Penguin UK to release their books in the .epub format!

It seems like Penguin UK will lead the way in advancing the .epub book format, reports theBookseller.com – this is great news for ePub!

Penguin UK plans to simultaneously release all their new titles in ePub along with the print edition starting in September, although the price of digital and print will be the same. Among the first releases will be the classic, The Three Musketeers by Dumas and Zoe Heller’s new novel, The Believers.

Another point noted in the article is that Penguin UK are currently working on releasing their 5,000 strong back list during this year and next — more great new for eBooks!

This article was brought to my attention via the TeleRead blog. David Rothman’s article makes some interesting points, in particular he wonders what kind of DRM will be applied – if any – and will Penguin Group USA follow suit any time soon.

Looking for a guide to creating ePub documents?

I created this site because there are very few blogs, mailing lists and other resources on the ePub standard. I wanted to try and bring together the few that there are in one handy place, in the hope to make this information easily available.

I am no ePub expert myself so I’m continually searching for new information and resources to help me learn. One very useful tutorial I found was the ‘Epub Format Construction Guide’.

Not only is this guide about creating ePub documents, it also gives some nice insights into the compliance of the ADE (Adobe Digital Editions) reader, still the most conformant reader at this time. A couple of surprising things about ADE v1.0 is that it does not support certain CSS attributes. Two big surprises were; text-transform and text-align: justify.

The tutorial itself is more like an “annotated example”, if you just wish to construct an ePub document in a quick hassle free way then this will help tremendously. Once nice thing I like about the guide is that it highlights the areas which need to be altered on a per project basis.

In the future I’m hoping to find more detailed tutorials so if you need more in-depth information, you’ll just have to reference the IDPF specifications.

You can read the ‘Epub Format Construction Guide’ at www.hxa7241.org.

DB2008: Global eBook Market & EPUB

Digital Book 2008 is a one-day conference held in New York City on May 14th. The conference is hosted by the IDPF and is part of their spring educational series. This is considered the best opportunity of the year to network with the global publishing and online technology leaders in the digital books world.

If you wish to attend you must register, but be warned, the event has been sold out for the last five years!

At the top of the agenda will be the emerging global eBook market and adoption of the EPUB digital publication standard. Some of the highlights are;

  • Publisher Experience and Workflow using the new IDPF “EPUB” Standard
  • “EPUB” Update on eBook Reading Devices and Software
  • Using Digital Book Technologies to Drive Sales and Create New Consumer Experiences
  • eBooks in Education and Accessibility Initiatives

There are going to be some fantastic speakers including;

  • Michael Smith (IDPF)
  • Bill McCoy (Adobe Systems Incorporated)
  • Peter Balis (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)
  • Garth Conboy (eBook Technologies, Inc.)
  • Leslie Hulse (HarperCollins Publishers)
  • Neil DeYoung (Hachette Book Group USA)
  • Willem Endhoven (iRex Technologies BV)
  • Martin Görner (Mobipocket.com)

— I wish I could attend myself!