HTML vs ePub

I know ... this one sounds silly but it is not ... and I can prove it to you.

What is publishing about?

It comes from a verb "to publish". In that respect the exact format you do the publishing is just a matter of taste. Good or bad taste is ... how to say it ... it is something that you have it or not but .... but you have the right to have your own :-)


From that point of view it really does not matter what you use as long as it is at hand for the reader.
From an access point of view HTML has an advantage .... it is at the core of the internet and even at the base of EPUB ... so it is better (or shall we say say "it can be"? we know to well that not everything/everybody lives up to its possibilities)

Coming back to the actual question .. if we speak about taste then we shall decide first whether both formats are the same type fruits.

Does HTML and EPUB even compare in any way?

I know that this will always be a debate but publishing is about distributing information. It does not matter the channel, the looks, the way you get your hands on it or whatever else. As long as you manage to put the mighty information in the hands of your readers you are good to go. In that sense HTML and EPUB can be compared.
Nevertheless we can agree that there are differences between those fruits and bellow we have some of the major points in discussion.

So how do they compare?

Hold your horses ... it will not be a straight technical comparison. Too easy to do and if I am allowed to say it not so kindly .... it's a s###ty job with no serious outcome.

So here you have my points:

Self sufficiency

That means it has or not all it takes to do the job.
At first sight it looks like each format has a different scope and is self sufficient for different targets but is it?

HTML comes with no clothes so to speak. You have the text and some semantics inside it (like headings, lists and tables). Everything else (like images and heavy media and fonts for typography) is outside and for good reasons (if you need me to explain this we will need some time to get you thru some good old principles of accessibility and not only).
EPUB on the other hand includes everything that defines a publication in the standard way of thinking. It hives you everything inside HTML and then some. You have there the structure of the publication (like a summary), the fonts for good looks (if you like to include them), even heavy media can be included (like movies and sounds) not to speak about a separate cover.
And what?
Is that a first? Anybody here remembers the Internet Explorer Web Archive format? It was called MHT and did many things that EPUB does. Long time in advance? Was it used in any way? NO? Why? We can discuss here about the fact that it came from Microsoft and they have a great way of loosing this kind of wars but it was a different problem. Nobody cared about MHT and what it offered. Except for some very specific situations where you wanted to store or send a complete representation of a web page and had no other means to do it you've used MHT. That was all.  Most publishers did not knew it existed. Shall I also remember about the LIT format? It also came from Microsoft. Long story short it did not worked. I can recall also MOBI and REB and many others. Will discuss latter what is common for those formats.
So to speak I will say that both are self sufficient. It just depends what you expect from them and how you prepare for the battle between two products based on each of those formats.  
No winner here.

It gives Looks and Presentation

I like well designed products. Who doesn't? The look makes the difference. But who has the looks here?
HTML comes empty handed in the presentation area as said before. It was designed to share information with no fuss. Just put it there with paragraphs and headings and that was all that it was supposed to offer. And this is what it does.
EPUB on the other hand it has the usual edge. It gives you a cover that the library software of whatever other software it interacts with, can show it to you so that you know what book is that and how it looks. You have also all the bells of the modern era in it and you might think that you can also do some typography (I will not comment too much about this point ... I will reserve another post for it :-) ).
And what?:
I am a supporter of greatness in simplicity. You might disagree but if you use an Apple product and you like it you know what I am saying. Nobody stops you to put a CSS and some fonts and pictures along to you HTML files. You can call that package a book and be happy with it. Will that make it look good? It might but not necessary. The format is not the answer to great looking books. Neither is paper and ink and good old printing technology. It is about what you are doing with the format and the technology in your hand. So to speak, EPUB does not bring anything on the table from this perspective. It just inherits some characteristics of the HTML and its associated technologies and gives you the sensation that you have something new. It is not new. It is not better from a presentation perspective. It is just a convention that some companies agreed to present this to you in a specific format. A format that can look as bad as any other
A draw here also.

It is Ready for business 

Being economical and providing the grounds for success is important but it takes some guts to be sincere and define what will be good in the long run.

May be we shall first agree what "ready for business" means. If you ask the normal guy they will tell you that everything that brings money in the company is. My take is that the normal guy has bellow average entrepreneurial spirit and here are my reasons.
HTML was invented in the scientific sector and it missed the class on business reasoning. No digital rights management you will say, no "big guns" supporting the business case, no sales channels no nothing. Just a format to distribute content. But it does that very well and it is at the base of many great content related businesses right now and in the visible future (let's just mention the web itself and the social network phenomenon). What will all those be without HTML? 
EPUB on the other hand has all of the above. It offers DRM (actually the Reader/App that interacts with it offers it but that is a different story) ... It comes with the backing of all major publishers ... It has multiple sales channels (very real web shops selling books in this format) and we might find some other advantages.
And what?:
Let's start with some basic business reasoning:
Big business comes either thru implementation of basic economics principles (like productivity, repetability, reputation, ...) or thru straight innovation. Both EPUB and HTML are digital formats so implementing the basic economic principles comes by default.
If we talk about production you might even see some advantages for HTML. I know that for sure and anybody who was involved in the production of EPUB files knows also that it is not a straight job and you do not have ready made tools and you don't know for sure how will it be displayed on the end user screen and some other aspects that make your life miserable. It is much cheaper to produce straight HTML files than a simple EPUB. No need to explain to much but we can give it a try in the comments if you like. In this perspective you can say that HTML helps you keep some of your hard earned money in your pocket and this is very good business any day.
So we still have innovation. This is again related with what you do with the format not what the format offers you. You can build great things with both formats but let's be serious ... when you have a very open, clear and well understood "jack of all trades" format like HTML and an open and shiny but also very much enforced and a "Goliath like" format ... what will you consider to be the best choice for the base of your next big publishing product? May be you will not chose HTML for that because it looks so much "light" but you will most probably have a hard time comming with a really innovative product enclosed by the limits imposed by EPUB.
You can call it a draw also but realistically speaking EPUB was made as a business tool and it does not live up to it's expectations. If a business is not a straight winner that are more chances that it will be a flop in the end. It might not be the case always but in most cases it is.

Some conclusions before you get bored?

If we keep the same line and of logic HTML looks like a more rough approach. Something like a draft manuscript in comparison with the hardcover published book. I can agree on this, but is that in any way a disadvantage? In this frugal society does anyone think that the hardcover will make the difference on the long run? People today are starting to question the necessity to own "harder" things like the cars. In 20 years if not less who will own a car in the developed world when the option of using a shared vehicle (or just asking for one to come to you) will be so much more appealing. How many members of that society will buy paper books and keep them like a treasure when they do not own a car and may be not even the house?
Don't get me wrong. I have lead and ink in my blood for the generations of printers in my family and I am looking to buy a letterpress in the near future but that will not change the future of the printed books.
No Starship Enterprise will carry any printed books ... except may be ... for curiosity.

So ... going back to the business side of the problem ... shall you go with EPUB or HTML?

Neither of them is a guarantee for success but if I am going to put my money on this I will go with HTML any day.
It gives you freedom to innovate. It lets you encapsulate the content in any kind of business concept and distribution channel you might like to go ... It makes me feel light and nimble and able to build something that will go beyound what it was already created before. This is what business is about.
Enjoy.

Hyphens & Dashes

Great resource on hyphens and dashes. I can't think of anything more but who knows. Suggestions are welcome :-)

ePub ebook WYSIWYG editor

I know, sounds unreal but finally happened.

Somebody ... Thank you Strahinja! ... finaly did it and now we have a working and truly a very useful ePub ebook editor.

You can find the project and download the package from: http://code.google.com/p/sigil/ 

What's more:

• You can edit directly the packaged file
• It helps you edit the syles
• You have also an image viewer showing all the images included in the book
• There is an metadata editor in the Tools menu
• A TOC editor is found in the Tools menu as well

There is also a manual if you are the kind of person who reads manuals.

It looks nice as well:

There is not much more to say. It is a nice piece of software that is simply doing the job.

Enjoy 

Publishing evolution

Last week I've seen how Wired looks on iPad (http://tv.adobe.com/watch/xd-inspire/introducing-wired-on-ipad/). Or should I say I've seen:
- how a magazine should look in digital form
- how digital content had to be displayed for years
- how a typesetter has to work to get things done for a digital device
... and the list can be much larger.
It looks nice, It looks as we should expect it to look. And this has to be the beginning.
I have to add that this has been created using InDesign and most probably is in fact just a heavy enriched PDF file. Nice work.
Enjoy the present :-)

Priviledge of being readed

Just found a great small article here http://www.pubexec.com/blog/the-no-1-rule-b-to-b-audience-development-301301.html.
It is about publishing and the fight for audience. This days the fight is not about convincing somebody to buy your content, but about convincing them to read what you give them (most probably free). Most authors are well under paid for the effort done writing articles, novels ... you name the material. On the net at least they knew somebody is interested in that material. That's a reward in itself (let alone the fact that you get your payment from google when you put "add sense" inside).
One way or another the commercial publishing will exist and publishers will still sell content, whether as ebooks, paper books or whatever else, but they have to accept the fact that the selling applies only on some specific kind of content. And nobody established what's that specific kind.
That's the beauty of life ... we have to discover that.

Who is the publishers worst enemy?

That seams related with the previous post about google digitization program but I'm not sure it is ... it was just started by it ;-)
I think what's happening with Google is not more different than what happened to other business partners in the publishing history. Think about Amazon ... is a good partner but if you talk with somebody working with them they'll love to criticize how the big bad Amazon is eating their profits.
Well ... when you do publishing just for profit you can be sure that Amazon is THE enemy, but if you do it in order to spread knowledge and leave a good life from that occupation may be the perspective will change. That does not imply that Amazon is a candid company ... is just doing it's business like any other retailer.

The bad, the ugly and ... the google

Why there are so many people in the industry scared about Google digitization program. If you refuse to let Google digitize your content you can keep it ... no problem ... but is that in your own interest? Google grew because they concentrated on a specific market niche "give people access to information". Publishers have a related business "give information to people". There is a common word you see? Somebody gives access and the other gives the information. Google knows how to make money from that ... why publishers can think at something? In fact Google is helping publishers reach a much larger audience ... that should be seen as a good thing. If they stop considering Google as the enemy may be something positive will come up.

Why publishing?

This morning when the blog page was displayed I realized that the initial bulet that crosed my mind about the content is not nearly as focused as initially intended. I fact I think that most of the time at anything but publishing. I suppose that's why I still love the area ... because I'm not so focused on it. I can still dream about boats and cars ... and preserve "the publishing virus" inside :). Have a nice day.

"The supplier" (Pilot episode)

One of my daily activities involves the discovery and managing the initiations phase for suppliers of publishing services. I know that most people don't know what to do with the "request for work" emails that hit their emails but somebody has to do this kind of job also.
I have to deal in that sense with suppliers from China, Germany, India, Maroco, Philipines and Romania and with freelancers form wherewer you could imagine.
It is a business like any other, just that the entrance bariers are very low. That should normaly drive the evolution of the industry in the god sens but unfortunately does not.
When I first got in contact with the industry most of the people involved had a god ideea of the specific tehnologies and processes. Everybody knew what an AQL was. And everybody knew that XML is the next big thing (it was the SGML era).
7 year after a project manager from Springer told me that he did not found a single provider at a fair who knew what DITA was. Today if I make a typo in an email refering a specific quality level expected on a volume, 1/3 of the receivers where not aware if that fact and will ofer me the writen level (wrongly spelled) instead of something you would expect.

What hapened? It is a matter of small prices and knowing what to ask for. They are used to be client driven. If the client ask for the lowest price they will ofer it. But that comes with a "price" also. The quality is much lower than what you would expect. In order to give you a good price they will use somebody unprepared for the job and if you don't qualify your suplier you will have a big surprize when the deliveries start coming.
In the last week I had to do two "train by email" sesions for using an OCR with supliers who did not know that using such and application is not a "press a button job" if you want to do a god job. What should I expect from the Quality Assurance team of such a supplier. I'll tell you: more than 50 errors in a batch where only 10 were alowed.

What you should do then if you need to find a supplier?

From my experience there are some simple rules that will save you job and your wallet:
1. Do you homework ad contact enough posible suppliers to chose from. If you have to find a decent supplier expect ... or may be I should say force yourself to test at least 5 for the job. If the job is something complex most probably you should double that number. If the job is big and the timeframe short ... count that and search for much more providers.
2. Prepare an set of specifications for the pilot phase. Something clear, and easy to understand. Try to create a complete package with samples of input and output, expected procesing steps and so on.
3. Define the quality level.
For data capture that involves a number of errors per 10k character (betwen 1 and 5) The industry standard is 2 errors per 10k character.
For conversion to XML, you should expect no errors at the structure level.
4. Be very specific and define what an error means in your case. If for example your project requires data capture you have to avoid "mising characters and spaces, badly recovered characters, broken paragraphs, aditional spaces and cariage returns, missing or badly recovered punctuation".
5. Send a sample of input of few pages and ask for it to be procesed in order to see if they understood the job and if they respect the quality level. The test will not cost you a dime. Is a standard process in the industry. A test will help them also to understand the dificulty of the job and to give you an evaluated price not something from the stomach.
6. Analyze the test output carefully. Usualy a supplier will do his best for the test samples. If they are not capable to give you good sample for the test you should not expect for more during the project. Let them know what was the result of the test and what was your expectancy. They're humans and ned to know what hapened. May be next time will do better if they know what was wrong.
7. Adjust you're requirements if you discover unexpected types of error in the samples.
8. Chose a set of suppliers form the best performers and try to improve the results by letting them know what was wrong. Chose the best price and tell the others what's the best price. They will try to beat that price for sure.
9. Prepare an work order and write all the info in it: specifications, error definition, expected quality, etc. Mention there if you can allow multy level quality (different prices for different quality levels). Be sure to writhe that you will not pay for batches that were not conformant with the expected quality level defined in that document.
10. Broke the job in batches that you can manage and send them one by one to the suppliers you chose in the end (you should chose a single one only if the project is small enough). Make sure you check the quality level provided at least for the first 2 or 3 batches from each supplier. If you find errors, more that expected send feedback and send back the job for rework. They should do the rework for free. When it comes back analize again ... if you still find erors you should not pay for that batch.

I shall continue this series in a new post during the next days. Good luck!