View From the Publishing Trenches

To everyone who insists that the future of e-book will be multifunction devices ruled by the ePub standard, I have but one word.

Balderdash!

But, you say, look at the popularity of the iPhone and other multipurpose devices. Haven’t they fueled the rapid rise of e-books? Aren’t people clamoring for a single format standard?

I think most e-book prophets have succumbed to the same shortsightedness that has doomed innumerable technology forecasts in the past. Maybe too many of them are too young to have watched forecast after forecast fail miserably. Real technological progress is not an easily graphed growth function.

And that’s the trouble with trying to forecast its growth. Throughout my 60+ years, technology in every field has shown the same pattern of progress (maybe I should call it change since it’s not always progress) — the technology (1) slowly gains momentum, (2) then accelerates (sometimes at heady rates), and (3) finally either makes an large, unforeseen leap forward or, even more commonly, is bypassed by a completely new technology that nobody saw coming.

Unfortunately for the forecasters, they usually make their forecasts in the second phase. History is littered with their failed projections. In addition, not all “old” technology withers away never to be seen again. Some people even still prefer 1960s muscle cars and vinyl records.

Does this mean we shouldn’t try to see into the future so we can attempt to plan for it? Of course not. Just don’t become so focused on one vision of the future that you don’t see the express lane pop up in the your peripheral vision with a whole new concept.

So what does this all mean for e-books?

I think there will continue to be a significant market for e-books in formats compatible with multipurpose devices (like the iPhone, iPod Touch et al). But I also see a major segment of e-book sales going to dedicated reading devices and even PC-based reading software. What you find an amazing capability I may find just an annoyance.

For example, there is no way I want to read any book on any kind of phone. The idea just doesn’t work for me. Of course, I am not married to a cell phone. For me, a phone is just a tool for communication, something I certainly don’t use for anything else when away from home. Of course, I don’t travel much, nor do I have any interest in traveling any longer (got it all out of my system years ago). I do all of my reading in my living room or home office.

I own a Kindle and find it useful for many reading tasks. I also have a half-dozen desktop e-book readers installed on my PCs, and all I have to do is double-click an e-book. The appropriate reader loads and opens the file (except for Amazon’s DRM books, but that’s about to change, too). Do I care which reader opens – Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Digital Editions,  B&N Reader, Microsoft Reader, Mobipocket Reader, Sony E-book Library, etc? Not really.  Not as long as the book opens and I can read it.

Do I care if people prefer the Sony Reader to the Amazon Kindle…or the new Cool-er Reader to both? No, even if it does complicate my publishing efforts.

But, surely, e-books must eventually zero in on one standard software format, right? Maybe, but maybe not.

Many forecasters insist that the IDPF’s ePub will become the standard format for all e-books. I’m not so sure. I’ve done quite a bit of e-book formatting over the past 18 months or so — in a variety of formats including the Kindle, ePub, and, of course, PDF.

I see two major flaws with the ePub format.

First, it is far more complicated and a much fussier format that the HTML-subset used by Kindle. When you make what should be minor changes, you often have to make changes in other portions of the zipped file (yes, kids, ePub is really just a collection of content, navigation, and style file gathered into a ZIP file). And a minor keying error can turn the entire (or at least a large portion of) the book unreadable — the same minor error in an HTML-based format usually affects only a portion of the displayed book. And there is no easy way to insert a new section of text, anywhere except at the end of the book, if you want it to show up in the displayed ToC — you have to redo the ToC.

Second, not all readers display a valid ePub file the same way. In fact, some features don’t work at all and others display differently. Sometimes, the reading device won’t open the file at all.

So much for a “standard” format.

Another problem we’ve encountered many times is that very few print book designers have any idea of how to create an Adobe InDesign file (the most common book layout software among pros these days) so that it can be converted easily to either ePub or Kindle formats. As a result, we often have to explain to our clients that their nicely formatted print book will cost at least an eye and a hand to convert.

Sure, you can use one of the many automated tools to convert a book into ePub or Kindle format from a Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF file. The results may display on the intended devices…but those results are almost always ugly with bloated code. If you book is straight text with little need for special formatting, it might be acceptable. The use of these tools by the uninformed is the primary cause of the rising tide of reader gripes about lousy formatting and typographical errors in e-books.

What’s my forecast?

You think I’m going to crawl out on the precarious limb? Sure. Why not?

I think we will see several classes of reading devices continue for the foreseeable future. We’ll have dedicated devices that do little more than display e-books for those who want nothing else. We’ll see the market for multipurpose devices continue to grow, albeit soon at a much slower rate (once the newness and cool factor wears off, they’ll have peaked). But we will soon see somebody release a desktop reader that can open just about any e-book format and display it properly (unlike the desktop Stanza app that will open most of them but often makes them look like crap).

Most people today still read e-books on the PC screen (OK, also on Mac screens). I see little to change that. Netbooks might make inroads, but they’re basically PCs. Tablet devices might suck up some of that market…but they’re also more-or-less PCs, too.

Is ePub here to stay? Not without a lot of changes. If the IDPF community resists, something will come along to bypass them and meet the nascent demand for something better.

So, what’s your forecast?