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eBooks an Overview by Beat Oderbolz
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Presented at the ADL Working Group Meeting. Vienna, Austria: 11/07/2012
Transcript of eBooks
eBooks an Overview by Beat Oderbolz
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ADL WG Meeting in Vienna, November 2012 Beat Oderbolz, [email protected]
2007, November 2010, July 2011, January 2011, May
Kindle and Kindle eBooks introduced Kindle eBooks outsell Hardbacks Kindle eBooks outsell Paperbacks (115:100) Kindle eBooks outsell Hardbacks and Paperbacks combined (105:100)
Ok… But what is so
great about eBooks?
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The interesting question is not «are they reading eBooks?» but «why are they reading eBooks?» Why is it, that a lot of people prefer an eBook to an actual book? So, let’s see…
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size and weight
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changable character size and reflowing text
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changable fonts and changable «themes»
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eBooks are searchable and they can access a dictionary
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Add highlights & notes which appear in a list
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Interdevice Synchronisation – Read an eBook back home on your couch on one device…
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…then, if you have to leave and can’t take your tablet PC with you, continue reading on your smartphone. The devices are automatically synchronised via a cloud service and the reader on the second device opens the eBook at exactly the same location where you left it.
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Very interesting for teaching/learning, and probably the «next big thing» in eBooks: Fixed Layout eBooks with a lot of Multimedia and Interaction. At the moment it’s just Apple who really supports this, but it’s just a question of time until other companies will jump onto this train. If you got an iPad: check out the free eBook «Life on Earth» Another interesting possibility: – eBook-to-Speech
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eBooks are «green» and «cheap»: No paper – No transportation – No stockpiling
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eBooks need electricity: no power – no reading
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eBook readers can break: don’t throw them, don’t get them wet, don’t swat flies with them…
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Waterproofed Kindle
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eBooks have no physical presence and carry no emotional value – they are just files on a reading device…
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…and they carry as much personality and warmth as this living room.
James Joyce’s Ulysses EPUB file
iBook Store 3 $
James Joyce’s Ulysses First Edition
The Manhattan Rare Book Company 60’000 $
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eBooks are no investments
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A big problem that concerns mostly academia: eBooks have no static page numbering – how do you refernce quotes in a paper? There are some ideas floating around on how to tackle this, e.g. numbering the paragraphs or setting so called «locations» in the text (Amazon).
eBooks… + do not use up any space:
1000s of books in one tiny box + are searchable + let you change the size of the
letters, or even change the font + let you add notes and highlights
which can also be removed again without any trace
+ let you directly access a dictionary
+ can be enhanced with non-static content
+ interdevice synchronisation + can be read to you by a text-to-
speech application + can be updated + are “green” and “cheap”:
no paper, no transportation, no stockpiling
Printed Books… + work without electricity + do not break + have a physical presence and
can carry emotional value, they can be more than just content
+ can be investements + have static page numbers
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Recapitulation: Advantages of eBooks (the points that do concern us as educators are green) Advantages of printed books (the points that do not concern us as educators are crossed out)
eBooks & ADL
offline
online
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Concept on how to use eBooks in ADL
eBook formats: The Tower of eBabel
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There are many different eBook file formats.
eBook Reading Devices
Hardware Readers
Tablet PCs With iOS, Android or Win 8
Smart Phones With iOS, Android, or Else OS
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To decide that crucial question we need to know on what kind of devices eBooks typically are used. There are three types of reading devices: Hardware Readers (Kindle Paperwhite, Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo eReader…) + lightweight (around 200 g) + small power consumption (around 2 months of battery life) Tablet PCs (iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Kindle Fire, Galaxy Nexus…) + full fledged PCs, not just eBook readers Smart Phones (iPhone, HTC, Samsung Galaxy III, Nokia Lumia…) + small, always with you
Most popular eBook Readers & the Formats they support
Amazon Kindle AZW, KF8, PDF, TXT, non-DRM MOBI B&N Nook EPUB, PDF Apple iPad EPUB, PDF, iBook Sony Reader EPUB, PDF, TXT, RTF, DOC, BBeB Kobo eReader EPUB, PDF, TXT, RTF, HTML
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Out of all this devices, this is a list of the five most popular readers and the formats they support. Virtually every eBook reader unterstands PDF. However, PDF was not really developed as an eBook format – this means, that a lot of the nice features from our list do not work, Most of all: PDF text does not «flow». Second choice: EPUB - The fact, that we keep out the users of the most popular reader out, shouldn’t concern us to much right now. We tackle that problem later. Btw: GoodReader (for iOS only, sorry) is probably the best PDF reader for mobile devices on the market! It even has a function called “PDF Reflow” which extracts the pure text out of a PDF and tries to emulate the text flow of an actual eBook – the result is somewhat pitiful…
EPUB Powerful
Open
Widely supported
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EPUB stands for Electronic Publishing and is the official standard of, and maintained by, the IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) It is Powerful: In it’s newest version, EPUB3, it supports more possibilities (audio, video, interactions, etc.) than most other eBook formats It is Open: EPUB is an open standard, no proprietary technologies are used It is Widley supported: Apart from the Kindles, most of the more popular readers (hard- & software) support the EPUB standard
EPUB EPUB internally uses • XHTML to represent the text and structure of the
content document • a subset of CSS to provide layout and formatting • XML to create the document manifest, table of
contents, and EPUB metadata
Finally, the files are bundled in a zip file as a packaging format.
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To open a EPUB container (without any DRM protection!), just change the extension from .epub to .zip and unzip it.
EPUB2 • Text • Tables & Lists • Pictures • Cover Picture • Table of Content
EPUB3 • Text • Tables & Lists • Pictures • Cover Picture • Table of Content • Audio • Video • Animations • Interactions • Internal and External Links • Embedded Fonts • And basically anything you
can do with the combination of HTML5, CSS and Javascript
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There are two versions of EPUB that are used: The older EPUB2 that can show the same kinds of content a printed book can show Then there’s the new version EPUB3, which handles everything EPUB2 handles plus a lot more!
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
«But there’s one small problem!»
• 0 Hardware Readers… • a few Software Readers • 0 Editors…
… are supporting* EPUB3 until now. * more or less…
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Apps, that support EPUB3… more or less… iOS:iBooks Android:Ideal Group Reader Beta So, for the moment, EPUB2 is still the way to go – but we keep our eye on EPUB3…
Sigil Open-source editor for EPUB2 eBooks. Supports both WYSIWYG and code-based editing of EPUB files. For Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
iBooks Author eBook authoring application by Apple. The output of iBooks Author is a proprietary Apple file format similar to the EPUB3 standard. Runs only on Macs and is free of charge.
Calibre Open-source software that organizes, saves and manages eBooks. Can convert eBooks between differing formats. For Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
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Production tools Sigil – probably the best EPUB editor on the market, better than the commercial tools – and it’s free. iBA – If you have a Mac, try it out. It’s easy to use and your eBooks look stunning and give you a glimpse into what would be possible with EPUB3. However, they can only be sold via the Apple iBook Store and can only be read on a Apple iPad. Calibre – is on one hand an eBook management software, on the other hand, and this brings us back to our friends with Kindles, a very powerful format converter!
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Sigil is an open-source editor for EPUB eBooks. As a cross-platform application, it is distributed for the Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux platforms under the GNU GPL license. Sigil supports both WYSIWYG and code-based editing of EPUB files, as well as the import of HTML and plain text files. Sigil homepage: http://code.google.com/p/sigil/
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iBooks Author (iBA) is an eBook authoring application by Apple. iBook Author eBooks are fixed layout eBooks and support most of the EPUB3 specifications: you can add audio, video, interactions and a lot more. However, documents created with iBooks Author may only be exported as PDF files, iba files (a proprietary eBook format, very similar to EPU3, that runs only on the Apple eBook reader app iBooks on iPads) or be published to the Apple iBooks Bookstore. iBooks Author runs only on Macs and is available free of charge from the Mac App Store.
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Calibre is a free and open source eBook library management and eBook conversion application developed by users of eBooks for users of eBooks. Calibre can also be used to sync your eBooks to a wide variety of devices. For more and device-specific information consult the Calibre hompage («About Calibre»). Calibre homepage: http://calibre-ebook.com
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One last, very cool thing! Well hidden in the sidebar Wikipedia has a book creating tool: With the Wikipedia book creator you can create a book containing a collection of wiki pages of your choice. You can export the book in different formats (for example PDF or EPUB) or even order a printed copy. A conclusive description on how to use book creator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Books Btw: “Diamond Age” by Neil Stephenson is a very cool sci-fi novel in which an “eBook” (well, actually it is more of a KI-book) plays a very prominent role. Read it!
Resources Sigil – Windows / Mac / Linux http://code.google.com/p/sigil/ Calibre – Windows / Mac / Linux http://calibre-ebook.com/ iBooks Author – Mac only http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/ (download via the Mac App Store for free) eBook reading apps for Tablet PCs and Smart Phones EPUB3 support Grid http://www.bisg.org/what-we-do-12-152-epub-30-support-grid.php idpf-Homepage http://www.idpf.org
for iOS
iBooks
for Android
IDEAL Group Reader ® Beta
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Some resources
