Recently I wrote about using animations in computer ebooks and mentioned PDF as the ebook format. As a computer book author, I am considering ebooks as an easy way to package and distribute digital content. I would like to avoid the waste of unsold paper copies (not to mention the cost of printing and storing those copies) and instead deal with relatively cheap digital bits. Being new to the world of ebooks, I didn't realize that there are so many competing formats for ebooks—Adobe, Microsoft, Palm, Gemstar, Mobipocket, Plucker, and more—vying for dominance. All these competing ebook formats—reminiscent of VHS vs. Betamax (but with more choices)—is probably a good sign; that must mean there is a market out there and everyone with a viable format wants to lock in their customer base. Along with the ebook formats, there is the issue of digital rights management—DRM—that publishers want and consumers resist, for valid reasons from both perspectives.
As you might guess, the ebook format becomes a factor when you want to distribute the book. In other words, the same book that you wrote using your favorite word processor could be packaged and distributed in many different ebook formats. That's the idea behind the Open eBook Publication Structure (OEBPS) from the Open eBook Forum—a standards organization for the electronic publishing industries. According to the OEBPS FAQ, the publication structure "is an XML-based specification for the content, structure, and presentation of electronic books.... OEBPS enables you to create a single electronic representation of a publication that can be rendered by many devices." This means that I could put a book in OEBPS files and they can then be used by many different epublishing and ebook reading devices. OEBPS sounds good for the future, but what do I do until OEBPS catches on. I was hoping I could just use PDF without any encryption for computer books meant to be read on desktop or laptop computers. If the PDF ebook is priced low enough ($5 to $7.50), I think the lack of DRM should not pose a problem.
By the way, there is a relatively new project—OpenReader—aimed at creating a platform-independent open standard format for distributing digital publications. The project plans to develop an OpenReader system for reading ebooks. The OpenReader system will support OEBPS, XHTML, MathML, CSS, SVG, and much more. I can't wait to try it out, once the first version of OpenReader is released!
Note: The Teleread blog as well as the Yahoo Group eBook Community discusses OpenReader (as well as ebooks in general).
Tags: books ebooks epublishing trends OpenReader OEBPS PDF XHTML CSS MathML SVG
That's useful info.
Zam
Ray Digital - Ebook Design, Ebook Development.
http://www.raydigital.com
Posted by: Zam | June 21, 2006 at 05:39 AM
Excellent post!
In print media, digital publishing made huge difference in circulations and revenues. Survey’s also predicting that online readership is increased dramatically from the past three years and its goes on. Digital publishing becomes the revenue generation tool for the print publishers. Publishers following new technology mediums and approaching the companies like http://www.pressmart.net to distribute their publications over the new mediums and it’s worked well!
Posted by: John smith | April 25, 2008 at 07:22 AM
Your blog is interesting!
Keep up the good work!
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Posted by: i3 Laptops | June 07, 2011 at 11:14 AM