Even though the specification for EPUB v3.0 was finalised last October, we’ve yet to see any production ready EPUB3 books out in the wild. The likely reason for this is that EPUB3 compatible eReaders have only come on the scene recently and without an eReader, there’s no way to test how the ebooks look – a bit of a catch-22.

Version 3.0 ebooks may seem non-existent at the moment but this will no doubt change before the end of the year, so now is a really good time to look at how we’re going to transform our Masters to EPUB3 – you do have your books in a master format right?

This last week I decided to convert one of the titles from epubBooks.com to EPUB3 and set to work on Gulliver’s Travels (download link below). I’ve only found two ways to view my newly generated EPUB3 ebook; Azardi and iBooks.

(Note: this test ebook is a very simple conversion from EPUB2 and doesn’t use any HTML5 or CSS3 specific features – consider this article as just a cursory overview.)

Azardi eReader

A short while back Infogrid Pacific updated their desktop eReader app to support EPUB3. At the time it didn’t mean too much because there weren’t any ebooks around. Now that I’ve got something to try I uploaded it and have to say, everything looks good. The Table of Contents works as required and all the content displays well.
Azardi is available on the main OS platforms; Windows, Linux and Mac. Try it.

iBooks

It seems Apple’s newest version if iBooks has some support for EPUB3. Like with Azardi, the TOC displays as expected along with all the content in the same way as the EPUB2 version. One nice feature in iBooks is how it handles footnotes; these are pulled from their place at the end of the chapter and displayed as a pop-up – perhaps the most useful way to view footnotes in an ebook.
iBooks is available on all iOS platforms. Try it.

Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) – Preview 1.8

Although ADE 1.8 Preview opens my EPUB3 ebook, it doesn’t work so well. The TOC is not available at all and footnote links don’t work. They do at least show at the end of the chapter.
The ADE engine is used in all the popular E-Ink eReaders, so let’s hope Adobe introduce full EPUB3 support before the final 1.8 version is released.

Gulliver’s Travels: EPUB3 eBook Experiment

As I’m expecting compatible eReaders to become more abundant over the next months I wanted to look at what’s needed to create a good solid looking EPUB3 book as I’d like to release all the free ebooks on epubBooks.com in the EPUB3 format. The book I chose for this experiment is Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (EPUB2 version here).
This is only a first-try and most of what I’ve worked on is the mark-up to make it a valid EPUB3 document. This means that all the CSS remains unchanged and mostly only the head section of the HTML has been updated. This first test is not EPUB2 Reader compatible, so there is certainly more I can do to make it work better on ADE and other v2 eReaders.

EPUB3 Experiment: Gulliver's Travels

Anyway, I hope you find it useful and please do post your feedback in the comments.

A couple of weeks back Ectaco announced their new 9.7 inch E-Ink eReader (WiFi and Touch Screen), nothing special in that, but the big news about this is that it will be the first colour E-Ink device to be available for purchase!

The jetBook Color EDU.12 has been in development since earlier this year in Russia and will be made available in the States during Q4 2011. The new eReader is actually being pushed as a K-12 device, or as Ectaco put it, “Educational eTextbook tablet with Test System, Home Assignments, Remote Tutoring and eBook studies”.

Anyone outside of the education system us unlikely to get their hands on one, or want to for that matter, as the it seems to be tied heavily to the “Teacher’s Console” and purchasing looks to be only possible via the Ectaco website; so you’ll probably need appropriate credentials.

There’s plenty more details on the jetBook K-12 website but I’ll list some of the main features here;

• Color e-Ink 9.68″ PVI EPD touch screen (1600×1200) using Electromagnetic Resonance Technology.
• 32GB of memory.
• Rechargeable 2350mAh Lithium-Polymer battery lasting for 10,000 page turns.
• Plug-in GPS module that allows parents to locate their child or the unit itself with a few clicks.
• Text-to-speech module for pronunciation of books
• Script character recognition in combination with an EMT panel allows students to write on the screen.
• Teachers can restrict the download of any programs or content that is not related to the class.
• Screen serves as an ID card for the student displaying a schedule of classes (updated daily via Wi-Fi or 3G).
• Send students grades, exams, homework, and messages.
• Fully interactive SAT course that will train, test, and raise students’ SAT scores.
• Features the content of a 50-state reading list
• A Speed Reading course
• Talking Oxford Dictionaries narrated by professional linguists
• Foreign language courses that teach any of the 52 available languages and provide great support to ESL students.

Pictures of the EDU.12 are hard to come by at the moment but from what we can see the device will suffer from one known limitation of E-Ink, which is that the colours aren’t generally very vibrant (suffering from low contrast and “pastel” colours) compared to the screens found on the current crop of tablets.

Still, every new advancement in screen technology brings us closer to the perfect screen – great clarity, very low powered, full colour, fast refresh, usable in bright sunlight, etc. – so hopefully this will be a success and provide the R&D teams with more funding to continue development.

I could only find a couple of visuals for this new eReader; an image from Liliputing and a video (in Russian) on YouTube, which shows the device for a total of about 5 seconds (jump to 2:05 and then again just after the 3 minute mark).

It’s been a few weeks now since the Apple iPad announcement; a 9.7-inch multi-purpose tablet with native Book, Magazine and Newspaper options. Although Apple hasn’t released this as a dedicated eBook reader or as a direct competitor to popular eReaders such as the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader, in essence, it is an eReader nonetheless.

So, the iPad is an eReader, and one that reads not only books and newspapers but web pages, emails and numerous other electronic documents. It can also do the stuff that an iPhone and iPod Touch can do – running thousands of third party applications from the iTunes App store. For this article though I’d like to focus on the book aspects, especially in relation to the EPUB eBook format.

There were rumours abound weeks before Apple’s announcement that they’d been discussing with publishers and newspapers to get their content for a new Apple device. Most of this content will be accessible from the upcoming Apple iBooks Store and there should be plenty to choose from as Apple have brought onboard big names such as Penguin, HarperCollins and Macmillan.

The new iBooks store will be integrated in true iTunes style and with a 3G iPad option; you won’t even have to worry about logging into Wi-Fi hotspots.

From what’s shown in the videos circulating the internet, the iBooks application seems to have typical viewing options (font sizes) and also that life-like page turn feature, though to be honest I still can’t figure out why this kind of gimmick is considered so cool. That whole drag a page, swipe your finger (Sony Touch) feature is fun for the first 10 minutes but quite frankly, I don’t sit there when reading a paper book being thrilled at the ingenuity of how a paper page turns, so why should it be any different with an eBook. Just let me tap the screen/press a button and give me the next page by the time I get my eyes to the top of the screen, thankyouverymuch.

People have talked about the iPad as being a game changer or an E-Ink Killer (Kindle/Sony). Well, I’m not sure any of the current E-Ink developers believed they’d reached the pinnacle of electronic mobile reading – E-Ink eReaders were always going to evolve and become more multi-purpose – but there are still advantages of these over the iPad with power consumption and reading longevity being two.

E-Ink is extremely low power and thus allows usage of up to two weeks before a recharge is needed. Also, sitting for hours on end with no interruptions from IM’s and incoming email, plus a very paper like screen, are very pleasant experiences I can assure you.

We’ll have to wait until its released before we know the exact power consumption, but the iPad will probably give around ten hours of play, and that’s highly likely with anything and everything turned off and maybe even a low backlit screen.

Okay, so this isn’t an iPad review and much of what I’ve said here is all personal preference anyway. I guess the real question you want form me is;

Does the iPad Support EPUB eBooks?

The quick answer is, yes.

The longer answer would also be yes, but there might well be some caveats here.

The Apple iPad native eBook format is EPUB; Steve Jobs said this himself at the announcement in San Francisco. This of course makes sense as many, if not most publishers have been working toward creating their content in this format, thankfully Apple haven’t forced the providers to come up with yet another format.

EPUB is lucky in some respects; it came about at a time when eBooks was just starting to become more main stream and this gave publishers the ability to focus [mostly] on just one eBook format. Beneficial for them and the end user.

It seems that there are really two questions regarding the iPad and the EPUB format.

One. What kind of DRM will it have?

The iPad EPUB eBooks will have DRM and it certainly won’t be the Adobe flavour. A recent announcement says that Apple is dusting off their old Fair Play DRM that was used for music in their iTunes stores up until just a year or so ago. This means you’ll not be able to use these books on other eReaders – you buy from Apple, you use on Apple – at least that’s the way it seems at the moment. Once the iPad is out there, perhaps we’ll see some solutions to get around that.

I should note that I don’t know enough on Apple’s Fair Play DRM to know if other vendors can implement it or whether this will affect their ability to use the Adobe DRM side-by-side with Apple’s.

Perhaps in the long term Apple will turn out to be instrumental in getting DRM off eBooks completely and a couple of years or three down the line this issue won’t matter any more. We can but hope.

Two. Can you Download or Buy from Sources other than the iBooks Store?

Will I be able to browse the epubBooks.com website, click the download button and have my books open in the iBooks reading application?

This is a really big question and one which is still open. My gut feeling is that the answer will be no.

I’ve yet to hear if Apple will allow competing eBook apps to be ported to the iPad. Perhaps the eReader developers themselves know that answer, but the Apple TC’s will forbid them to talk, so everything is hush hush for the moment.

If apps such as Stanza are allowed onto the iPad then I think all the above questions will be answered in a positive light.

The iPad will be out there in a couple of months so then we’ll know for certain the future of reading with the Apple iPad.

[UPDATE: EPUBs from epubBooks.com can now be added to iBooks and there are now plenty of other Reading apps for you to use. You can read more about this over on my Apple iPad review page.]

Apple iPad: Quick Facts

• Released Date: Late March 2010 and April 2010 for 3G option
• Price: Currently $499 for the 16GB model
• Memory: 16/32/64GB
• Multi-Touch 9.7 inch screen (1024×768)
• iBooks Store for books, magazines and newspapers
  • EPUB book format
  • Apple Fair Play DRM
• Various other electronic content
  • Video, Music, Games
  • Untold apps providing eMail, Calendars, Maps, Photos, etc.
• Wi-Fi & Bluetooth
• Pre-paid, no-contract, unlocked 3G connectivity (optional upgrade)
• External Keyboard Dock
  • Apple or other standard Bluetooth keyboards

If you’ve ever been visiting a site that’s offering free .epub files and wished you could just click the link and immediately start reading – with none of that “open with… ” or “download to you computer first” nonsense – then I’ve found exactly what you want. An eReading app that allows quick and easy EPUB reading, right there in your web browser.

EPUBReader is one of the more recent software only EPUB readers and has grown into a very stable and good looking ebook reader since it’s release. The eReader itself is actually an add-on for the very popular Firefox web browser – for those still using Internet Exploer (IE) this is yet another good reason to change over to Firefox.

Once installed all you have to do is visit any website with DRM free EPUB files (why not try some Charles Dickens or Edgar Allen Poe from my own catalogue) and click on the download button. The book will open right there in the browser/reader for immediate enjoyment.

Reading from a computer monitor is not a comfortable practice for everyone, but for those who don’t mind this it’s certainly a great solution.

Please note: you won’t be able to read any DRM encumbered EPUBs with this eReader – I don’t expect that to ever change while it remains a web browser plugin – so let’s hope more publishers release DRM free ebooks in the future.

The software is in constant development and there’s always new features being added so it’s worth keeping it up-to-date. For more information visit the official website (epubread.com) or to install now jump right over to the EPUBReader Add-on page at Mozilla.

Fancy an eBook reader with two screens? Then you might want to take a look when Asus release their Eee Reader, which could be out before the end of the year.

I’m not totally convinced that having two screens will improve peoples reading experience, though perhaps the one book type that could benefit woud be the textbook. The ability to have the book on one screen and a web browser on the other, looking up a spelling, or word meaning over the internet would be quite handy too.

There is also speculation on what book format the device would use. Well, if this reader is based on the normal Asus netbooks I would say that every book format would be readable. Adobe DE? Mobipocket Reader? And why not, as Steve Jordan commented in his recent Teleread article, maybe we need eBook readers to support every format. If the Eee Reader is a Windows based system then that could be a reality, we’d even see Adobe Digital Editions on there, meaning ePub formated books will be readable to.

Steve Jobs talks again about dedicated readers, insisting that, “general-purpose devices will win the day”. Well, as usueful as it is to be able to read books on an iPhone/iPod Touch, the small screens just don’t hack it for me, so perhaps the Asus will be the first company that makes a viable general purpose device. The image above is not likely the real thing so it will be interesting to see what they come up with

If you didn’t already know, I come from the UK, so you can imagine my delight when I saw that the two new Sony Readers (Pocket Edition & Touch Edition) are on pre-order over at Waterstones UK and W.H.Smith.co.uk. I fully expected that us Brits would have to wait another year before being able to buy them, but it seems that Sony have done the right thing!

For those of you who have not already heard, Sony are releasing three new eBook Readers. They are all e-paper devices that can read ePub books. The Pocket Edition has a 5″ screen. The Touch Edition is 6″ like the PRS-505, but with a touch screen. The Daily Edition, which was announced just today, has a 7″ tall touch screen and wireless connectivity via AT&T. At the moment the Daily Edition looks like it will only be released in the U.S.

The costs of the readers over at Waterstones is £179.99 for the Pocket Edition and £249.99 for the Touch Edition. Keeping in form with the PRS-505 prices, these are yet again much more expensive than our U.S. counterparts can get them for; $199 (~£120) and $299 (~£180) respectively.

Waterstones does not have the Daily Edition reader for pre-order and I wouldn’t hold much hope either that it will be released in the UK this year; Sony would still need to find a mobile provider who would allow them to piggy-back on their cell service. The general assumption is that Amazon have been trying to arrange this on their Kindle for quite sometime, without success.

Although news on the release of the COOL-ER eBook reader isn’t new, what is interesting is that the makers have struck a deal to sell this in the Argos stores.

For those of you who are not from the UK, Argos are a household name — if a Brit hasn’t bought from Argos, you know their neighbour has!

The BookSeller.com article also states that the COOL-ER book store has 3/4 million titles (although not all in the ePub format).

I don’t have a one of these readers myself – I can’t justify spending £189 when I already have a Sony 505 – but as it uses the Adobe Digital Editions, any ePub books you download from epubBooks.com or buy from one of the many book stores around, should render the same as they do on the Sony Reader.

For me, the importance of this Argos/COOL-ER deal shows that eBooks (including the ePub variety) and the digital readers for viewing them are finally entering the mainstream.

I was just over at Bill McCoy’s blog (Adobe) reading his latest post about the current number of dedicated eBook readers which support the Adobe DRM’d EPUB format. Of course there are a number of other reading devices, such as the iPhone that can read non-DRM EPUB eBooks, but it is still surprising how many there actually are.

The Adobe Digital Edition Devices page has a little more details on each but here’s a very quick run down;

• EZ Reader
• EZ Reader Pocket Pro
• Mentor
• BeBook One
• BeBook Mini
• Cybook Gen3
• Cybook Opus
• Cool-er
• Elonex eBook
• Hanlin V5
• Hanlin V3
• iRex Digital Reader 1000S
• NUUT2
• Sony Reader PRS-300
• Sony Reader PRS-505
• Sony Reader PRS-600
• Sony Reader PRS-700

Have you heard of all these?

Bill himself seems suprised, saying, “this is faster take-up than even this optimist had hoped for, given our launch less than six months ago of the enabling Adobe Reader Mobile 9 SDK that’s been integrated into all of these products.”

Whether you believe DRM is right or wrong, the positive side of this is that we are seeing more vendors supporting the one eBook format.

We are however still waiting to see if the Amazon Kindle’s will start supporting EPUB; will they use their own DRM – will they use any DRM at all. Let us also not forget Apple, what formats will they support on their upcoming tablet.

I just noticed on the Bookeen website that their new mini eBook reader, the Cybook Opus, is now available. I have to say this does look a very cute reader.

There’s nothing spectacular regarding the specifications but with a 5″ screen (4″ x 3″- 101mm x 76mm), this is a very pocketable eReader. The best part about this for me is their support for the ePub format, which includes the Adobe DRM (EPUB and PDF).

It looks like they’ve teamed up with BooksOnBoard, who will be providing the official Opus eBooks.

At £215 it’s not exactly the cheapest reader out there, but many will be happy to pay the extra penny’s just for its portability.

While all the U.S. publishers/eBook stores remain reluctant to embrace the ePub format, the UK, and Europe in general, is really forging forward with its adoption. The latest to release an eBook store selling ePub books (plus PDF and other popular formats), is the UK academic publisher, Blackwell.

In addition to the 45,000 titles they have launched with (in partnership with the eBook wholesaler Gardners), Blackwell will also be stocking the BeBook eReader, a reader which is becoming quite popular among UK users.

It’s uncertain as to whether they will use any DRM (I can’t imagine they won’t) but at the moment the BeBook does not suopport the Adobe (ePub/PDF) DRM. However, there was a recent annoucment from Endless Ideas, who sell the BeBook, that their new WiFi BeBook reader will be supporting ePub DRM. Perhaps there will soon be a firmware update for the current model.

In a press release on thebookseller.com, Borders UK have announced the release of their own ePub eBook reader, in an effort to compete with the Waterstones/Sony partnership.

According to the article this reader has been specially developed for Borders, although it gives no details on exactly what the specifications are. All I know is that it is an E-Ink device that readers EPUB and “Adobe formats” (presumably PDF). As it has been released to work with the 45,000+ titles available at borders.co.uk, it must also be able to read the Adobe DRM protection.

At the moment it seems exclusively for in-store release as there is no mention at all on their website.

It’s great to see some comptetition for the Sony and of course more choice for the consumer. If I find out anything else about it I’ll let you know.

This last week has proved to be quite a week for the EPUB eBook format with announcements from Google, Sony and Project Gutenberg on their support for the EPUB format.

Project Gutenberg EPUB Books

Over at Project Gutenberg, Marcello Perathoner has been working hard to convert all the Gutenberg titles into the EPUB format. At this time these versions should be considered experimental, but after trying several different titles, they are all more than readable.

The books are converted where possible from the HTML version in the Gutenberg archives and for those titles without a HTML version, Marcello uses the plain .txt book. The plain .txt files at Gutenberg are notoriously inconsistent in their layout so converting these accurately is extremely difficult — I know this myself only too well. Perhaps it’s time Project Gutenberg embraced a Master Format.

What makes this special from the other news (see below) is that all the Gutenberg books go through a proofreading process and so the accuracy is very high. This is why so many other eBook project are based on the Gutenberg archives.

Google and Sony partner to release 500,000 Public Domain EPUB Books

Over the last few years Google has been scanning bo0ks by the million, making them available on their book search, but this is the first time they have any of them available to an eBook reader. All the titles are in the public domain (pre-1923 titles only) and once added to the current Sony Reader catalogue, brings the total available titles to around 600,000, far surpassing Amazon Kindle’s 240,000 catalogue. Amazon still use their own propriety eBook format and do no currently allow EPUB files to be read natively – conversion is needed first – but as the Google EPUB books all come DRM free, there are many tools out there that will allow you access to these on a Kindle or other reading platform.

As the press release states, “the publishing industry has more or less united on EPUB for e-book distribution”, so c’mon Amazon, let’s see some native EPUB support!

Don’t have a Sony Reader?

Although this announcement is aimed at Sony Reader owners, you don’t need to own a PRS-505 or PRS-700 to read these Google EPUB books. Just download the Sony “eBook Library” software to search and download. Paul Biba’s article over at TeleRead shows how to access the books without owning a Reader.

No access for non-U.S. based PRS-505 owners

Yet again, this is a U.S. only release, at least if you already own a PRS-505. You can only access the Google books via Sony’s “eBook Library” software, but in my UK version we don’t have access to the Sony Book Store as we are only pointed to the Waterstone website. When I tried to install the new version (2.5) it tells me it cannot install in my region! I believe it is because I already have my UK reader registered and if I were to install on a second computer I would then have access to these titles.

If there are any non U.S. PRS-505 users out there who have succeeded in accessing the archive, please let me know.

Google EPUB Quality?

As Google does not proof read their scanned books, relying completely on the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to produced the digital characters, the quality of the text themselves is not as good as archives like Project Gutenberg or websites that take their books from PG, such as Feedbooks.com. Then again, were are getting 500K free books with the potential to access another million Google books in the future.

All in all, this has been a good week for the EPUB format.

Back in September I wrote about my epubBooks development; a project to convert the .TXT ebooks from Project Gutenberg into the IDPF’s EPUB format. After many months of hard work I’e finally finished the conversion tools and I’m now preparing development of the website itself, which will allow anyone to download my EPUB books, and all for free.

Although I’m happy with the current formatting in the EPUB files, I wanted to turn to you, the ebook community and ask for your feedback, in the hope that the improvements you submit will make these EPUB ebooks even better.

EPUB Book Features

• Linked Footnotes – each footnote number is a link, click on this to see the footnote (I’ve actually made them all endnotes). Clicking on the notes number takes you back to the original page.
• Images – Some titles will include images.
• Nicely formatted titles, subtitles, etc.
• Paragraph indents – Except on first paragraph of a chapter/section – as is usual in paper books
• Block Indents – Small left/right indents on block quotes, letters of correspondence, songs, etc.

This is just a small selection for some of the formatting features I’ve implemented.

Please Note: As certain systems enforce their own stlying by defaults, various features will display differently. UPDATE (2011): This isn’t as prolific as it used to be.

Test the EPUB

The title I’m making available as a pre-release download is Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift – this has many features which show off my conversion. As this eBook contains images it is quite large, weighing in at over 5MB.

The test book has now been removed as you can find the final release here;

Gulliver’s Travels (Final)

All comments, on both the frontend formatting (indents, italics, etc) and the underlying code (OPF, NCX, HTML markup) is very much appreciated.

This ebook can be read using Adobe Digital Editions, Stanza (desktop and iPhone version), Sony Reader (PRS-505 and PRS-700), BeBook and the FBReader.

Enjoy!

Andrew Savikas over on the O’Reilly TOC has written a nice tutorial on how to read your O’Reilly ePub formatted books on the iPhone using Stanza.

One thing to note about this is that he was only successful in doing so when using his MacBook Pro, he was unable to say the same about the process using Windows.

After reading his article, I have to say the whole thing seems really easy!

Andrew did bring up one of Stanza’s failings, “A lot of the formatting isn’t (yet) supported by Stanza, including lists and tables. The text appears, but without bullets or clear indentation.” Perhaps it’s understandable about tables but I am surprised that lists are not yet supported. However, the app is still in beta and we know that Lexcycle are working hard on improving it.

One thing Andrew noted in his post was that O’Reilly are also looking into releasing their titles as individual iPhone Apps. I’m not convinced by this approach myself, but hey, for you iPhone users it will if nothing else give the proper formatting that O’Reilly intended

Okay, there’s a long way to go before ePub is a format that all devices can read properly, however it’s great to see that the industry is still moving forward.

Not so long ago Liza Daly released Bookworm to the public, an ePub web application for reading .epub formatted eBooks.

Another alternative is now being developed by Opera Software for their popular web browser in the form of a widget. Jon Noring has been advising Haakon Lie over at Opera to develop the browser plug-in, which is currently at a beta stage of development.

Please note: to use the widget you will need to download a version of Opera with File I/O support from Opera Labs.

There are some basic instructions posted over on the Opera Widgets blog. In short these are;

• Add books by going to the library and clicking “Add book…”
• Read books by clicking “Read”
• Navigate a book using the keyboard
  • Scroll up: Shift-Space, Page up, Arrow up, Z
  • Scroll down: Space, Page down, Arrow down, X
  • Previous chapter: Arrow left
  • Next chapter: Arrow right
  • Chapter top: Home
  • Chapter bottom: End
  • Toggle TOC panel: F4, T
  • Toggle bookmark panel: B

For some reason you will need to rename your .epub file to the .zip extension. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

There was no mention of any DRM capabilities so don’t expect any DRM protected books to work yet. There are however, a number of places where you can download free EPUB books. Please visit the epubBooks page on this site for a list of suitable websites.