TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Jon Noring’ Category

By Jon Noring

I have been quite perplexed in reading the many comments about IDPF’s “ePub” format following the release late last year of its underlying specs. A number of very smart people, including several developers who naturally dig deeply into tech specs, have painted ePub as a dark and mysterious digital publication (e-book) format, unlike anything else in the Universe™.

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:

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By Jon Noring

When I was in college I collected 78 RPM phonograph records, primarily jazz records from the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. Either I was good at collecting, or just lucky. I found and acquired several large jazz and blues collections (a total of over 100,000 records, about 25 tons, passed through my fingers), and didn’t lose a dime in the process.

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.

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By Jon Noring

AAP’s recent open letter strongly supporting the use of ePub by publishers was covered by David Rothman in a separate blog article.

Reading the letter, it was unclear to me whether AAP supported ePub as a consumer format. The letter focused mostly on using ePub as an intermediary format to be converted by wholesalers and retailers into various proprietary end-user formats currently in vogue.

The letter did imply support of ePub as a consumer format, by the use of the word “IF” in the second paragraph, but it was not explicit and some might have interpreted the letter differently. If so, they should read the clarification by Ed McCoyd, the Director of Digital Policy at AAP, who signed the AAP open letter. With his permission I am quoting part of his reply to the letter I wrote him:

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By Jon Noring

Since interest in the new IDPF EPub e-book open standard appears to be growing by leaps and bounds, I’ve started a new Yahoo Group for detailed discussions about EPub, called EPub Community.

EPub Community is intended for publication creators, developers, readers, and anyone else interested in all things related to EPub and the IDPF specifications which underlie EPub (OPS/OPF/OCF). Although the group’s focus is likely to be fairly technical, we certainly invite and encourage non-technical discussions. More generic discussions about e-books, and other non-EPub-related discussions, can happen at Book Futures, The eBook Community or Digital Text Community.

Subscription info: Sign up via the Web or send a blank e-mail to epub-community-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

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By David Rothman

Baen has partly crowd-sourced the selection of manuscripts. But what about the ultimate crowd-sourcing—letting buyers choose from an enlarged pool of books? Can the right Web-tools then enable customers to find the right gems? It’s a debate now happening on the eBook Community list. See list moderator and TeleBlog contributor Jon Noring’s initial post and responses from Zumaya Publications Executive Editor Elizabeth K. Burton, publishing consultant Marion Gropen and others.

My take: We need a variety of business models and book selection methods. Can we automate the search for the next Moby Dick? I’ve told of the potential of algorithms, but they’re just one tool to consider, especially when looking for works of literary distinction.

Popularity: 4% [?]

By Jon Noring

Moderator’s note: Great timing, Jon. I’ve just posted The Triumph of social sites: Publishers, listen up! Annotation-style capabilities, of course, will make in-book communities possible. - D.R.

David Rothman recently called on IDPF to develop an open standard, third-party annotation and linking format. I’ve previously written about the need for such a standard in two TeleRead articles [1, 2]. Hopefully the third time will be a charm!

The need for such a standard is pretty obvious. Various companies are already implementing their own proprietary standards for third-party annotation of, and linking between, digital media such as books, music, video, etc. Annotation and linking of content (no matter the type of content) is rapidly becoming a vital and fundamental component of interactivity with content, being of great value to business, academia, education, libraries and archives, social networking, etc.

Thus it is important for interoperability (that is, to prevent another Tower of eBabel) to have a single, well-designed, open standard format for third-party annotation and linking. From my research in this area, I have not yet found a developed standard suitable for this purpose (but if one exists, let me know, please!)

“Real-World” example: Annotating an e-book

Because the above introduction is a tad theoretical, let me give a fun “real-world” example to better illustrate what I’m discussing:

Mary is sitting on the beach reading a steamy romance novel on her e-book reading device (e.g., laptop computer, or dedicated e-book reader.) In a particular scene of the story, she is introduced to a character named “Charles,” about whom she really would like to share her thoughts with others. For example, she might want to share something relatively academic like “Charles reminds me of a character right out of a 19th century English novel,” or maybe something a little more earthy and personal like “Wow, Charles is a real hunk!” (I’m not sure if “Charles” can be both!)

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By Jon Noring

(This article announces the launch of the Digital Text Community, a new mailing list for serious discussion on the digitization of “ink-on-paper” texts, such as books, periodicals, documents, etc. Please join our community!)

Like many of you, I daily follow and contribute to dozens of blogs, mailing lists and forums to keep abreast of digital publication related news, opinions, and developments.

David Rothman should be happy to know that the TeleRead blog is the first place I go to every day to stay up-to-the-minute on digital publishing news and views.

Considering the vast number of blogs, mailing lists, and forums on the Internet, one wonders if there’s any topic which is not somehow covered in some way, including topics in digital publishing.

“Digital Text Community” launched

Recently, it became clear that for one topic, the digitization of “ink-on-paper” texts, there indeed was a void. Certainly there are discussion forums associated with specific projects to digitize texts (e.g., Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders.) However, these forums tend to be for in-house project planning and not intended to be neutral meeting places for the many independent projects (both non-profit and commercial) which are digitizing “ink-on-paper” texts. (Yes, Martha, there’s a LOT more going on than just Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders!)

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By David Rothman

Millions of elderly people suffer from fading vision. And large-print books are not always nirvana—not when many retirees also have arthritis, which makes it hard for them to hold the books and flip pages.

With the above in mind, the TeleBlog will soon publish an important essay from Isabelle Fetherston, the reference librarian behind Senior Friendly Libraries, who shares my enthusiasm for e-books as potential life-enrichers for the elderly. May library-related sites and senior citizens’ groups spread Isabelle’s message! Read on, and you’ll see that my own interest in these issues is personal, not just professional. [Update, Dec. 12, 2007: Isabelle’s essay is now here.]

The bottom line: Patron choice—and people ahead of medium!

Granted, many in the library community fear that E will drive out P. I myself doubt that will happen soon. Whether it does or not, something counts more than cardboard and ink and glue—and that’s the words, the stories, the facts, the emotions, in books.

Without E available, millions of seniors will be left out of the world of text, given the limits of large-print books, ranging from price to scarcity to their challenges for people with arthritis.

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By David Rothman

Good-bye hard disks? Hello, your own Library of Congress? Well, we’re not there yet. But in the next few years, a new technology could lead to thumb-sized solid state drives storing a terabyte each. Power consumption might be one-thousandth of flash memory and costs perhaps one-tenth. Just the ticket for multimedia e-books, eh? Or even high-res movies inside them?

In between his CSSing for the TeleBlog, Jon Noring took time out for some calculations. He figured that 20 million books exist in the world and that 18,000 of these drives would do the trick for high-res images of them.

If nothing else, imagine the benefits for the One Laptop Per Child project. Even without WiFi, kids in mountains and remote jungles could enjoy immediate access to huge collections of knowledge—well, budgets and copyright gods permitting. Perhaps the already-available info would be the equivalent of a cache, reducing the need for new downloading when WiFi was available.

The gobbledygook for the technology is programmable metallization cell (PMC), and Wired News has the details, inspiring the inevitable Slashdotting.

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By David Rothman

Along with Boing Boing, Wonkette and other well-known blogs, we’ve made Blogging Heroes—Michael Banks’ book, which Wiley will publish later this year. Mike likes our fight for e-book standards and against Draconian DRM, in addition to our library-related efforts.

You can read Mike’s TeleBlog chapter—which Wiley sent with permission to reproduce it—in either HTML or PDF. Order the book here.

Because of the nature of Blogging Heroes, Mike focused on me. So once again, I’ll remind you of the contributions of others, especially Robert Nagle, Branko Collins, Jon Noring and Garson O’Toole, not to mention Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti and newcomers such as Paul Biba.

Update: Robert and I will be accepting sponsors and advertisers to keep the blog sustainable without charging readers or going through the standard hassles of the usual nonprofits. The big condition, in every case, will be that people not lean on us to water down our stands. Publishers Weekly, our newest partner, has let me write exactly what I want in E-Book Report. Stay tuned for a PW blog post later this week on “DRM as a lit and biz toxin” (just David speaking for David).

Technorati Tags: Mike Banks , Michael Banks , Blogging Heroes , TeleRead

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By David Rothman

The Web site of Publishers Weekly, the powerful 135-year-old bible of book publishing, has started running news and views I adapt from the TeleBlog.

I’ll also write some PW-first items, online and offline, and will welcome suggestions from the e-book community.

PW’s home page will spotlight my E-Book Report blog at least 2-3 times a week, and I hope that TeleBlog regulars will drop by to enrich my posts with their own insights. Commenters don’t have to work in publishing or agree with me. The only musts are civility and fairness.

P-E bridges

Also known as the TeleRead Web Log, we draw tens of thousands of e-book lovers each month and are read not just in the public domain and open source communities but also at major companies such as Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Oxford University Press. Not to mention our much-appreciated participants from smaller houses such as Books for a Buck and Drollerie Press. So the PW alliance is natural one. Meanwhile thanks to Robert Nagle, Branko Collin, Garson O’Toole, Jon Noring and others whose posts—sometimes in line with mine, sometimes fervently not—have helped us reach our present level.

My own personal vision over the years has been to build bridges between E and P. Despite my years-long campaign for free e-books via well-stocked libraries, I’ve always cared about the little detail of fair compensation for writers and publishers (as well as about e-stores—to assure the widest-possible choice of books). The PW gig is a paid one.

Same TeleTude

These past few days, I’ve been busy seeding E-Book Report with posts for you to comment on. My ‘tude in PW is the same as here, especially on DRM matters.

I hope you’ll jump in while keeping in mind PW’s different, less technical audience and the need to explain tech terms. That’s A Good Thing. Let’s share our enthusiasm with e-book newsbies in publishing. Be tactful and patient with them, DRM boosters included. Ideally all sides in the debate will learn from each other.

My PW posts so far:

–Parts I and II of “Feed Ed’s e-cats? Best-sellers out of tested ’slush’?”—complete with a photo of Ed Howdershelt with “Muffin” and “Bear.” The post is pro-Ed. As a successful E writer with crossover potential, he deserves a chance in P. Later I’ll mention other candidates for Big New York Publishers, or BNYPs as they say on the eBook Community list.

–The joys of e-book ownership. I did the library-in-your-hand routine and shared a few choice words about the anti-ownership technology known as DRM. I’d welcome some positive e-book stories in your comments—and why it’s better if  you can own books for real. Would you like to be able to pass on all your e-titles to your children, for example? I’m not saying that ownership should be the only option. But if we’re going to take e-books seriously as a medium, it had better be one.

-Parts I and II of “Why you should care about E–even if e-books now disappoint us.” No miracles promised, but I give four reasons for long-term financial growth–Topic A for publishers, even though I remain just as interested as ever in the social benefits of e-books. (more…)

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By David Rothman

E-bookers should watch the IDPF carefully to make certain that neither Adobe nor any other company turns .epub into a proprietary standard through extensions or otherwise. But guess what one of the best countermeasures is? Use of .epub! And noticing suspicious situations and pointing out omissions, which ideally the IDPF can address in time—for example, lack of reliable interbook linking!

Readers and publishers of all kinds, then, not just public domain people but also Random House and little publishers, should thank the open-source-based Feedbooks site where co-founders Hadrien Gardeur and Loïc Roussel are fighting the good fight for genuine compatibility and setting a good example.

Tolstoy and scores of other writers already in .epub

From Tolstoy to Orson Wells and Creative Commons-licensed writer Cory Doctorow, Hadrien and Loïc now offer scores of authors via a beta treatment of the .epub format. Hadrien has invited e-bookers to sample his free wares, and, yes, when I used the easy-to-install OpenBerg plug-in for Firefox, things went smoothly. Page transitions via the space bar were a little sluggish, but that’s very possibly a Firefox thing rather than an OpenBerg problem. I may update this item when I’ve sampled the Feedbook offerings further. Bottom line: the .epub action now indisputably extends beyond dotReader and Adobe Digital Editions and other commercial products. (Update, 5:12 p.m.: I should have mentioned the wonderful FBReader, too, especially since it’s the program  I use on my Nokia 770.)

Congratulations to OpenBerg, of course—see OpenBerg-related threads at MobileRead. Yes, I know. OpenBerg in its present form isn’t the ultimate e-book reader; I don’t know if it plays well with CSS, for example. But it’s a great start, a wonderful way to begin to befriend .epub. I hope that someday Firefox and all other popular browsers can come with native .epub capabilities, or at least that many more .epub add-ons will show up for browsers. (more…)

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