Resources for EPUB and eBook creation

Author Liz Castro has a number of great resources available for those interested in creating eBooks in the open EPUB format. This is of special interest to those who want to use Adobe InDesign for this task. I used her book EPUB Straight to the Point as a text for a graduate course at SJSU I co-taught on this subject. If this interests you in the slightest, I urge you to check out this link.

EPUB for documentation

I think a very useful case for the EPUB eBook format is for developing documentation. Documentation is more than telling people how to use computers.

PDF is good and useful, but one problem with PDF is that it is limited to a computer or paper and there are plenty of instances where that is less than ideal. For example, an owner's manual for a car. Who wants to carry around a huge book in their car or have to drag their laptop to their front seat to be able to figure out how to program their navigation system. With EPUB you could put your owner's manual in your smart phone in a way that has a table of contents and is searchable.

Good deal on EPUB book this week

Peachpit Press's eBook Deal of the Week, for this week, is EPUB Straight to the Point: Creating ebooks for the Apple iPad and other ereaders, by Elizabeth Castro. This book is recommended. It has a great introduction to EPUB as well as workflows for creating EPUBs from Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign.

Normally $23.99 it is on sale this week only for $9.99.

I strongly recommend checking this out if you are interested in producing books, documentation, course readers or other eBook type content in EPUB format. It does not cover the Sigil workflow, should you choose to go that route. But, there is still plenty of useful information here, especially at that price point.

More information on EPUB is in this post.

Adding EPUBs & PDFs to iBooks App for iPhone or iPad

Have the EPUB somewhere on your computer where you can navigate to it. This may require downloading it from an external source.

In iTunes, select the file menu, File > Add to Library

This then opens up the Add To Library navigation box:

Select and Choose the Title you wish to add.

Now be sure the Books > Sync Books setting for your iPhone / iPad is either set to All Books or Selected Books with the title you wish to have on that device selected.

Now, Sync your iPhone / iPad

New Adobe suite for moving publications to iPad

According to a post written by Terri Stone on Creativepro.com, "you can go from InDesign to iPad using tools that are now available in beta form on Adobe Labs. The full suite will ship next year, but be warned -- it won't be cheap." Stone said:

It's no secret that the iPad versions of Wired and The New Yorker were created using private, prerelease versions of Adobe software. The prerelease program wasn't limited to big corporations; CreativePro.com's sister publication, InDesign Magazine, used the prerelease software for its iPad app, too. But details about the process have been sketchy -- until now. [Read More]

Adobe estimates that it will release the full Digital Publishing Suite sometime between April and July of next year.

EPUB3; The evolution of the EPUB standard

The EPUB (short for electronic publication) format is evolving. The next iteration of EPUB is called EPUB3, by Liza Daly. Listen here to her presentation at the O'Reilly Tools of Change Frankfurt 2010 conference on October 5, 2010.

According to Daly, topics covered in the talk include:

• The current state of the EPUB3 working groups and overall schedule.
• Enhancements to worldwide language support, including vertical text.
• Native multimedia and HTML5 video/audio.
• Interactivity, and the UI and accessibility challenges it imposes.
• Improved styling and layout via CSS3 and media-query.

Listen here to her presentation if you are interested in the direction this format is taking.

The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) is a trade and standards organization dedicated to the development and promotion of electronic publishing and content consumption. The IDPF develops and maintains the EPUB content publication standard that enables the creation and transport of reflowable digital books and other types of content as digital publications that are interoperable between disparate EPUB-compliant reading devices and applications. EPUB is a free and open e-book standard by the IDPF. Files have the extension .epub.

Liza Daly, of Threepress Consulting Inc., is a member of the IDPF Board of Directors.

Commentary: Books, paper vs. electronic

I am a lover of the printed page. Yet, I have many eBooks and have read several novels on my iPad. I am reading one now. I find reading an eBook to be equally satisfying as reading a print book as far as book as a reading experience.

Bookstores? I love bookstores, Green Apple Books in San Francisco, Powell's in Portland, Elliott Bay Books in Seattle are all places I can get lost in.

But, let's not talk about paper books and bookstores; let's talk about film photography and camera stores. I love film photography. I have old press cameras that are older than I am. I love being in darkrooms and going to camera stores and talking about film and developers and photo techniques that do not involve computers. But, despite that passion; camera stores are almost gone. Film is not dead; but it is not mainstream either.

You could also say similar things about vinyl record stores. To be sure, vinyl records are not dead and there are still vendors that specialize in meeting the needs, wants and desires of those folks who prefer the old ways. But, to most people camera stores and records shops are just plain retro.

I prefer eBooks to printed books for technical publications. For reference books I find eBooks have it all over paper. I resent technical books that are not available electronically; I find them to be so inconvenient. I can have my whole technical library with me on my iPad, iPhone and all the computers I use; all at the same time. Paper technical books go out of date in two years and are virtually worthless. To me, that is really a waste of good trees.

So, in my opinion, for novels either paper or electronic is fine, for technical books I prefer electronic, for art "coffee table" books I prefer paper! I could go on. I think in ten years we will be looking at paper books like we now look at vinyl records and photo film. They will still be a passion for some; but for most they will just be a retro decorating accessory. Most folks who have them will have maybe a few around, just to impress our friends.

Thinking about the future of publishing

In my opinion, to quote Stewart Brand at the first Hackers' Conference in 1984, "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."

What we are going to be seeing with EPUB as an open format, the Internet as a distribution method and iPads and other devices as consumption devices is a huge push toward the free side of the equation in the book industry. Making and distributing a book is going to be dirt cheap compared to traditional paper based publishing.

The question is establishing value. This is the challenge to journalists already, and will be to book publishers and librarians. In a sea of free information and the potential for that wave, that has already hit newspapers, to start washing over the book publishing industry the whole idea of monetization has to change. To make money you will have to be really, really useful. If you are not you will be routed around. You will have to find another monetization strategy, a way to embrace free.

EPUB vs. PDF on a Mobile Device

Focusing on the iPad and iPhone, EPUB is only one of the two formats Apple's iBooks application supports. The other is Portable Document Format (PDF). PDF is an open standard for document exchange. PDF was created by Adobe Systems in 1993. PDF is used for representing two-dimensional (2D) documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a fixed-layout 2D document that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2D vector graphics, which compose the documents. Lately, 3D drawings can also be embedded in PDF documents.



Image: PDF on an iPhone (Click image to enlarge.)

PDF is designed to reproduce page images. PDF text traditionally could not be re-flowed to fit the screen width or size. As a result PDF files designed for printing on standard paper sizes are less easily viewed on screens with limited size or resolution, such as those found on mobile phones and PDAs. Adobe has addressed this by adding a re-flow facility to its Acrobat Reader software, but for this to work the document must be marked for re-flowing at creation, which means that existing PDF documents will not benefit unless they are tagged and resaved.

PDF documents can be read on an iPad. That is great for access to legacy and transitional documents. But, if you are hoping to have your eBook reach a larger audience, consider EPUB.



Image: EPUB on an iPhone (Click image to enlarge.)

A great source for much of this post and recommended reading is Elizabeth Castro's great book, EPUB Straight to the Point: Creating ebooks for the Apple iPad and other ereaders, published by Peachpit Press in both print and electronic editions.

Introducing EPUB

Yesterday I posted my cookbook for using the free EPUB creator Sigil to produce eBooks in the EPUB format. But, why would you want to produce them in EPUB format. Indeed, what is EPUB?

The EPUB (short for electronic publication) format is a free and an open standard for e-books. EPUB is the most widely accepted format for eBooks. The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) is the trade and standards association for the digital publishing industry that developed and maintains the EPUB standard. You can find the official specifications for EPUB documents on the IDPF website.

In essence an EPUB document is a specially constructed zip file with the .EPUB extension. You can reflow the content of an EPUB document into any size display screen, from a phone to a tablet to a desktop monitor. EPUB also allows for the generation of a navigational table of contents.

The content of a book formatted with EPUB is contained in XHTML and CSS files, which may reference images and embedded fonts, and can be encrypted with DRM.

The pages in an EPUB document are written in XHTML which is a special flavor of HTML. The EPUB file also contains a series of XML files that help format the book so that it can be properly read by an eReader.

There are a number of tools that can generate EPUB files for you, either from plain text, from XHTML, from Microsoft Word, or even from Adobe InDesign. The tool I use for creating EPUB eBooks is Sigil. Sigil is a basic WYSIWYG EPUB editor that works for producing basic EPUB eBooks. If you want to go beyond basic, in these early days when EPUB tools are less than perfect, it's a good idea to know what's going on under the hood so that you can go in and make necessary adjustments.

For example, Word doesn't export drop caps, but you can edit the XHTML files by hand to allow them. InDesign doesn't export text wrap with its EPUB documents, but you can set up the files so that a quick edit to the XHTML achieves that aim. Just like working on a Web page, the more you work using any tool to generate EPUB documents, the more you will want to be able to get to the code and be able to tweak it.

Besides the iBooks application that Apple provides for the iPhone, iPod touch and of course the iPad. EPUB is supported by other devices and client applications including the Barnes and Noble Nook, and the Sony Reader. The Amazon Kindle, at the time of this writing, does not support EPUB. EPUB is supported on desktop and laptop computers using Adobe Digital Editions (which is free) and on various platform smart phones including Android and Blackberry using products like Lucidor, Stanza, Ibis Reader, Aldiko and Mobipocket. EPUB can be considered a write once read on (almost) any device eBook format.

A great source for much of this post and recommended reading is Elizabeth Castro's great book, EPUB Straight to the Point: Creating ebooks for the Apple iPad and other ereaders, published by Peachpit Press in both print and electronic editions.

My eBook cookbook for making eBooks

Using Sigil, a free EPUB editor, to make an eBook

What is Sigil?
According to the Sigil Website, "Sigil is a multi-platform WYSIWYG ebook editor. It is designed to edit books in ePub format." Yes, it is all that, and it's free!

Why would you want to make an eBook?
Well, imagine being able to do a course reader, documentation, a family history or that novel you have been wanting to write (and have no publisher for) and being able to distribute it yourself to the world in a format that can be legibly read by almost all computers, tablets, iPads, eBook readers (except Kindle) and smart phones including iPhone, Android and Blackberry.

Why would I make an eBook about how to use a computer to make eBooks?
Because it can be hard use your computer to read an online Website about how to do something with your computer, when you are trying to use that computer to do that something. Now you can use your iPhone, Android or Blackberry, iPad or other device (except Kindle) to read the cookbook.

Here are links to my eBook Cookbook and to some Sigil and EPUB resources:

• My eBook EPUB Sigil Cookbook
• Sigil download Website
• Sigil Tutorial
• Sigil Documentation
• Adobe Digital Editions, free software for reading EPUB documents on your desktop or laptop computer
• Elizabeth Castro's great book, EPUB Straight to the Point: Creating ebooks for the Apple iPad and other ereaders

Comments and corrections are greatly appreciated and can be emailed to me at s_sloan@mac.com or posted here on this blog post.

Why Free eBooks Make Sense

A printed book requires a considerable investment in printing, binding and distribution. Since costs are high to get products in the hands of consumers, authors have to either spend a lot of their own money to get titles to market, have backers or have to get publishers to be willing to take a chance to print the books. Risk is involved, all parties proceed with hopes of making enough money off book sales to recoup printing costs and, hopefully, make a profit.

The barrier to entry is much lower for authors of eBooks. Using commonly available computer tools it is viable to print and distribute your own titles directly to readers over the Internet. eBooks can be consumed on devices ranging from cell phones to eBook readers to desktop computers. This can be very empowering for niche publications. Yes, Digital Rights management (DRM) is possible with EPUB formatted content, but like open source software, it may be preferable to make money off of free distribution of open source eBooks by making money off of related products or services.

There may be other business models where it could be advantageous to give the books away rather than charge for them. Since the production and distribution costs can be so low, it may be possible to profit through ad revenue. Author/publishers could include pages of advertising in eBooks, targeted to the reader demographics of a particular eBook title. If such a book proved popular it may be possible to gain further revenue by marketing spin-off merchandise.

Imagine, for example, an e-publisher giving away Harry Potter type eBooks and making the money off of movie sales, toys and related goods. That is not that hard for me to imagine.

Tablets to outsell eReaders

Flipboard on an iPad. Tablets do a lot more than eReaders and folks seem to get that!
Click on photo to enlarge.

According to James Kendrick on Gigaom:

Tablets that serve multiple purposes are going to see tremendous growth according to UK analyst firm Informa Telecoms and Media, as consumers choose them over dedicated e-readers such as Amazon’s Kindle. Tablet sales are projected to hit 50 million by 2014, a whopping increase of over 1200 percent over the 3.65 million to be sold this year. [Read More]

As more people have them and use them. Thanks to great device specific applications and Twitter as a content streaming and shaping tool, I predict the emergence of these devices as a whole new tech tool will really be understood and appreciated.