I’ve had a crazy old time since I returned home from the Frankfurt Book Fair last week so this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down and write a little about my time there, and an interesting time it was.

I again had the pleasure of having lunch with IDPF Executive Director, Michael Smith. There was no real agenda, it was just a chance for us to have a good chin-wag about ePub, how things are moving for the format and such other things. This year the IDPF held three sessions but due to my day job duties in London I only managed to attend one of his sessions; missing what I’m sure was an extremely interesting ‘EPUB Update and Tweaks and Tricks for EPUB on Devices’ session presented by Keith Fahlgren from O’Reilly – I’m wholey dissapointed about that.

Still, I did manage to attend the ‘New and Updated eBook Reading Devices’ which was rather interesting.

For this session there were four speakers; Michaël Dahan (Bookeen), Neelan Choksi (Lexcycle Stanza), Willem Endhoven (iRex Technologies) and finally Richard Siegersma (ECO Reader). All the speakers had some interesting things to say but a couple of points stuck out.

Michaël talked about their user statistics; 35+ age group consisting of 60% female, 40% male and that digital reader users are mainly for “heavy” readers. Michaël also told us that Bookeen will be releasing their Gen4 6” reader mid-March 2010.

Willem told us that iRex will also be releasing a new reader in mid-2011 which will be full-colour! I presume this is the reading screen itself and not a secondary screen like that of the new Barnes & Noble “nook”.

Networking Events

On the Thursday evening there was the IDPF Networking event which I have to say was much busier than last year, just goes to show how much the digital market and support for ePub has grown over this last 12 months.

I also had the pleasure of meeting up with several members of the Linkedin Ebooks, Ebook Readers Group hosted by Dominique Raccah (Sourcebooks). Only a handful of people attended but all were great people and we even had the pleasure of Margaret A. Harrison and the charismatic Steve Potash from OverDrive attending.

eBook Digital Reader Reviews

One of my goals for Frankfurt this year was to do a good bit of smooching with those digital reader people to procure some for review purposes – the results we actually quite positive.

My first meeting was with Phil Wood from Interead, where I had my first hands-on moment with one of their COOL-ER’s – man is that thing light! I also spoke with Royal-Line, who will be bringing the NUTT reader to Europe, iRex, and I also stopped by the Bookeen stand to check out their new Cybook Opus. I have to say the Opus does seem to be a very cool device indeed.

Phil agreed to send me one of their COOL-ER’s, Royal-Line gave me one of their NUTT readers there and then and Bookeen said there might be a possibility of sending me an Opus – from what I saw of the Opus, I do hope this is possible.

Along with the Sony Touch Edition, which I received just last week (a self purchase unfortunately), I will have three (possibly four) new reader reviews on the site before the end of November.

Digital Content is on the Rise

Anyone who’s been around the eBook world during the last 12 months can certainly confirm that we’ve seen a great increase in the interest of eBooks and digital readers and this was certainly reflected at the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair. There were more, bigger and better digital reader and content provider stands than ever.

All the talk round the net is that 2010 will be the year of the eBook – I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like at next year’s book fair, but I’m going to be there to experience it first hand!

During the Digital Lunch seminar at this years Frankfurt Book Fair, Michael Vantusko from Overdrive commented that W.H.Smith was one of their eBook customers. As I was updating the epubbooks.com homepage I thought I’d check them out to see if they actually have them online yet. I don’t know the date W.H.Smith went live with their ePub books but they currently have almost 6,500 ePub titles.

As Overdrive also distribute to Waterstones I would imagine that the W.H.Smith eBook collection will grow quite quickly. It’s great to see more stores offering ePub formatted books to the consumers – perhaps this extra competition will result in lower eBook prices sooner rather than later.

There is however quite some way to go before the number of ePub titles reaches the overall eBook numbers. Here’s a quick breakdown of the current eBook titles in the W.H.Smith eBook store;

56056 - PDF
15368 - MobiPocket
6441 - ePub

I also found it interesting that they’re offering eBooks in languages other than just English. Here’s a breakdown of those in the ePub format, which I will follow up with total eBooks in any particular language.

5863 - English ePub Books
509 - French
50 - German
9 - Spanish
6 - Italian
2 - Swedish
1 - Finnish
1 - Norwegian

A selection of different languages in all eBook formats found on the website;

60586 - English (All eBook Formats)
946 - Spanish eBooks
885 - Japanese eBooks
801 - French eBook
424 - Italian eBooks
390 - German eBooks
35 - Dutch eBooks
26 - Russian eBooks
19 - Chinese eBooks
14 - Portuguese eBooks

I was very lucky this year to be able to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair. As it was only going to be a one day affair for me I choose Thursday, the day of the Digital Lunch: Digital Publishing and the EPUB Standard’ seminar.

Before the session got under way I had a quick look around the ‘Digital Market Place’ Hall and came across the iRex Digital Reader stand where they were showing off their DR1000 model. Along with having a basic reader they also have two models with a Wacom touch screen and one of those with Wi-Fi. All models have a 10.2 inch display (1024×1280 pixels) – so no need to go zooming in on your PDF files now. This looks a great piece of equipment. After checking out the iRex stand I then made my way down to the IDPF session.

There were four speakers at the Digital Lunch, Michael Smith (IDPF Executive Director), Michael Vantusko (Overdrive – unfortunately Steve Potash could not make it), Fionnuala Duggan (Random House Digital Group UK) and Robert Nell (Sony Reader).

Mike Smith got things started with an outline of the IDPF and the ePub format. He discussed the amazing sales figures we’ve been seeing in the eBook world and the uptake of the ePub standard from publishers and conversion houses.

Then Mike Vantusko from Overdrive talked a little about the challenges of being the first distributor to offer ePub formatted books. He was also was very positive on the uptake from stores such as Waterstones, Borders and W.H.Smith from the UK.

Fionnuala Duggan from Random House UK was very positive toward ePub although she did have some reservations regarding piracy. This seems a common issue among publishers and although I agree that the one-click piracy that digital content offers makes it easier, with or without official digital versions, piracy happens. We all saw what happened with the Harry Potter books.

Random House are now working on having core user formats of both ePub and PDF. Fionnuala also mentioned that as from 2009 they will simultaneously release both Paper and eBook editions of all their new titles.

If you’ve been keeping your eyes open then you would of heard recently that Sony made an unprecedented move by relocating their entire eBook division from Japan to the U.S. to better promote the Sony Reader. Robert Nell talked very emphatically about the future of the Reader and told of their expectations for tens of millions of Readers being sold – Sony is serious about eBooks!

“Two years ago there was no [eBook] standard…now there is a standard, the IDPF ePub standard” – Robert Nell

I managed to grab a few moments with Robert after the seminar in the hope of getting some juicy details about the Readers future, but as one would expect, he was very careful not to give anything away. I asked about a release date for the upcoming Wi-Fi features and even when I offered up an October 2009 date, to tie in with their current one model per year schedule, he calmly said nothing. :)

Neither would he give a release date for the PRS-700 in the UK, although he did confirm that it would be released. I got the impression that we won’t see the PRS-700 in the UK until the latter half of 2009 – very likely September or October. If you’re from the UK and were holding off buying a Reader in case a PRS-700 release was imminent…I wouldn’t wait. So get along to SonyStyle.co.uk (or Waterstones UK) and buy yourself a PRS-505 – I’m sure you won’t regret it.

For their big push into Europe, Sony is continuing their partnerships, such as they have done with Waterstones in the UK. In France from the 23rd October, the PRS-505 will be sold at fnac and Germany will get theirs early 2009 in partnership with Libri GmbH.

Later in the afternoon I met up with Michael Smith for a couple of beers and had a great chat on all things ePub. Mike showed a real interest in ePubBooks.com so it was nice to get some positive feedback on my project. I very much got the feeling that as well as supporting the large publishers and conversion houses, the IDPF are also very encouraged and supportive of what is happening in the community with projects such as ePubBooks and Feedbooks.

In the evening we headed down to the Jazil Bar for more drinks, as did a number of other people.
Hadrien Gardeur from Feedbooks was hoping to make it to the fair, but unfortunately he didn’t show. I did meet Andrew Savikas from TOC O’Reilly, though only briefly, which was a real shame as it would have been great to have a good chat with him – alas I had my train to catch.

The big message I took from the fair was that publishers, conversion houses and distributors are serious about the ePub format. Everyone is getting excited about the growth of eBook sales in general and publishers seem to be almost relieved that we are now seeing an eBook standard developed, which in the long term will save them money and be better for the end consumer.

Next Monday will mark the start of the 2008 Frankfurt Book Fair. The IDPF will of course be attending, and also presenting a session entitled; Digital Lunch: Digital Publishing and the EPUB Standard.

Mike Smith (IDPF Executive Director), Steve Potash (Overdrive), Fionnuala Duggan (Random House Digital Group UK) and Robert Nell (Sony Reader) will be talking about the “effects on Publishers, Channels and Devices – Market Experience with the Sony Reader and other Software using EPUB”. eBooks is currently the fastest growing segment in the publishing industry and with sites such as Feedbooks.com delivering over 2,000,000 titles in the last few months alone, the ePub book format is set to dominate the eBook world.

If you’re going to be at the Frankfurt Book Fair then I recommend attending this session. This will be taking place at 12:00 o’clock on the Thursday (16th October) in Hall 4C, Alliance Room.