ePUB, EPUB, or .epub? to be continued

This post is a version of a draft of a story for OhmyNews around the time of the Online Information show in December. The comments will show links to later posts.

Last year I was invited to join the publishing panel when someone was a bit late. this year I hope to just ask questions. Such as what is XHTML? Why do they call it .epub or whatever? Why would InDesign lose all my formatting when I try to save as EPUB? Co I have to learn about Cascading Style Sheets? Could this be a bit more simple?

Similar questions for the London College of Communication Futures Conference in October at the time of Total Print so there should be some clues.

The Sony Reader will be available in the UK next month and even though there seems more US interest in the Kindle, there is no UK Kindle and also Waterstones still has credibility in the book world. Before December there could be interest in this area enough for somebody to explain how ePUB is open to most writers.

Meanwhile PDF is another option. There may be an explanation to be found on how Adobe thinks about all this. Still no MARS plugin for Acrobat 9 as far as I know. Possibly Adobe is so segmented marketingwise that it is left to users to make choices and a pattern will emerge later.

Previously, story for OhmyNews


Sony Reader Opens to EPUB Format for Digital Books