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Re: PDF and ePub Formats

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From: John E. Brandt
Date: May 12, 2010 8:27PM

ePub is relatively new open standard for formatting electronic books. It
basically uses the DAISY standard "to represent the text and structure of
the content document, and a subset of CSS to provide layout and formatting.
XML is used to create the document manifest, table of contents, and EPUB
metadata. Finally, the files are bundled in a zip file as a packaging
format." [see Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB]. There are a
number of e-reader packages that can be used to read documents created in
the ePub standard, among them iBooks the reader on the new Apple iPad. A
list can be found on that same Wikipedia page.

ePub files can also contain DRM (Digital Rights Management) layers which
publisher use to protect their copyrights.

As for how widely they are used, I don't know. But according to recent
reports, Apple has sold a million iPads in the last few months, so I suspect
there will be a lot of e-books sold using this standard.

Lastly, I will add some personal observations. The e-book industry is very
dynamic and in tremendous flux. Many of the traditional book publishers are
terrified of what happened with the record industry and file sharing
programs like Napster. They are moving (crawling) very cautiously into the
21st Century. Until they are confident that they can be successful
(financially), I suspect they will continue this crawl. Stay tuned.

John E. Brandt
jebswebs.com
Augusta, ME USA
<EMAIL REMOVED>
www.jebswebs.com