Entries tagged with “idpf” from Tools of Change for Publishing

News Roundup: Digging Around Amazon's Topaz Format, Twitter Novels, June Ebook Sales Up 87% Over '07

Mac Slocum
September 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Digging Around Amazon's Topaz File Format

Late Night Code is popping the hood on Topaz, that mysterious "other" file format used on the Kindle:

Mobipocket files purchased from Amazon have an AZW extension (which presumably stands for Amazon Whispernet - the name of the Kindle wireless download service). Mobipocket files from other sources will have a MOBI or PRC extension. Topaz files will have an AZW1 extension if downloaded directly to the Kindle, and a TPZ extension if downloaded from Your Media Library on Amazon.com.

Writing Novels with Twitter

ReadWriteWeb has a brief survey of mini serialized novels in the U.S.:

In Japan, mobile phone novels called "keitai shousetsu" have become so successful that they accounted for half of the ten best-selling novels in 2007. Here in the Western world several would-be novelists are attempting to use Twitter to create the same phenomenon. Some of the novels tweeted so far have been interesting and engaging, but others, sadly, appear to be abandoned. Will micro-format fiction ever take off here as it did in Japan?

June '08 Ebook Sales Up 87% Over June '07

Wholesale trade ebook sales accounted for $4.9 million in June '08, according to industry stats from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). This is an 87 percent increase over June '07. Year-to-date ebook sales are up 43 percent over last year.

Note: The AAP/IDPF stats aggregate information from 12-15 trade publishers and reflect wholesale sales figures in the U.S.

Related:

• See more publishing news and insight in the TOC News section

IDPF: Boundaries of Participation

Peter Brantley
May 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

I wanted to add a few of my own thoughts to Andrew's last post on the AAP and the IDPF. I agree that there is too much emphasis on a replication of the print page, and too little engagement in re-envisioning the product so that it supports a diversity of distribution channels and ultimately, product conceptualizations. For that matter, many of us will still opt for some form of print manifestation, for some classes of this content. But regardless, publishers are aware at least cognitively of these transformations, as Sara Lloyd of Pan Macmillan witnesses in her recent manifesto. Indeed, DAISY is not the only actor that is encouraging IDPF to adopt a more profound engagement with newer presentation technologies and a greater diversity in the expectations for interaction, collaboration, and sharing.

One of the harder equations to solve is where the support for some of the features Andrew mentions should actually be located -- are they format bound? What is the value in specifying an explicit framework that supports (e.g.) OpenID and OpenSocial for collaborative reading of texts (viz. texts broadly defined)? How much of that should be a normative consideration of the application environment, vs. how much in a schema? Perhaps we rather need to participate more outbound such that libraries and publishers more actively engage in efforts like OpenSocial and DataPortability, to bring the changing needs of our served communities into those dialogues.

Organizationally, how do publishers and libraries become the type of enterprises where that kind of open technical and policy engagement is not only tolerated but endorsed as a normal run of business, instead of being perceived as a perfidious seduction?

I don't have either cleverness or answers, but I do wonder what goes into the IDPF's court as a work product, and what goes into the court of our community as a responsibility to redefine and rescale the boundaries of the world of participation.

Responses and Additional Coverage:

• Original Post: "AAP Passive-Aggressively Endorses EPUB"
• Bill McCoy Response: "AAP EPUB Endorsement On Target"
• TOC Response to McCoy: "Another Perspective on the AAP/EPUB Endorsement"

Another Perspective on the AAP/EPUB Endorsement

Andrew Savikas
May 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Adobe's Bill McCoy has responded to my post on the AAP's endorsement of the EPUB format over on his blog:

Andrew says he's "not clear why it's the IDPF's problem to deal with conversion into non-standard formats" and quality assurance of the results. But this is the AAP, comprised solely of publishers, speaking to the IDPF, a broader group that in particular includes the eBook format and device vendors. It seems perfectly appropriate for AAP to make sure it's on record with vendors that the job isn't done just in having a neutral open standard for intermediate distribution of reflow-centric content. Ideally all the proprietary distribution formats will go away over time, but meantime the conversions and resulting quality issues are very real.

Bill's response is reasoned and thorough, and raises understandable objections to my original post. And the root of my objection to the AAP's approach is summed up nicely in how Bill concludes his post:

It's been over six months since EPUB 1.0 was approved, so from where I sit, it's not too overly demanding for the AAP to start asking the IDPF "what have you done for me lately?".

My concern is that by spending energy and resources working to satisfy publishers concerned primarily with replicating a print experience (something I contend is unnecessary for the vast majority of books published today), the opportunity cost is measured in lost energy and effort that should be directed toward building knowledge and capabilities for true digital publishing.

When I read between the lines of the AAP's letter, it's something like: "EPUB still isn't as good as PDF as far as we're concerned, and we want you to keep working to make it more faithful to our printed pages." But to me, EPUB is so extraordinary because it brings books that much closer to the richness of the Web. What are the standards and best practices for incorporating live web content into ebooks? Where's the framework for incorporating Google's new Friend Connect or OpenID into ebooks (so I know which of my friends is also reading the book)? What about a standard or mechanism for aggregating annotations and comments from ebook readers? To me, these are the kinds of questions publishers should be asking and the IDPF should at least help in answering.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Bill, and for the IDPF. I just think the AAP is misguided in asking them to make ebooks work more like print books, rather than how to make ebooks work more like the web.

Responses and Additional Coverage:

• Original Post: "AAP Passive-Aggressively Endorses EPUB"
• Bill McCoy Response: "AAP EPUB Endorsement On Target"
• Peter Brantley Response: "IDPF: Boundaries of Participation"

AAP Passive-Aggressively Endorses EPUB

Andrew Savikas
May 15, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Note: Most of this post was drafted on the train ride back from New York on Wednesday night, and I held off posting it because I thought it sounded too snarky. Well, a day later I still think it sounds snarky, but that's a consequence of how strongly I feel about this stuff. I really do have a lot of respect for the publishers named in the AAP letter's footnote, many of whom are experimenting and innovating in a lot of very interesting ways. I have no idea who suggested those caveats, or more importantly, who insisted on them, just that they really don't belong there in the first place. Note that O'Reilly is not a member of the AAP. You've been warned, snarkiness ahead... 

Timed with yesterday's IDPF's Digital Book 2008, the AAP (Association of American Publishers) has put out a letter in support of the EPUB format (that the letter is posted as the scan of a printed letter is certainly amusing, and also quite telling). While this is a positive development, the "yes, but..." part of the letter reveals a subtle lack of understanding on the part of AAP (not the first time -- two weeks ago at OnCopyright 2008, AAP VP Allan Adler said that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all have the same "database" and Google Book Search was how Google was trying to differentiate itself; also not the first time we've disagreed with the AAP).

In particular, the AAP highlights three issues that they "encourage the IDPF to work with its member organizations to develop guidelines/plans for addressing":

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