This blog started five years ago today, a couple of weeks before Amazon launched the game-changing Kindle and a couple of months after the industry had placed its hopes for a smooth transition to digital on its own open format, EPUB. It's hard to remember or imagine but at that time Sony was the hot… Continue reading Five years of eReport
Category: ebook formats
Update: PressBooks adds new features, pricing and distribution plans
A few weeks ago, I reviewed PressBooks, one of a new breed of online ebook production tools. PressBooks founder Hugh McGuire just announced a handful of updates and some planned changes to the PressBooks business model. Together, they represent a significant improvement to the PressBooks offering so it’s worth recording them here. I’ve run the… Continue reading Update: PressBooks adds new features, pricing and distribution plans
Online ebook production tools, Part 3: Inkling Habitat
This is the final article in a series looking at a new category of online ebook production tools. The earlier reviews looked at PressBooks and Vook. Unlike Vook and PressBooks, the Inkling Habitat online publishing platform is aimed squarely at the textbook market. It provides publishers with the tools to produce and distribute rich interactive… Continue reading Online ebook production tools, Part 3: Inkling Habitat
Analysis: Ebook Format Wars, Round 2
[This article was originally published in the March 2012 issue of News on Bookselling, the magazine of the Australian Booksellers Association.] This year will mark the fifth anniversary of Amazon’s launch of the Kindle, the event that triggered the spectacular rise of the ebook. Amazon has remained the biggest beneficiary of this growth, with its… Continue reading Analysis: Ebook Format Wars, Round 2
Analysis: Apple’s iBooks 2.0 is big, smart, and will be the ‘Kindle moment’ for textbooks
Apple made several announcements yesterday which can drive the textbook’s digital transformation — or, in Steve Jobs’ more colourful phrase, its “digital destruction”. My pick is that this will be the tipping point for educational publishing, its ‘iPod moment’ or ‘Kindle moment’ when the market suddenly takes off. But Apple’s moves will go much further… Continue reading Analysis: Apple’s iBooks 2.0 is big, smart, and will be the ‘Kindle moment’ for textbooks
EPUB3 ready to go, now Amazon responds with Kindle Format 8
A couple of weeks ago, the publishing industry’s EPUB3 specification was finally signed off. This was the cue for device makers and e-reading app developers to build it into their next releases and for publishers to start work on enhanced ebooks. Now Amazon has responded with its own next generation ebook format, Kindle Format 8 (KF8), complicating… Continue reading EPUB3 ready to go, now Amazon responds with Kindle Format 8
Review: Bluefire eReader app spells great news for indies
A big hole in the eReading landscape has just been filled with the launch of independent ebook reading app Bluefire. The free iPad and iPhone app will read ePub formatted ebooks, including ebooks encrypted with Adobe’s ACS4 digital rights management. While there are already several eReading apps that will do this, what sets Bluefire apart is that… Continue reading Review: Bluefire eReader app spells great news for indies
Make your own Kindle ebooks using new Adobe InDesign plug-in from Amazon
Publishers who want to produce their own Kindle-ready ebooks can now do it directly from within the Adobe InDesign page layout software using a free plug-in thatAmazon has just released. The plug-in adds an “Export to Kindle” facility which generates the file in a few clicks, similar to InDesign’s native ePub export facility. This is… Continue reading Make your own Kindle ebooks using new Adobe InDesign plug-in from Amazon
Blio e-reading platform launches today, sort of
The Blio e-reading platform launched today, promising to deliver the Holy Grail of a rich visual experience and good readability on mobile devices. Unfortunately, today’s launch was of the Windows version only and this probably explains why, like many commentators, I’m feeling a little underwhelmed and even disappointed by it. After months of build-up, Blio… Continue reading Blio e-reading platform launches today, sort of
Magazines get behind next generation ePub standard
Since the announcement of the iPad, magazine publishers have been scrambling to turn their magazines digital. But there’s one problem: unlike books, which have seen a surge in digital sales, the magazine industry has no standard format that publishers, e-reading device manufacturers and consumers can rally around. That looks set to change as an influential… Continue reading Magazines get behind next generation ePub standard