RosettaSolutions
A few of the major translation players are RosettaSolutions, codeMantra, and Publishing Dimensions (the latter’s Web site is down due to a move, but try the Google cache).
But I’m not sure if the economics would make sense for little houses like Linda’s.
Meanwhile, yes, the large publishers are continuing to show interest in .epub. Their holdup is the DRM issue; they want secured books, and .epub doesn’t have DRM interoperability—DRM isn’t in the specs. But sooner or later they’ll make the switch, believe me. The DRM interoperability issue is still on the IDPF’s agenda.
For now, small publishers—many and perhaps most of which share my aversion to DRM–can lead the way and in the near future see .epub titles displayed in full glory on the Sony Reader, the Cybook Gen 3 and inevitably other machines.
Remember, .epub will work much better on small tablets, PDAs and cellphones than PDF generally will. You don’t have to choose between letters too small or the other nasty option, scrolling from left to write. While some sites offer PDF in various sizes, so to adjust to smaller machines, .epub as a rule is much better for handhelds.
The negative of .epub is that publishers will have less control over design, but generally, books can still look very attractive, while being far, far more convenient for readers than PDF is. For novels and other recreational reading, it’s no contest. .Epub wins!
Creation possibility #5: E-stores and distributors
Sooner or later, they’ll offer .epub as a format option and might provide conversion services.
Creation possibility #6: In-house techish solutions with help from consultants
.Epub is an open format, so theoretically there’s no reason why you can’t code the files yourself—except that it would be time-coming and requires special skills. You could also go the consulting route. “I will do custom .epub builds for publishers small and large on a consulting basis and hold credentials as a long time e-book publisher and core developer of the .epub standard,” says Jon Noring a long-time TeleRead contributor. Yes, yes, I’m eager for other consultants to mention their availability and, briefly, their credentials. Just use the comment box. Meanwhile Jon is looking for a scripter to build a conversion script for the BookX conversion system.
Now on to the issue of .epub-readable software–and hardware—to recommend. Once again, I’ll say say, “Don’t go for such-and-such, just because I’m mentioning it first.” Your needs will differ from others’.
Reader possibility #1: Adobe Digital Editions
Adobe Digital Editions can read PDF and .epub alike, and you can download it for free. See past TeleBlog posts on DE, Information Today writeup, and Wikipedia item with relevant links. I don’t like DE’s interface as much as that of Mobipocket, and hope that Adobe can make it less awkward to use. Still, DE can do .epub now. And last time I checked, it worked fine with public domain books from Feedbooks.
Remember, too, that DE will be on the Sony Reader in the near future, complete with the ability to handle DE books with Adobe encryption (not an open standard!).
Reader possibility #2: FBReader
FBReader is for the adventurous who don’t mind the absence of features such as boookmarks. They’re on the way! What’s more, FBReader runs in Windows and various Linux flavors, including one for the Nokia 770, which I use. It can read not just .epub but a bunch of other formats, including nonencrypted Mobipocket. Earlier TeleBlog items on FBReader are here. Please note that FBReader cannot cope with Cascading Style Sheets in .epub documents right now. On the positive, it’s open source and runs experimentally on the iLiad E Ink machine.
Reader possibility #3: OpenBerg
OpenBerg is a plug-in that works with Firefox. See past posts. Like FBReader, it’s open source.
Reader possibility #4: The Sony Reader and the Cybook Gen3–when they’re ready for .epub
Sony and Adobe have already committed to doing .epub on Sony Readers, although it isn’t clear if the capability will be present on older models.
One .epub reading possibility I can’t recommend now is dotReader. Along with other TeleBlog denizens, I have not succeeded in getting it to work with Feedbooks files—even though Feedbooks content works great with Adobe and OpenBerg. I have a query in to Mark Carey, CEO of OSoft, dotReader’s developer. Let’s hope that dotReader can soon join the .epub-compatible list for real.
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Comments:
One concern I have with Digital Editions is security. According to Adobe, Digital Editions is built on an extended Flash Player 9 runtime.
Flash Player has a long history of being exploited via the internet to compromise computers. If I install Digital Editions, what are the security implications? Does Digital Editions tie-in to the browser, like Flash Player?
Although I am not anti-Flash, I am concerned about securing my computer and will not install software that poses a high risk of compromise, as I believe Flash is. Not to pick on Adobe, but I also disable the ability to run Javascript in their PDF reader software for security reasons.
Not that it matters in the Grand Scheme of things, but I intend to support .epub in my iPhone ebook reader, though of course the software won’t be able to read DRM-crippled books. I’m looking into FBReader’s source code this week.
Well it does matter, in this case. I’d love to see .epub books on the iPhone.
Can you support CSS on the iPhone, using Safari somehow ?
If you’d like to add a search engine directly in your application, you can also take a look at the API that we’re building on Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/newsstand_api
I use InDesign regularly for designing and producing books, and it’s a terrific program with fine control over every aspect of the layout. It should be noted, however, that much of that control is not maintained when outputting to .epub format. This is due to limitations in the current .epub standard, since its CSS feature set does not support the full range of layout options offered by InDesign (and since reflowable text, by its nature, has a much looser level of layout control).
If you are considering InDesign for .epub output, you can get a fully-functional 30-day trial from the Adobe web site.
Thank you for all your great help and advice, David!
I’m sampling the .epub format now, using Digital Editions on my laptop.
Next I’ll see about putting one of our ebooks into that format, and I’ll keep you posted!
Linda re .epub: Hey, you’re the reason I did the article. Thanks for reminding me of the nuts-and-bolts concerns of publishers, and keep us posted of your experiences with .epub—good and bad. It’s especially important to zero in on the negatives so techies and others can work to correct them. Best of luck, and I hope that the big houses also notice (ideally experimenting not just with .epub but with the nonDRMed or social-DRMed varities)! David
Joseph Gray makes an excellent point about the potential dangers of software like Flash that millions run as a browser plug-in. I use an internet browser to read blogs such as TeleRead and also to read some e-books, e.g., Gutenberg editions. Of course Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox both have regular security patch updates that can be performed in an automated or semi-automated fashion. Yet a careful person who regularly installs browser patches may still be vulnerable, because many security flaws are present in out-of-date plug-in software. For example there have been security problems in Adobe Flash Player, Sun Java JRE, Apple QuickTime, and Adobe Reader. Also media players such as WinAmp and Windows Media Player have had security problems.
An article entitled Media players more dangerous than Windows at the website “Windows Secrets” lists the version numbers of several programs that “can be attacked across the Internet”. The article says many people are now keeping Windows itself patched so “hackers have turned to applications that allow Trojan horses to silently infect PCs. Now we all need to learn to keep our add-ins updated, too.” The article provides advice on obtaining updates. Sadly even updates are not risk-free and can cause problems. So use the guidance in the article at your own risk! Caveat downloader.
Gerry Manacsa commented above:
Hmmm, maybe I am misinterpreting your comment, Gerry, but are you saying EPub should support styling options not included in CSS 2/3? EPub certainly supports CSS. It requires support for a significant subset of CSS 2, and allows authors to include, and reading systems to support, CSS properties outside this quite inclusive subset.
If there are CSS properties you believe EPub should support by default, by all means let the IDFP OPS Working Group know about it!
And yes about your other comment regarding the looseness of layout. EPub is a “reflowable” format, and thus will not, and should not, support anything allowing publishers to page-fix digital presentation. That’s the function of PDF and similar page-fixing formats. Other than for print, or for very special markets, publishers should be thinking “reflowable” and not “fixed”, and not fear letting the end-user decide on selecting the typographical presentation parameters they prefer — that’s the future.
Jon, I’m not necessarily saying that .epub should go beyond CSS2. However, new users of InDesign and .epub might reasonably expect that the formatting that they put into their InDesign document will carry through into .epub — which it definitely will not.
I haven’t used InDesign, but have used many word processing and desktop publishing programs over the years. Here is my take on formatting and exporting to various formats, including .epub.
If a user expects that all of the formatting and features that they use in a program like InDesign will “carry through” to an .epub document, then either they are naive in their understanding of the software and the formats that they are using, or the software publisher is not adequately documenting what features work when exporting to various formats (or both).
For example, if I were to create a complex document in MS Word and then saved this document as HTML, I wouldn’t expect that the layout, graphics, fonts, etc. in the HTML document would exactly match the Word document. I understand what the limitations of HTML are and don’t expect it to do something it wasn’t designed to do. In the same vein, why should I expect .epub to do something it wasn’t designed to do, just because I created a document in InDesign, using features not supported by .epub?
A new user of such powerful software as InDesign can be forgiven for not fully understanding these things at first, but that ignorance should not be used as an excuse to badmouth .epub or any other document format, because the user didn’t get the results they expected.
I see three things that could be done to aleviate this problem. First, the IDPF should quickly create a web site so that a user can submit an .epub document for validation (similar to the one for HTML at http://validator.w3.org). Why the IDPF? it’s their standard, they should take responsibility for validation. Second, tools like InDesign should make it clear what features “degrade” when using .epub. Third, InDesign (and other tools that output .epub) could also incorporate a built-in .epub validator.
I came across this helpful document from Adobe on using InDesign to create an .epub document.
http://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleditions/indesign-epub.html
We’re doing conversion to .epub on the back end, and would love to eventually open it up for instant conversion of documents. Currently, HTML and especially XHTML are the obvious ideal bases for conversion, but we’re also using RTF.
A validator is a must. So is reading system flexibility. For example, my version of Digital Editions will not display pages of an epub containing XHTML with XML declarations.
I don’t think InDesign is ever going to be the preferred method of outputting a final .epub, but perhaps a convenient intermediate step. It is, as Jon Noring points out, for fixed-page layouts, and as such is not going to export a look-and-feel but a useful data structure. An open-source .epub conversion API is going to be far more useful in enabling reading systems to convert on-the-fly, so users don’t have to worry about mass-scale conversion of different kinds of ebooks.
Aaron Miller
Bookglutton.com
Gerry Manacsa wrote:
Thanks for the clarification, Gerry.
Yes, I agree with you it is a matter of expectations on the part of the authoring tool user. But this is not the fault of EPub, Adobe Digital Editions (and other EPub readers), nor even InDesign.
It is simply that those who are used to building fixed-page formats (where all typography is fixed by the publisher) need to learn that EPub is a reflowable format and thus some typographic information will not, and more importantly should not, carry through to EPub presentation to the end-user.
It will take time for this to sink in. I’m not sure what IDPF can really do about this. Since InDesign is Adobe’s tool, I hope that Bill McCoy will consider prodcuing some sort of “EPub from InDesign” document which explains why some InDesign stuff does not carry through to EPub, and more importantly why this benefits the publisher. The message of how it benefits end-users to have more control over typographical presentation is something that publishers need to understand.
(p.s., I read Aaron’s and Joseph’s replies after I posted the above comment.)
Aaron wrote:
Wow, I need to download the latest version and try it out on some of my EPubs where I not only include the XML declaration, but the DOCTYPE as well. If this is the case, I will need to do my usual and let Bill McCoy know that this is not a feature (in case they believe that, not sure), but rather a bug that needs fixing as soon as possible.
OPS definitely allows, and I believe encourages (and possibly requires, I’ll have to recheck), all XML documents in OPS (both content documents and the Package) to include the XML declaration. It is a pretty simple thing in parsing/processing the documents to not let the XML declaration be a problem, so the fix hopefully should not be that major.
(To be fair to Adobe, I suspect they have a whole slew of issues to fix, but this one is pretty important, in my opinion.)
Noring wrote:
“Other than for print, or for very special markets, publishers should be thinking “reflowable” and not “fixed”, and not fear letting the end-user decide on selecting the typographical presentation parameters they prefer — that’s the future.”
I agree…but only half way: The reality of the reading situation is, that the author would like to ‘fix’ lets say an image to a certain informative text or even a short byline, and on the other hand the end user perhaps wants the possibility to ‘fix’ this image on the screen (‘freeze’ the position) while ‘scrolling’ several more screens of text and still having the image at hand. Also a demand for zooming up the image while remaining the font size….
In my opinion the question is not either/or, but to give the enduser complete freedom to choose both when and how they want (or need of) the ‘flowability” or “fixed” features to work.
As for Adobe – I wouldn’t be surprised if Bill McCoy allready have a new Authoring Tool in mind, aspecially designed to create ADE Books… maybe a ‘Dreamveawer Lite E-Book’?
(If he is not, perhaps someone else have?)
[...] the eBook Industry. There have been many discussions on the TeleRead site, including some .epub tips and a discussion on the pros and cons of the standard which should give you a nice flavour of what [...]