TOC tutorial on how to read O’Reilly ePub books on your iPhone

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.

Fictionwise to start selling ePub formatted books…soon

A few days back one of the MobileRead forum members contacted Fictionwise and asked when they will start selling ePub formatted books. As they noted in the post, BooksonBoard are currently the only online bookstore that are selling commercial ePub books.

UPDATE: We should not forget that O’Reilly have a small selection of titles that come as an eBook bundle, included in that bundle are books in the ePub format.

Fictionwise replied by stating that “We are currently making our plans for epub compliance over the coming months.”

However, it seems that one of the biggest hurdles for them is how to encrypt their titles, “each vendor is currently using their own proprietary encryption scheme for epub.” DRM isn’t going to go away anytime soon so it’s understandable that they need to work out these issues before they can move forward.

An interesting point they made was that there are still very few publisher supporting ePub at this time, yes more will follow suit, but until they do the number of available titles will be limited.

Continue reading “Fictionwise to start selling ePub formatted books…soon”

An Opera ePub book reading widget is being developed

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.

Continue reading “An Opera ePub book reading widget is being developed”

Sony Reader now reads ePub books!

Very early this morning, 12:01 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time to be precise, TeleRead.org broke the news that Sony are officially releasing a firmware update allowing the Sony Reader Digital Book PRS-505 to read the IDPF ePub formatted books – available from their website today.

The ePub standard has seen great interest of late from both professionals and amateurs alike but this is the first time were are going to be able to read ePub formatted books on a dedicated eBook device such as the Sony Reader.

The new firmware allows the Reader to view both DRMed and non-DRMed ePub/PDF files, which also means Sony users can now purchase books from vendors other than Sony itself (Fictionwise, O’Reilly, Penguin UK, etc). A short time ago we had confirmation from several publisher that they will start to provide ePub formatted books – Penguin UK announced they’ll have plenty of ePub books available from September 2008.

Waterstones/SonyStyle to sell Sony Reader in the UK!

For those of us who are UK eBook fans, Sony have partnered with the Waterstones book store in the UK to start selling the Sony Reader, available from 3rd September 2008, they will have over 25,000 titles available when they go live! You can also Pre-Order your Sony Reader UK (PRS-505) from SonyStyle.co.uk. The eBook titles to be made available at Waterstones will be released in the ePub format.

Continue reading “Sony Reader now reads ePub books!”

Use the web-based Bookworm reader to read your ePub books

If you are looking for a web-based ePub book reader then look no further than Bookworm. Developed by Liza Daly (see also tei2epub Converter), the Bookworm ePub reader will allow you to read ePub books directly from your web browser, there is also a “mobile web-optimized” version for those of you with an iPhone.

The reader is currently in an open-beta status, so as always, expect some bugs and of course many improvements over the coming weeks and months.

To use the reader you will need to create an account on the Bookworm site, all your books will need to be uploaded there. At the moment there is no way to organise your books so if you upload more than a couple dozen, navigation may be a little cumbersome. Liza is working to improve this.

Unlike most other ePub readers, Bookworm allows for full use of stylesheets and images, which is especially critical for technical books which include HTML tables and code samples.

Continue reading “Use the web-based Bookworm reader to read your ePub books”

O’Reilly are now selling ePub books!

Last month O’Reilly announced that they will be starting an experimental pilot and selling selected titles in an eBook bundle. The bundle includes a PDF, Kindle-compatible Mobipocket and of course an ePub formatted version.

Today, O’Reilly announced the availability of 30 eBook titles! The cost of the bundle is a little lower than the paper version and if you wish to pay a little more you can get the print book with the eBook bundle included!

Here is the full list of those thirty titles;

Stanza: Read EPUB books on your iPhone

UPDATE: Stanza is no longer maintained so I’d recommend you try out Bluefire Reader. Checkout my iPhone or iPad pages for some more information on reading EPUB books on the iPhone with Blurefire and other apps.

Ready … Set … Read!

This is the headline on the Lexcycle website for their new iPhone eBook reader called Stanza. They’re touting this as the ‘premier electronic book reader for the iPhone and the iPod Touch‘ which more importantly (at least for me) has the ability to read ebooks in the EPUB format.

Stanza is still in beta at the moment so there will be a few bugs hanging around but hopefully lexcycle will go final soon. [UPDATE: Stanza is now considered one of the best free eReaders out there with most bugs fixed, and available for iPhone and iPad].

Stanza Logo

Okay, so now you have your Stanza/iPhone EPUB reader, but where do you get your books from? This is the easy part…

You can download lots of free EPUB ebooks right here on epubBooks.com.

Alternatively, you can use Feedbooks, whose catalogue is available from directly within the Stanza app.

Browsing and downloading books once you’ve installed Stanza is very intuitive, just select Online Catalog and Feedbooks to get books from our service — feedbooks.com

Commercial ebooks are not currently available so all the titles you’ll find are in the public domain, but what’s available from both epubBooks and Feedbooks should keep everyone reading happy for a lifetime.

Right, all I need now is an iPhone…

UPDATE: I now have a full review of the iPod Touch and the Apple iPad – these two reviews have lots of information on adding ebooks to your Apple device as well as what other EPUB eReader apps are available, and all of which can be used on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Feedbooks RSS tool converts to EPUB

Feedbooks are at it again, now they’ve gone and updated their RSS tool to include conversions to the ePub format! I’ve been playing around with this and it’s a really cool app – you can even supply your own RSS feeds. The converter actually outputs to a number of different formats including;

  • ePub
  • Mobipocket/Kindle
  • PDF
  • Sony Reader (PDF)
  • iLiad

Hadrien, Feedbooks co-founder, posted that along with adding support for ePub and Mobipocket, the files will generate much faster and there is also an “API endpoint for developers to create applications (such as iNewsStand on the iLiad).”

Continue reading “Feedbooks RSS tool converts to EPUB”

ePub books finally reach mass market status

New eBook Standard Now Available For Mass Market Audience was the title from yesterdays WebWire press release on the ePub book catalogue at BooksOnBoard.com. With almost 200 eBooks in the ePub format this is the first real source for mass market books to be released in the new eBook standard.

It’s a little unclear if the ePub versions have DRM restrictions, but as the site states;

DRM Adobe ebooks can be read only on Adobe Reader 7, Adobe Acrobat 7, or Adobe Digital Editions […] We recommend Adobe Digital Editions for Adobe format eBooks, both pdf and ePub versions…

We must presume that they have DRM in place.

The market is still waiting for better ePub readers and until we get those it won’t matter how many ePub books they release. Let’s hope that the Sony Reader (PRS-505) receives its Digital Editions firmware update soon and that other dedicated readers, such as the Amazon Kindle and Cybook follow suit.

Yes, we still have a long way to go but it does look like we’re on the right track.

O’Reilly to start selling ePub Books!

Today over on the O’Reilly TOC, Andrew Savikas made an annoucment that from July 2008, O’Reilly will release a selection of their catalogue as a DRM-Free eBook bundle. This will include a PDF, Kindle-compatible Mobipocket and yes, an ePub format version! Not only are they giving you three for the price of one, but these will also be DRM-Free eBooks (they are considering a form of social DRM.)

Although they are still working on the ePub versions, any PDF eBook you buy now will make you eligible for free access to the ePub version once it is released. For the moment this is only an experiment, but if It works out, they plan to release their whole catalogue in these formats (barring a few with copyright restrictions and some old ones that present at format-conversion challenge.) Continue reading “O’Reilly to start selling ePub Books!”