TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘EPub’ Category

By David Rothman

Will this hurt or help e-books?

Partly as an anti-linux move, Microsoft is offering to sell Windows XP Home to manufacturers for as little as $16 per machine for use in developing countries. The future of the OLPC XO-1’s successors? For more prosperous markets like the U.S., the price tag would be a little higher.

Sure enough, there’s a catch—in fact, a bunch of them. For example, screens can’t be bigger than 10.2 inches, nor drives roomier than 80G, and no touch screens are allowed. In addition, RAM can’t exceed 1G, nor chips be better than  1G single-core processor (at least as a rule).

Besides thwarting linux, one other big goal is to prevent econo-machines from being able to run Vista. Don’t you love the monopoly mindset?

E-book related pros and cons

From an e-book perspective, here are some pros:

• Low-cost machines are fine for reading e-books, as long as the screen resolution is decent. A PC World report doesn’t mention any res limits. So the net effect might be to encourage the production of good, e-book-friendly laptops that can run commercial e-book apps such as Mobipocket and Adobe products, including the ePub-capable Digital Editions.
• The 80G drive limit is no big deal for most e-book readers—at least for now, when multimedia books aren’t so common. Same for the RAM and chip limits.
• Maybe this will be the kick in the pants that linux people need to be more responsive to the needs of ordinary consumers, including e-book-lovers. I want to see more FBReaders out there—and a better existing FBReader.
• Perhaps with all the fine print in the Microsoft offer, linux will actually get a boost from vendors unhappy with the restrictions, and we’ll soon see a wealth of open source apps for e-books. Don’t count on this.

The cons:

• Anything bad for open source, free software, etc., is bad for e-book fans in the long run, and I see this scenario as far more likely than the last one mentioned above. While the linux world hasn’t been too accommodating toward us so far, the potential is there. The open source approach could ultimately mean a greater choice of apps and more customizable ones. Not to mention more difficulties for DRM. But will Microsoft choke off the market for linux on the low-cost machines?
• Touch screens are always nice for e-book users, especially on laptops convertible into tablets. But Microsoft won’t allow this?

So, gang, what’s the bottom line here? Short term, I see positives such as more of the cheapie laptops that can run common commercial programs. Long term, I see more challenges for open source apps in e-books and other areas.

The numbers: Microsoft expects that sales of ultra-low-cost PCs will reach 10-13 million in ‘08. Others are not as optimistic.

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By David Rothman

Why do I keep pushing the ePub standard and complaining about PDF? Here’s a major reason.

For most reading, it helps to be able to change font sizes easily—in particular, if your vision is less than perfect. And PDF often limits your options, especially on small-screened machines. It is not a true reflowable format. In plain English, that can mean hassles such as having to scroll from left to right, because enlarging the letters can result in chopped-off lines. No, I don’t want to have to worry about different files for different machines.

The beauty shop angle

Ficbot (not in the above photo) agrees with me about easy size-changing: “Today at the hairdresser I was getting highlights, had to sit under a heatlamp for 45 minutes, and was not allowed to put my glasses back on. Hello, bigger font size!” Overwhelmingly our commenters are on her side in responding to Tamas Simon’s gutsy essay challenging the idea of reflowable formats. But I’m glad Tamas spoke his mind. Let’s not take anything for granted.

Important debate

This little debate is of no small importance to the e-book industry. Right now PDF just may be the most commonly used document format. But for e-reading on small devices, it is generally a disaster since most PDF e-book files are not tagged for reflowability. Yes, I’ll welcome thoughts from PDF-lovin’ folks, especially at Adobe and Wowio, where Gerry Manacsa regards PDF as being more designer friendly at this stage in its development than ePub is. To Adobe’s considerable credit, it’s been a leading advocate of ePub (although, yes, I recognize the business-drive motives).

Image: CC-licensed photo from SpooSpa. Again, that is not Ficbot shown.

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By David Rothman

Fictionwise has long been a hangout for gung-ho science fiction readers. But guess what? As I write this, not one SF e-book is among the top ten sellers. The champ within the genre is Human by Choice, by TeleBlog contributor Darrell Bain and Travis S.Taylor—-just number 19, though. Have SF readers forsaken Fictionwise?

Not at all. Instead Fictionwise has undergone an alien invasion, so to speak—of romance fans with loose purse strings. 

“Looking at sales from a single typical month, January 2008,” co-owner Steve Pendergrast reported to the Fictionwise e-mail list, “we find there are about one-third more unique romance buyers than unique SF buyers (someone who bought both would end up in both lists). This is not a huge difference in the absolute number of unique buyers. However, the romance buyers also buy more; on average they buy 62 percent more than SF buyers do in terms of revenue. The combined effect is, Fictionwise now sells about twice as much romance as SF. The reverse was true just a few years ago.”

Possible sea change

So what does this mean for the e-book industry? Definitely a seachange if other stores are experiencing similar results. This suggests:

• The e-book business as a whole needs to take on eBabel and DRM problems sooner than many of the old timers would like, if it doesn’t want to miss out on all the potential business from e-romance fans. As a group, they are probably more tech-hip than the typical reader, but almost surely not as much as the SF crowd. The good news for publishers is that readers of romances probably aren’t as likely to use P2P networks for illegal book-sharing as hardcore techies are. Probably. Anyone feel otherwise?
• For ergonomic reasons, it is important to replace PDF with the reflowable .epub format as soon as possible in most cases—to make it easier for read e-books on cell phones, which many of the new crop of readers will favor. Do you really think they all own Kindles? Of the eBabel formats, the reflowable Mobipocket beats PDF by a long shot in usability. So does ePub, and it’s important for the IDPF and publishers to encourage the development of good reading and creation apps—both commercial and open source.
• Also helpful will be more Kindle-style machines that can download titles without hassles, via wireless. Time for more alliances with phone companies? And what about better software to integrate the shopping and reading functions?

Meanwhile, lest Darrell and friends worry, the less spectacular but still noticeable growth in SF is continuing at Fictionwise. “SF sales are not declining by any means,” Steve told the Fictionwise list. “In terms of unit sales, SF sales in (for example) January 2008 were up 12% over January 2007, and in terms of revenue up even more, 16% year over year. Those are very solid growth rates.”

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By David Rothman

Say good-bye to the Panasonic WordGear (sold for $350, with a 5.6-inch color LCD screen and 1,024 by 600 res).

You read that right: Panasonic is discontinuing the WordGear. Might the WordGear have survived if the IDPF’s ePub standard had been in widespread use and the WordGear could have displayed a zillion and one e-books in that format? Ideally nonDRMed. Panasonic didn’t help when it apparently used a clumsy DRMcentric approach.

Meanwhile hello to the BEBOOK (330 Euros for such features as the 6-inch E Ink display and the ability to read .doc, .txt, .pdf, .jpg, .htm and .rtf files) from Endless Ideas. So when will we see the BEBOOK selling for $159, the price tentatively mentioned for the basic Astak? And how long until the BEBOOK can handle DRMed Mobipocket  or another common format used for bestsellers? Mobi is supposed to be on the way. If so, will Mobipocket permit other DRM-”capable” formats? Or bully Endless Ideas by saving Mobi must have an exclusive? If you want a bunch of hardware makers around, competing to offer the best gizmo at the lowest price, then root for ePub—especially a nonDRMed flavor. Aren’t you tired of Mobipocket and the like dictating to hardware makers?

(Via MobileRead.)

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By Tamas Simon

Reminder: These are Tamas Simon’s individual opinions. - D.R.

I read a lot of posts and comments nowadays on the need for a reflowable e-book format. ePub is said to be a “solution” for this. I understand the frustration; I just don’t think reflow is such a big deal, especially not if we look at the long term trends. When do we need reflow anyway? I think there are two cases:

First scenario is when we have some content on a device and we want to change the font size. Honestly, how often does this happen? Once you’ve set the font size for a size that works for you, how often will you change it?

Second scenario is when switching devices. We have some content that looks acceptable on one device and we want to move it to another device that has smaller screen size. If it has larger screen size, we usually don’t even bother, do we?

Wouldn’t you be happy if…

If someone would let you use a different version of the file for the second device—but still a PDF file or something like that, a “final non-reflowable format”—wouldn’t that make you happy? I think what we really need is not one end-user e-book-format that can reflow a hundred different ways but rather a means to access the content in a format that works at the moment. So the “reflow” can very well happen on a server, in the “cloud” or just by being offered a wide variety of formats.

The Feedbooks approach

Check out Feedbooks for instance. You download the book for one device and then download it again for another device. No problem. “Reflow” is done for you by the site. And it very well addresses the first scenario, too;  you want bigger letters, there you go. I don’t see why this could not work for copyrighted works. We just need someone to provide the service.

At least there would be something value added, something that provides convenience, something that consumers would pay for in an era when content itself becomes so abundant that it’s almost impossible to charge for it. The publishing industry is still fighting this trend but have a look at some bittorrent sites, see what happened to music: you’ll most likely agree that the trend is clear.

The ownership issue

What happens then with “owning a book”? Well, I suppose you could “own” the source format TEX, or XML that is used to produce the different outcomes. Or just share what you have on the P2P network and hope that someone has another format of the content that will help you out one day. Chance are there is.

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By David Rothman

“Speaking of libraries,” Philip Gulley writes in a mostly lighthearted essay in Indianapolis Monthly on Kindles vs. traditional books, “what will become of them if the Kindle succeeds? Copyright laws, written by lobbyists and passed through a Congress beholden to big money, will prevent libraries from downloading books and sharing them for free with patrons, which will effectively make literature and information inaccessible to the poor. Books will become like healthcare in this country, available to some and not others. Congress might eventually remedy this, but it will take 50 years, and in the meantime three generations of poor children won’t know the pleasure of curling up with a good book, expanding their minds, and broadening their opportunities.”

The TeleRead take: Well, Philip, you’re off on the details, but I like the spirit of the above, which, alas, considering the copyright lobby’s influence in D.C., turns out to be less of a joke than you thought. TeleRead, anyone? And new business and access models for libraries, with fair compensation to creators?

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By David Rothman

The positives of Ezra Klein’s CJR article and related video: He’s a new Kindle user and hails the machine as “credible. As a product of Amazon, it’s intertwined with the world’s largest online bookstore, legitimized by the one company that can lay some claim to having already changed the way we use, or at least acquire, books. The real question, though, is what took so long?”

In general, the Klein article is upbeat on E and notes the possibilities of  adjustable font sizes, outbound links, interactivity and updated books (albeit, I’d assume, not the 1984ish variety). At the same time his CJR piece correctly recognizes that the Kindle and the like are not perfect replacements for paper books, given the screen-contrast problems of E Ink, among the other flaws.

The negatives—blindness to the eBabel and DRM issues: Um, Ezra, I mostly liked your piece, but as an e-book newbie, you unwittingly left out a few details. Unless we want the whole bleepin’ e-book world to revolve around Jeff Bezos, we deserve nonproprietary e-book standards in areas ranging from the basic format to guidelines for shared annotations and interbook linking.

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By Aaron S. Miller, CTO of BookGlutton, a Web-based community of readers

I’m happy to announce the first tool in our Web API, the BookGlutton ePub Converter. It’s a simple way to create the IDPF’s open e-book format, ePub, from a basic HTML file. The tool can be used from anyplace on the Web, in back end scripts or front end pages, but the curious can play with it on our site, where we’ve put up some documentation and a test form.

I’ve voiced concerns about the ePub format before, but I’ve been working with it for over a year and want to make it more accessible to independent, open-source Web developers and tech-savvy Web readers. I think free tools like this, and hopefully open source libraries to accompany them, will do a lot for the ePub format.

Try the converter—and share feedback

So please, create some ePubs. Readers, convert some of your favorite HTML editions to ePub and let me know how it goes. Authors, if you feel overwhelmed about how to get your work into the ePub format, use this tool to generate boilerplates. Web developers, if you’re curious about the internal XML workings of the format, rename your epub with a .zip extension and open the files up in your favorite text editor. Ask yourself how the format could be improved for Web browsers and let the IDPF know what you think. And finally, share what you build.

Moderator: That’s an unofficial ePub logo. Hello, IDPF? When will you do an official one? Meanwhile I’d encourage people to try out Aaron’s ePub converter, as he suggestions—and share feedback in our comment area, not just privately. - D.R.

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By David Rothman

Reading the TeleBlog, you’re in Niche Land. Whether the Iranians nuke D.C. or the Devil appears as a winged Afghan Hound in Times Square, you can bet we’ll try to find an e-book angle.

But what about big book-publishers? Even when they think E, too many of them still mess up on the details of the niche approach. For example, they promote their general URLs rather than directing people to in-house niche sites for baseball fans or origami enthusiasts. Small publishers, especially the specialized ones, can actually outperform the big boys in many cases.

Clueful comments from a major industry guru

With the above in mind, I nodded as I read some recent speeches by Mike Shatzkin, a  publishing guru who has pounded the table for both e-books and  the need for a niche approach. “Every book should be an e-book,” he said, “and just about every book should be loaded for print-on-demand. POD is not just for end of life; for many books, it can be critical during mid-life.” Right now, it would appear that Hachette is the only major publisher releasing all titles in E—partly, I myself suspect, because it’s standardized on ePUB as a distribution format and can enjoy its economies.

I also liked Mike’s interest in the elderly as a market for POD, although I wish he’d really played up pure-E for them as the best approach to take, despite the need for format choices.

Free wisdom from Mike

Via the PersonaNonData blog of Michael Cairnes, another outspoken consultant and also the ex-president of R.R. Bowker, I ran across links to the Shatzkin speeches. Even with some repetition among them, they’re well worth a read, whether you’re a big publisher who needs shaking up, or a small, niche-hip guy or gal who would enjoy a little vindication, or a writer pondering whether to self-publish or go the traditional route:

• End of general trade publishing (completely retold), Jan. 22, 2008—delivered for Random House’s Digital Day
• Publishing in the Digital Age panel remarks, March 10, 2008, for the Book Business Conference and Expo.
• The digital state of play in the U.S., April 16, for U.K. publishers at the London Book Fair.
• The Future for Publishers and Booksellers, May 7, for Danish publishers and booksellers in Copenhagen.

Another good point Mike makes: The fact that use of e-books within the industry—for sales reps “carrying” around many manuscripts, for example—will help led to general use of e-books.

On dedicated e-devices and formats: “When research I did…demonstrated pretty convincingly that most e-books sold in the US are not read on devices, but are Adobe files that are most likely read on PCs,” Mike said, “I was surprised. Only about a third of sales are of Palm, Mobi, or Microsoft dot lit formats that we’d expect to be read on a handheld. The emergence of the Kindle and the vitality of Sony Reader may change that balance soon, but that’s what it has been.”

A related aside: I’ve queried a Sony PR rep for the latest on Adobe Digital Editions for the Sony Reader—just when will we see it available? Digital Editions is to let people read DRMed PDFs, not just Sony’s proprietary BBeB format. Let’s hope that ePub is also still on tap.

Detail: Unlike Mike, I continue to believe that cellphones will matter far, far more as e-readers than will Kindle-style devices, and I also wish he’d pay more attention to the eBabel crisis and the damage that the DRM mess has done to the book industry. But, hey, he’s entitled. Furthermore, I agree with him that the Kindle has done e-books a service in encouraging more publishers to digitize. It’s just that the real action, as I see it, will be on cellphones as they improve and rollout E Ink displays become common. Wireless, as an easy way for people to get books, can in effect be built in.

Image: CC licensed from Kapungo.

Technorati Tags: Mike Shatzkin,pubishing,book-pubishing,Michael Cairnes,PersonaNonData

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By David Rothman

“Three months after acknowledging multiple vulnerabilities in its popular Reader software and then patching the program, Adobe Systems Inc. yesterday finally provided some details about the bugs.” -  Adobe breaks silence on February’s PDF bugs: Flaws’ severity may have prompted silence, researcher speculates, in Computerworld.

The TeleRead take:  Go here for downloads to address Reader and Acrobat 7 and 8 problems if you haven’t already.

Question: Do you think open source readers are better or worse from a security perspective than the usual commercial products are? And might Adobe’s security problems be one reason why the IDPF should encourage the creation and development of open-source ePUB readers—whose tires can be kicked from the start, to at least reduce the possibility of surprises later on? I want to see both open source and commercial models (in this case, Adobe’s ePUB-compatible Digital Editions) thrive.

Update, 2:03 p.m.: John Dowell at Adobe offered a helpful, unofficial response to the CW article.

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By David Rothman

Yes, the actual book—the paper and cardboard—accounts for just part of what you pay at the store.

But new hikes in paper and fuel costs may make e-books more competitive with P than before. And of course we know which approach is greener.

Related: P-books as global warmers: Another argument for E. Paper books are a speck of paper consumption, but e-book readers can also display newspapers, far more villainous as polluters in P format.

And speaking of the p-to-e transition: Reluctantly, a daily stops its presses, living online, the New York Times’ write-up on the Capital Times in Madison,Wisconsin. Also see Wikipedia item.

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By David Rothman

Love the iLiad’s eight-inch screen but don’t want to pay some €650?

The silver “Book Edition,” on sale Friday, might be the answer.

It omits WiFi but comes loaded with 50 free English-language classics—in Mobi format?—and sells for €499. Among the titles are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice and Dracula.

U.S. price question

Yes, I have questions. What does the €499 mean for U.S. consumers in practical terms?

The current iLiad goes for US$699. Will the Book Edition’s price be in the lower 500s? I’ve emailed iRex Technologies.

Helping out novices

I also wonder about iRex’s documentation, based on my experiences with the older model. In iRex’s place I’d offer a simple, colorful illustrated guide, going beyond a “QuickStart” card, and distribute it on paper.

Many novices want to focus on the information, as opposed to accustoming themselves to e-reading right off the bat. Especially I’d play up how to buy books, download Mobipocket Desktop (screenshot) and synch the main PC to the iLiad.

Remember—the wireless Kindle lets you download e-books in a blink; no need to synch or use a memory card. That’s what iRex must compete against. Gang, how do you feel? Remember, iRex wants nontechies to be among the Book Edition’s buyers. What works for you, as an e-connoisseur, might not work for many bibliophiles.

Praiseworthy commitment to many formats

On the positive, beyond that awesome screen, it’s great to see iRex offering the 50 preloaded books and aiming for a lower price.

Furthermore, I like iRex’s continuation of its commitment to a choice of formats. Now supported are “PDF, PRC (Mobipocket), HTML and TXT” and “support for additional E-book formats will become available over the coming months.”

Let’s hope that the IDPF’s ePUB standard will be added shortly, and that iRex will encourage its software partners to cut back on use of DRM, so people can own their books for real.

Titles available: iRex talks about 49,000 books in Mobiformat. The Kindle has 115,000 titles, though at least some of of these are newspapers and blogs, and the screen isn’t as large or readable in general as the iLiad’s is.

Links: Press release, specs

(Thanks to Wiebe de Jager at Ebookreaders.nl and MobileRead.)

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