EPUB Boot Camp: Under The Hood

EPUB for Independent Publishers What’s Under the Hood?

Who Helped?
Michael Smith – IDPF
Megan Cowie – BNC
Brian O’Leary – Magellan Media
Phil Madans – Hachette
Frank Grazioli – Wiley
Liza Daly – ThreePress
Andrew Savikas – O’Reilly

EPUB Derivation
Based on XML
Makes use of XHTML and DTBook
Compliant with CSS 2.0

Who’s Afraid of XML?
XML is easy – it’s text!
You’re already doing XML  ONIX!
EPUB is just another flavor of XML, as ONIX is

What is EPUB?
Three specs that make up EPUB
What it’s used for
Why it’s important

Three Specs That Make Up EPUB
Open Publication Structure - OPS
Open Packaging Format - OPF
Open Container Format - OCF

Open Publication Structure (OPS)
Standardized way of representing digital content for electronic reading devices
Publishers sell digital content to many aggregators
Need a single standard so as not to produce multiple file formats

Open Packaging Format (OPF)
Describes the components of the OPS publication
Provides metadata (like ONIX does)
Specifies the reading-order of the publication (which components are meant to be read first, second, last)

What’s OPF For?
Specifies how the OPS publication is to be used/packaged
Provides supplementary information about the OPS document
Provides a way to declare a table of contents

Open Container Format (OCF)
Collects the OPS and OPF files in a single “container” file (usually a ZIP file)
Defines the rules for the ZIP container files

What’s OCF For?
Is the single-file format when exchanging in-progress publications between different individuals and/or different organizations.
Is the recommended single-file format to be used as the transport mechanism between publisher and distributor.
When delivering the final publication to the end-user, OCF is the recommended format for the single-file container that holds all of the assets that make up the publication.

What Is EPUB Used For?
Neutral, standard format for sending and receiving ebooks
Allows publishers to make sure that ebooks appear the same way on most devices
With widespread adoption, reduces the need to produce ebooks in multiple, device-specific formats

Why Is EPUB Important? Kindle

Getting Down and Dirty
Converting Word to EPUB
Converting HTML to EPUB
Converting InDesign to EPUB
Tools

Converting Word to EPUB
Word 2007 is based on XML
Many options – some say too many
“ Tag pollution” – MS imposes its own tags on the doc
Not many tools available to clean up a Word XML document
BookGlutton does Word  HTML  EPUB
Calibre does TXT  EPUB

Converting HTML to EPUB
Very few tools…for a reason
BookGlutton – accepts one HTML file at a time
Calibre – primarily a cataloguing system but does HTML  EPUB conversions
Caveats
HTML is ridiculously styled/coded, unstandardized
Unlike XHTML, can’t be tied back to an XML doc and validated

Converting InDesign to EPUB
Supported by InDesign
Caveats
Have to use InDesign functionality (no freehand styling)
EPUB requires a separate XHTML stream for each section or chapter - thus each section of an ebook should be created as a different document in InDesign
Other documented issues

Tagging and Chunking Best Practices

Tagging

Types of Tags

How to Tag

Chunking

What Is Chunking?

How Low Can You Go?

When Do You Stop? Military History Book Chapter Description of Battle Capsule Bio of General Description of General’s Shrewish Aristocratic Wife Mention of G.S.A.W.’s Best Friend Mathilde Lengthy Digression on Mathilde’s Fashion Sense and Literary Salon Mention of Viscomte Bruno Heffendorf, interloper and troublemaker

Tagging & Chunking Workflow

Who Tags What When

Author-centric workflow

Who Tags What When

Editor-centric workflow

Who Tags What When

Production-centric workflow

Who Tags What When

Marketing-centric workflow

Who Tags What When

Subrights-centric workflow

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EPUB Boot Camp: Under The Hood

by BookNet Canada

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