The theme of my talk was that ePub is easy to produce using the same skillsets that some publishers already have in-house in their IT and web departments (though there were plenty of heads shaking that they don’t have even those). There was a lot of interest in being able to use InDesign since that is a tool that a few publishers do have.

Slides follow:

Introduction to E-formats

Kindles, iPhones, Sony Readers, Google Books, e-pub, prc, DRM, no-DRM, images with OCR, page-based display vs. reflowed text . . . How do we put books in front of readers on the web? How can we get files ready for a variety of handheld devices? What will it take to get your titles into every online bookstore? Conversion experts will outline the array of e-book formats available to online readers and discuss what e-books look like, what e-books can and can’t do, and how you can prepare today’s scholarly books for tomorrow’s containers.

Moderator: Kate Davey, BiblioVault Manager, University of Chicago Press
Panelists: Liza Daly, President, Threepress Consulting Inc.; Daniel Lee, Director of Digital Content Development, Harvard University Press; Chris Palma, Strategic Partner Development Manager, Google Book Search

The session is at 5-6pm on Saturday, which means all the attendees will already be at the hotel bar. For the few who show up, I’ll be covering ePub, conversion from other formats, reflow and accessibility.