Today the IDPF made available the first public draft of the EPUB 3.0 specification (press release).
The IDPF has posted a good overview document to 3.0 that is worth spending a little time with. But here is a brief summary of some of the proposed new ‘features’, or changes, in EPUB 3.0.
Tom and I called in to the BISG meeting on Thursday (January 13, 2011) where the findings of the Identification of eBooks Research Project [pdf - slides] were revealed and discussed.
The results of this research are pretty distressing for someone who works with standards every day, but also (sadly) not at all surprising. Here are the key findings from the report…
An ISTC is a new way of linking different formats of the same book. Unlike an ISBN, it is tied to the book and only the book, not the publisher. A simple example is using an ISTC to link the hardcover, trade paper, mass market, and epub versions of a title. Even though each format would have a different ISBN, they would share a single ISTC.
But why is it important? We’ll tell you.
Kobo gives us some examples of how data issues can impact your book sales in the digital market.Sending good quality metadata in the first place will help you get your books to your readers on time. And that’s what we all want, right?
I asked Michael to list the most common metadata issues they see at Kobo. Here is his list (in order).
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.
