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Re: PDF and ePub Formats

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From: Adri Edwards-Johnson
Date: May 12, 2010 8:33PM

My library system purchases downloadable ebooks in ePub format - more and
more publishers are making their materials available that way for purchase.
We have a lot of patrons checking them out.
--
Adri
(long time lurker and will probably go back to lurking now)

On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 8:26 PM, John E. Brandt < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> 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
>
>