Slides and notes from my talk at BookNet Canada Tech Forum 2010 are posted.
Instead of becoming alarmed at the proliferation of ereaders and ebook softwares, designers and publishers should be thinking about the two dominant ePub reading engines: Adobe Mobile Reading SDK and WebKit.
This talk will help ebook producers understand what a reading engine is [...]
One nice feature of the Bookworm source code is that it includes a suite of test ebooks. Books which should not be processable, because they’re severely malformed, are prefaced with invalid- in the title. Other books demonstrate different characteristics. (Not all of the other books are actually valid, but their inconsistencies are minor [...]
ePubs are being created with increasingly sophisticated designs and ebook devices are becoming increasingly powerful. This creates a real tension: ePub creators want to be able to develop nuanced ebook designs using CSS, the makers of ePub reading systems face an expanding range of screen sizes (from postage stamp to poster size), and some readers [...]
We were curious about the distribution of languages for ePubs on Bookworm (Ibis Reader doesn’t yet have enough titles to be representative yet.)
The following information is derived from the dc:language field in the OPF file.
Here’s the chart:
During much of the first quarter we needed to turn folks away who were looking for help with ebook conversions and other projects, due to the demands of launching Ibis Reader.
We’re on track now to resume consulting and custom publishing software development alongside Ibis Reader, so please feel free to contact info@threepress.org for:
Ebook [...]
Publishers and authors have been asking us for an easy way to get readers started with their books in Ibis Reader. Because Ibis is a part of the Web rather than a standalone application, we can easily add an ePub book that’s available on the web with a simple URL:
http://ibisreader.com/library/add/?epub=URL-of-the-ePub
For example, to add this book [...]
The last few weeks have seen a tremendous increase in interest about ePub. Many new blog posts have been written trying to explain the format. We’ve also seen a big jump in the number of publishers coming to Threepress for help with tricky ePub problems or just asking for guidance about the format. While I’d [...]
We’re starting to share early betas of the Ibis Reader mobile UI for iPhones, Nexus Ones, and other Android devices with a limited group of testers. If you’re interested in joining the beta program and testing on other phones, tablets, and laptops, please email info@ibisreader.com. You may be asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
More [...]
Obviously I’m a fan of the ePub format. It’s flexible enough to support advanced publications, but a simple text ebook can be put together with minimal effort.
But I don’t think it’s minimal enough. If I could go back in time and be involved with ePub and its predecessors, here are the choices I’d make:
Make [...]
The ePub format allows for a fairly comprehensive set of book-friendly metadata, mostly drawn from the Dublin Core set of terms. Knowing what metadata to use and how it will appear in today’s and tomorrow’s readers is key; here are some recommendations:
Authorship
Two elements describe authorship of a work: dc:creator and dc:contributor. As you might [...]