ePUB 3

1

How did we get here and why is it taking

so long to get anywhere else?

Nic Gibson, 26/02/2016

nicg@corbas.co.uk / @CorbasLtd

JIBS

Background

• Multimedia

• New media technology

• Publishing

• XML…

• eBooks

• Consultancy

• Training

2

Overview

• A brief history of ePUB

• The state of the game

• Why isn’t everyone happy?

• Where is EPUB heading?

• What can we do?

3

A brief history

How did this start?

• eBooks are old

• Enciclopedia Mecánica, 1949 Spain

• Doña Angela Ruiz Robles

• Mass take up of eBooks took until

2006/7

• Amazon’s Kindle kickstarted the

market

5

ePUB History

1999 — Open eBook Publication Standard

2007 — EPUB 2.0

2010 — EPUB 2.01

2011 — EPUB 3.0

2014 — EPUB 3.01

2016 — EPUB 3.1

6

ePUB 2.0

• First truly successful format

• Along with Kindle, launched the eBook revolution

• Suffered from

• poor reading devices

• poor implementations

7

ePUB 3.0• Update of ePUB 2.0

• Added

• good metadata

• scripting

• fixed layouts

• rigour in definition

• maths

8

Where are we now?

9

State of the game

• Most eBooks sold in academic and trade are ePUB

2/3 hybrids

• Little advantage take of the ePUB 3 features

• Things remain hard

• try reliably doing Maths

• Walled gardens still dominate

• Open access exists but it’s not EPUB based

• Knowledge Unlatched

10

As a reader

• Can you annotate easily?

• Do your equations work?

• There are 63 devices listed on epubtest.org

• None of them are 100% compliant with EPUB 3.0

• You will never have heard of most of the devices

11

As a library

• PDF is a preferred distribution format in many cases

• Publishers have difficulty with lending concepts with

eBooks

• ePUB requires a new set of tools for the reader

12

Why isn’t everyone

happy?

13

The industry

• Publishers wouldn’t commit without devices

• Device manufacturers would commit without content

• Walled gardens make publishers happy

• Proprietary formats

• Web based readers

• The tablet is killing the dedicated reader

• Amazon

14

Readers and Features

• Device support is still erratic

• MathML support is not reliable

• Indexes are supported poorly

15

The quality

• eBook production is a commodity for many

publishers

• Outsourcing has caused a skills crisis in many

publishers

• Few major publishers create their own eBooks

• Quality control is … lacking

16

The missed opportunities

• eBooks gave publishing the opportunity to do

something new

“Publishing is a very conservative industry. eBooks are

the first new thing we have done since the introduction

of the paperback”

Publisher, Penguin Books, 2007

• Publishers primarily decided that moving into

eBooks was exciting enough, anything more was …

too outré

17

What holds us back?

18

“The demands for the features offered by

ePub3.0 exist in the education, STM and

training markets, where HTML5 is taking over

and is being customised to serve proprietary

reading systems and platforms”Walter Walker, President CodeMantra, January 2016

Where is ePUB going?

19

ePUB 3.1

• A major update

• Designed to drive adoption by simplifying

requirements

• Support HTML

• Simplified metadata requirements

• Legacy EPUB 2.0 support removed

• Due by end of 2016

20

ePUB and the Open Web

• Co-ordination between the W3C and the IDPF

• A packaging model for the web

• allow all of the power of the Open Web Platform to

support the activities of readers

• Rich media support in books!

• Support the blurring of the distinction between books

and applications

21

What can we do?

• Define the need

• It is not clear from the publishing side what the

customer wants

• Join in

• The IDPF is cheap to join

• The membership list is dominated by suppliers not

consumers