The most recent IDPF BSIG call highlighted the cost of success. Epub adoption has been happening all over the place with some publishers creating only epub and device manufacturers seeing the wisdom of supporting epub, but with this success has come the growing pains of a young standard in the wild.
Adobe, as pointed out in an earlier blog post, is pushing ahead with all sorts of digital tools for publishing and reading. So naturally they have had a lot of experience with the epub validation tool and of course with the Sony Reader. What they have discovered is that even though you might have a valid epub file this doesn’t mean it is going to be supported nicely on certain platforms.
What this means for the IDPF organization is that they need to take the lead on creating a best practices committee. Adobe has the jump on the group there but the need to have a neutral body suggesting best practices cannot be overstated.
Other news coming out of the call is that the IDPF is hoping to expand their statistical reporting on digital sales. Currently they report only on the numbers they receive from 13 publishers in the States, but post Frankfurt they have struck some agreements with places like Japan, Germany, Italy and other markets. This is bound to help flesh out the picture of the trend toward digital adoption. That being said, Mike Smith, executive director of the IDPF reported US Trade Wholesale Electronic Book Sales for Q3 08 revenue as $13,900,000—a 77% increase over Q3 07.
For the slides from today’s call and presentations given at Frankfurt you can go to www.idpf.org
BookNet Canada is a non-profit organization that develops technology, standards, and education to serve the Canadian book industry. Founded in 2002 to address systemic challenges in the industry, BookNet Canada supports publishing companies, booksellers, wholesalers, distributors, sales agents, industry associations, literary agents, media, and libraries across the country.