New ePub creator from Infogrid Pacific – free for non-commercial use
By Paul Biba
Richard Pipe, CED of Infogrid Pacific sent me the following email:
There has been some lamenting from Dave at the lack of an “easy to use” Open Office to ePub convertor for the masses. We have just released a product. If it is of interest to you or your readers you will find the information at
http://www.infogridpacific.com/igp/AZARDI/eScape%20-ODT2ePub/
Still working on the online documentation, but for anyone who knows OOo and templates it’s a cinch (he said optimistically).
It’s Beta, and we all know what that means.
Richard
Richard Pipe
CEO – Infogrid Pacific Pte. Ltd
Here is some text from their site.
eScape is a free Open Office Writer to ePub creator. It lets you instantly and effortlessly turn Open Office Writer documents (ODT) into perfect ePubs ready to share with your friends. eScape the print book hegemony and go e-book first, with eScape. It’s easier than you think.
E-book enthusiasts have found it difficult and complicated to create respectable ePubs. The pain is over. Follow a few simple styling rules and with eScape you can create fantastic ePubs instantly.1. Use the supplied Open Office Template (OTT) to Structure-Style™= your text files in the familiar Open Office Writer environment.
2. Open eScape, browse to your ODT, cover image and select a CSS.
3. Set a few reader friendly options and click “Create ePub”You can modify and add stylesheets to give your books a distinctive and personal style,
You can modify and change your ODT files to make customized dedication and gift pages. Give your books the real personal touch! It’s so easy to do. You can make personal named copies of books for all your friends and family, you can even change the stylesheets and create different versions for different moods.
Of course ePub e-books created with eScape are best viewed in the free and open source ePub readers: AZARDI, Bookworm and Calibre.
eScape uses a special version of IGP:FoundationXHTML (FX), the same power-house XML engine behind the publishing engine IGP:FLIP, which lets you create production quality print, Online and eBook formats simultaneously.
The software is free for non-commercial use. There is no mention of what the pricing is for commercial use. Here’s the relevant license info: eScape is licensed to individuals at no charge (free) for non-commerical use only if: 1) it is downloaded from this site and 2) the eScape acknowledgements page is left in the book. Non-commerical means that eScape cannot be used to create ePubs for money. You are explicitly forbidden to use eScape to provide ePub creation services. The ePubs you create can be freely shared, distributed and and given away anywhere and to anyone as long as you do not charge for them. This includes any and all service and/or distribution fees.
February 21st, 2009 at 3:11 pm
The reason there is no pricing for commercial use is quite frankly:
a) Don’t know if anyone would want to use a desktop ePub only creator commercially,
b) The idea was to rise to Dave’s challenge for an open source OOo to ePub app. Hence the apology on the Blog for it being a drop-in, not being a Plug-in (too darn hard)
c) It has too much of our business value buried inside to just give away (we have to feed the children), but to the real eBook amateur enthusiast, we are happy to support them.
d) Does everything have to be commercial?
There is no commercial model for this planned. Beg us… give us a zillion dollars… and we might turn it into another software commodity. However IGP:FLIP is our commercial app for instant multi-format production and eScape is an ePub adoption “accelerator”… maybe… or as Wayne said… not.
February 26th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Wow, what a great resource! I look forward to trying it out. Just a year ago we were bemoaning a lack of epub tools; now tools are beginning to emerge. A lot has changed in only a year.