Background for the business and to ebooks. Global Programme, covering all territories but I’ll mainly focus on the UK
- not too tecchy just describing the approach. -in a typical consultancy way I may ask more questions than provide answers... background - a very exciting time, gone from a void to an embryonic but real business. talk about wider external market environment, critical mass of external and internal events. - high level publishing workflow - Invite questions ongoing
Started the project in 1997, epub ratified in nov 07, Waterstones launch in Sept22 ‘08
we have to talk about Kindle and other formats in the context of epub
Put epub into context - you’ll need to think about all these things ISBN’s creation - in epub metadata?
-was new and ticked various boxes at the time ‘we thought it had legs’ – seems more obvious now than it did at the time and wasn’t even called epub back then but oeb -no tie-in to other organisations -could take experience, knowledge and tools from the web
-kindle careful to consider - choice of formats is both practical and strategic -example of splintering, leads into chunking and other experimentation, epub may be the basis.
- It’s all about suppliers, not just choosing but managing them ongoing-big subject and won’t cover here. - in-house there are lots approaches and it’s whatever works for you - this won’t be knew for many but our general approach is to push digital production as far upstream (i.e. as close to the point of creation) as possible
-EPUB wasn’t mature and hasn’t changed in this time, wanted to tighten it -not rewriting the IDPF spec, must not change it in any way, or stray into areas where the spec is insufficient
-these are global -content specific = drama, poetry -OPS:open publication structure,OPF:Open packaging format,OCF:Open container format
Headlines - Images-SVG, family trees landscape (don’t forget rights), insets Tables-device support, large tables How do you want to capture pagination?
quick overview of each - no time to demo, there are others
Best practices doc is more technical
Full control over content in XML source - Publishing on demand, custom pub to varied formats - RNIB large format, XSL-FO to PDF for authors (request and pay for file from vendor). - OASIS, IDPF: benefit from community support and development in what has become a very active area; do others do this? - encourage participation in TC, IDPF: mention negotiating a group deal. - We have benefited from not waiting. use of xml gives flexibility reduces impact of further new conversions
-new systems, evolving format -to get the most of XML it must be at the centre of the document workflow - update once, produce many: is anybody doing this, if so is it working? - Challenges; external authors, traditionally strong reliance on vendors, new skill sets and culture for traditional vendors and in-house staff. good vendors? - INDD and Word XML support is still limited. - ebook development for new devices and platforms, new licensing models, channels; what do others face?
- new devices, applications (apps?) and channels -epub more commonly spawning other formats and going via new channels and devices - always looking for cost savings and efficiencies
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