new ebook formats

[Leonard]

Unless one was talking about enhanced ebooks - which relied mostly on
the muscle of the reading device to render it properly - ebooks in
general, those that catered to readers using the "lesser devices", the
Kindle included, had to contend with plain, drab looking ebooks.
Appearance was sacrificed for flexibility so that the book appeared
mostly uniform on most devices. That seems to be changing with the
introduction of new standards that might actually improve the
appearance of ebooks.

http://onehourselfpub.com/kf8-epub3

However, the question remains of how much attention should publishing
houses pay to these advances in technologies? Should publishing houses
have their own development teams or should they outsource them to
"ebook developers"? And should publishers respond to every change that
the likes of Amazon and Apple introduce, spending a lot of money in
skill upgradation in the process, or should there be a line drawn
somewhere?

Thoughts?

- Leonard Fernandes
+91-98503 98530

[Dilip Kumar]

Hi Leonard,

This is a very important question , and no easy answers.

eBook standards have for long been a subject of intense debate - we
have had PDF's , EPUB , .PRC , .LRF .LIT and many more created by
device manufacturers and some by DRM companies.

The various decision making factors for following a specific eBook
standard , in my view :

1. Reader audience - regional , global , country specific
2. Content - plain text fiction , children's books , travelogues ,
technical etc
3. Platform that your reader will read on - PC , tablet , mobile of e-
Ink device
4. Price at which the eBook will sell , or free distribution as the
option


With new standards coming out this year , a Publisher can go two
ways :

a. Create or buy a workflow system that supports Book creation for
print and digital standards - this requires investment , a little bit
of learning curve and time to get your book library transferred to
this system. In most cases legacy print book creation suites have now
upgraded themselves for the digital publishing standards , so look for
upgrade options which would be cheaper. There are various solutions at
different price ppoints , even some which would be based on a pay per
use license. With such a system a publisher can continue with
tradition print books , standard ePubs , while start looking at
options for migration based on content type , market need etc.
b. Work with ePublishing partners whose main business is creation and
conversion of content. However pure eBook conversion is no more a
lucrative business as you can get quite a bit done free if you are
ready to publish through a vendor. I don't think any Publisher in
India should pay for eBook creation anymore ! There are companies that
do eBook creation for you at almost free rates , if you also allow
them to sell your eBooks :-) This will be the model to go forward. If
you are a publisher and also an online retailer , then this may not
work for you.
c. Use insourced eBook experts to implement custom solution - these
experts can implement a light ePublishing system tailored for your
requirements and size which your book creators can use.
d. Use internal resources and low cost software - This is an option
if you have technical guys who can create home-made solutions that can
help create eBooks in most of the standards. This is advisable for
startup publishing companies with less than 20 titles or so.

I feel the best way is to create an infrastructure in the publishing
company that allows one workflow - Write a book , distribute through
many - print , Kindle , IPAD , App , PC version etc.
How that infrastructure can be created is based on budget , return on
sales projected from the new eBooks , future roadmap etc etc.

Just my two cents on this , though I am a learner in this field and no
expert :-)

Cheers

Dilip