Why  Do We Need ePub3?

17 February 2013

ePub3, Opinion, Production

Q. So why do we need ePub3? This question comes up regularly on various social sites, blogs and forums. This is usually from people who see ePub2  and custom formats as doing the job, or who have had little contact with digital books.

I prepared this post some time ago, but hesitated to put it up because of the opinionated nature. However there does seem to be a need to have some informed opinion on ePub in general and ePub3 in particular. So here it is.

Q. So why do we need ePub3?

This question comes up regularly on various social sites, blogs and forums. This is usually from people who see ePub2  and custom formats as doing the job, or who have had little contact with digital books.

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Note from an ePub3 Supporter (and critic)

This post is a critical discussion of ePub/3. Please note that Infogrid Pacific (IGP) is a BIG supporter of standards in general and ePub in particular. To my knowledge we are the only independent company that produces Reading Systems (AZARDI), Content deliver systems (AZARDI:Content Fulfilment), distribution systems (IGP:Distribution Manager) and Production Systems (IGP:Digital Publisher) for digital content and ePub2/3 since 2007 with pricing oriented for the developing world. Previously we supported OEB from 1999. Infogrid Pacific has a unique perspective on ePub2/3 in particular.

Infogrid Pacific is NOT a member of the IDPF and has no intention of becoming a member, but we are still allowed to be critics! The Infogrid Pacific focus is on the total cost of ownership of digital content for print, current and emerging e-book formats and future value, not just ePub.

A. The short answer is no one needs ePub/3 except:

1. It makes it easier to produce one format package and send to multiple e-retailers

But that doesn't happen because every reading system from every e-retailer has so many variations you have to dumb-down to the features of the most simple reading system out there.

Generally that is OK if you are publishing trade novels and simple non-fiction. For all other content it's a mine-field.

ePub3 is a repeat of ePub2 with the quirks and limitations which crippled ePublishing production for four years.

So this one fails.

2. It is a container for DRM or Watermarking

This is probably the best reason. We all know that DRM and Watermark schemes are easy to crack, but they are better than nothing. If you don't believe in DRM leave your house doors unlocked and makes sure you tell everyone the house is open.  DRM/Watermarking are designed to keep honest people honest, not crooks. It is not an argument that DRM can be cracked therefore should not be used. O'Reilly and Doctorow use big words from small containers.

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Don't Dave!

Did anyone see the sad anti-DRM argument twittered repetitively and boringly from O'Reilly's TOCcon about "Dave" taking over the computer. Sheesh! I guess this is 2013 conference intellectualism?

When your 2013 argument is a quote from a 1968 FICTIONAL science fiction movie about 2001 with people are floating around in acrylic suites you have seriously missed something about real life somewhere.

The problem in 2013 is Dave's shifted and has the weak values not HAL. The story is historical curiousity not representative of current facts. 

Low value and no value content doesn't need DRM. Content that is intended for reading by anyone (like a blog post) needs the opposite of DRM.

However all DRM systems are seen as negative closed loops. It is important to allow honest people to agree together that it is not good to leave the front door unlocked. DRM demonstrates there are not a lot of honest people in the world. It is only the way corporations market digital content publisher to consumer agreements that sucks.

3. It lets us use HTML5 ....... Not!

Sort-of! If you are making one ePub3 package for all channels it will be a crippled experience. In fact you will be using very little XHTML5, very little HTML5 and a very little bit of CSS3.

Theoretically you will be forced to use the very badly defined HTML5 <section> or <article> elements.

The specification should have allowed HTML5, but doesn't. It's an unlearned lesson from the Internet experience with XHTML, which resulted in HTML5. Why? So we can be backwardly compatible with retarded systems like Adobe's very sad ADE reader.

However...while the well formedness and validity characteristics of XHTML5 are essential in production to allow automated tools to operate easily, reliably and at low cost. The final package doesn't need such encumbrances. Members of the IDPF theorizing they want to remix ePub3 content doesn't cut it. Let them show the applications working to really establish the requirement.

Web rendering engines are totally optimized for HTML/HTML5. XML is a poor cousin, and in some cases doesn't do so well. When you put in a lot of rules, rules are easy to break, or forget, or not understand.

E-book reading systems are passé (except to the ancient paper loving world people who will talk about clarity, eye tiredness, use in sunlight, etc., etc., etcl,). Totally cool. Buy a reader but understand for a million reasons tablets are in.

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Webkit Mobile Secretly Destroys the Standards Inertia

Most tablets are currently iPad or Android some cake flavour. However the Webkit implementation of both is disparate enough to need serious checking, testing and often compromise.

We have to always remember Apple scorns standards and will only use them to their benefit (like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, et al) while Google pretends to stand on standards to present the opposite viewpoint. The result. The Webkit hairy arm-pitted monster.

Is E-Pub3 DOA?

As a technical specification ePub3 is DOA. Just try building production systems, packaging systems and reading systems for it that deliver to all ePub reading systems. Try walking on the moon (we did that last Tuesday because it was easier).

Our approach is to start by creating a highly sophisticated XHTML/CSS product using IGP:FoundationXHTML and then dumbing it down in processing for various delivery channel limitations. That is a lot of dumbing down. But it means valuable publisher content is ready for all the insanities the reading system market can throw at it.

The Production and Processing Traps

The IDPF doesn't ever consider the production costs, methods or technology of implementing the features in the specification. This should be a TOP priority. (I have been secretly told the participants are trying to increase production costs. Shock!). However the real shock is the specification was written with no reader exemplars or examples existing. Fact. The ePub3 specification was a sort of school essay exercise.

Of course it was able to bounce off the ePub2 specification and clean up some of that specification quirks. That was the upside. The opposite was the introduction of torture-racks of inanities.

The strange outcome is that it is considerably easier to create an ePub3 reading system than an ePub3 / digital content production system of worth. That should seriously raise alarm bells. Just join #eprdctn on twitter to see it in action.

The market works

Fortunately the market decides which features are important because even creating the full specification is too impossibly expensive in production. If no-one can make an ePub3 with epub:type they sure in hell are not going to implement CFI sensibly. Publishing has to address impossibly high production values. EPub3 does nothing to address this. Rather it shoots production values in the knees.

Consider something as potentially useful as epub:type properties. It will never be fully implemented in reading systems because the behaviours in reading systems have not been agreed or even recommended. At best it's half a specification.

The IDPF test books are by and large lamentable, undocumented and largely unusable. Some of them even have core packaging errors.

This and other reasons is why some of the more extravagant ePub3 features are doomed to stay in their dark closets where they should remain. Some reading systems may support them, production will not. Be very careful of any reading system that states it supports the full specification. That means it is doing strange things, but is probably a straight-up lie because a standard reading system cannot be created from the specification. 

All Books/Digital Content Are Not Equal

If we are thinking about fiction and general trade publishing we obviously don't need ePub3. EPub2 will do the job as people move from paper to digital interfaces of some kind (or back again) and upgrading to ePub3 is just a irritation.

If we are thinking about a reinterpretation of the print publishing industry we don't need ePub3. PDF does that fine.

If we are thinking about how do we enhance what we do today, we don't need ePub3. The Amazon and Apple "fixed layout" mediocrity (apologies to the fan clubs) provide enough tools and options to confuse paper thinkers into thinking they are being original with content as they mimic paper on screens with a few widgets. Watch out for the secret Adobe back from the brink adaptive CSS strategies hoping to capture the heart and souls of little production people.

However It's What We Have... today!

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Wart Central

EPub3 is loaded with warts. Totally loaded with warts. It has warts on its warts. It turns good things into warts. It infects publishers with warts and puts warts on literary classics. But in 2013 it has fewer warts than ePub2, atrocious Kindle proprietary stuff, infinite edged web "stuff" and App strategies.

It took a few hundred years to work print publishing out. We should give digital content a year or two.

The battle moving forward is not ePub3 vs. ePub2, or paper. The battle is ePub3 vs. real HTML5 and the human creative drive. ePub3's corporate lock on the past will simply become irrelevant.

EPub3 is going to totally wipe out really fast. The "trade organization" driven nature of the IDPF has resulted in a compromise specification that has rays of light, that are gloomed by last decade mistakes and stupidities, while being loaded with solutions that solve nothing that hasn't already been solved. They have forgotten the human reader.

The fact that there may be a W3C workgroup convened to control ePub3 is a ray of hope. They have worked out how to implement complex specifications and nothing is ratified until two vendors have implemented matching systems. This makes vendors cooperate together. It has evolved to make real standards possible.

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Best Practices. The W3C

The W3C has a very practical and demanding view on the consistent production of web content. Something they have learned in nearly two decades. There is always a voice that is saying "what about the user".

Ultimately it is about the consistency and quality of the end-user content engagement experience. That is something the IDPF don't appear to understand even though they debate and submit to the opinion (or threats) of the largest corporate noise-maker.

It's a Noisy Publishing World

There is a noise-management problem for publishers to sustaining and change existing business models vs. the so-called self-publishers. It is a real issue and potential threat in many areas. It is difficult to say if best sellers (in the scope of millions of books) will move into self-publishing. It certainly wont with the Amazon and Smashwords consumer-optimist models of sucking bucks off thousands, while a few "success stories" filter through.

The real self publishing agenda is about the commoditizing of publishing where everything costs the same irrespective of its value or worth. That is what works for Amazon and apparently no-one sees it. Everytime I see a tweet or blog comment that I wont pay over $1.99 for a book I gag. You don't have any discrimination skills? The world just doesn't need that many variants of X Shades of Gray (or is that Grey?). 

The generalization of cost over value with quality published content is currently a noise machine of incredible proportions. Hopefully publishers are strong enough to fight back in this war.

The self-publishing business models are not designed to make money from best sellers while sustaining hopefuls. They are about sucking a few bucks from each hopeful while representing the few successes as aspirational stories. Amazon et. al. are built on the exploitation of mediocrity. This is of course only a cynical observation. Good luck if you make it in the self-publishing commodity mashup-machine.

And in Conclusion

EPub 2 and the commercial reading systems available were/are incredibly bad. Much of the ePub3 specification is better but we have yet to see what happens with the reading systems from commercial e-retailer vendors.

The call is ePub3 will be many times worse than ePub2 except for the simplest of content. The IDPF wont talk unless you give them money. That is their rules. That is fine.

EPub3 is a small lurch forward but is still only a stepping stone in the evolution of high value digital content delivery. If you need to put your content through an e-retailer such as Apple's iBooks, Amazons Mobi or Kindle, Kobo or Barnes and Noble it is a required current strategy.

Don't trust your content to the ePub3 format only. Make sure it has been produced in a system like IGP:Digital Publisher so you can quickly adapt to any real business requirements in the future, and that future is going to happen faster than anyone thinks.

We are very fortunate that our primary focus is on ePub3 for education, training and controlled channel delivery. We do plenty of fiction and standard non-fiction production and distribution, but the fun is with the content that you know changes the lives of the consumer.

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