Last month, Sony announced that a new software update to its Reader Digital Book device would allow it to read the EPUB format established by the International Digital Publishing Forum. Most of the major book publishers participate in the forum and support the EPUB format.
Prior to this update, the only source for e-books that could be read on the Sony Reader was the Sony E-Book Store website. Now, anyone who can publish in the EPUB format can sell books for the Sony Reader.
What is EPUB? First and foremost, EPUB is an open standard, meaning there is nothing proprietary about it. EPUB is an XML-based format designed to allow for reflowable text in digital books and other publications. EPUB relies on two standards:
- Open Publication Structure 2.0 (OPS) — XML-based standard for authoring digital publications
- OPS Container Format 1.0 (OCF) — zip-based standard to encapsulate delivered publication components
It sounds more complex than it is. Provided, that is, you have software that can generate e-books to the OPS/OCF standards. The good news is that Adobe InDesign (IMO, the best WYSIWYG book design and typesetting software that is rapidly becoming the industry standard) can directly export a book in the EPUB format.
When using InDesign to export a book into EPUB, you select File > Cross-Media Export… > XHTML/Digital Editions…
You will then have some options to select — how to handle graphics, whether to include the ToC, etc.
The resulting file will then be readable on any device supporting the EPUB format (like the Sony Reader) or by using the Adobe Digital Editions software, which is free.
If you want to see what the actual XML code and files look like. All you have to do is replace the ‘.epub’ file extension with ‘.zip’ and then open it with WinZip (or whatever other ZIP format software you use). Here’s the file list in the EPUB/ZIP package for a small booklet I just produced:
WinZip Screen Shot
You can open the XHTML file in a browser and see the basic text of the document. If you want to see it in all its XHTML glory, though, you’d need to unzip those files into a new directory and allow WinZip to retain the subdirectory names already defined.
Now, if Amazon would only allow their Kindle to read EPUB in addition to their current proprietary format, the playing field for digital publishing would be far more level.
We at Slipdown Mountain Publications LLC will soon be releasing books in the EPUB format for our customers who own Sony Readers.
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5 Comments
August 29, 2008 at 2:40 pm
[...] its own wireless model down the road and it’s unclear how much Sony might benefit from its recent announcement to support EPUB format. It’s still way too early in this game to say who’s won and who’s lost, but the [...]
September 8, 2008 at 7:45 am
Top marks to Sony for supporting EPUB ! This format must be the way to go to avoid the nightmare of proprietory format lock-in by book sellers.
December 5, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Hi,
Good article. I am a publisher who uses Amazon’s product since they made it easy to publish for independents. Sony is just a copy cat in this, dealing with Border in attempt to carve out a market slice from Amazon.
Cheers
Murine Press
October 27, 2009 at 12:31 am
I have formatted and published my book on kindle (originally published as a paperback). Can I use the same formatted file to publish on sony reader?
marcia
October 27, 2009 at 8:19 am
Marcia,
Nope. Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader use two very different formats.
You can use Calibre to convert the Kindle file (provided it does not have DRM) into ePub, which is compatible with Sony. If you have the source HTML files for your Kindle book, you can also use Calibre to convert that to ePub. But if the file was not created with ePub in mind, you may not like the looks of the resulting ePub file.