I am from Europe and I am proud of that.
The printed book came up here, the radio, the web ... Skype started here too.
It is not the fact that we invent things here ... it is just the fact that we take something that actually existed before and we put meaning in it.
What eBooks have to do with this?
If you looks at the world market for ebooks you will see that something does not really works.
In US the eBook market become a really important piece of the puzzle. You have to publish in order to have your content on those shiny iPad's, Kindle's and Nook's. But is this really publishing or is it something else.
How many of those readers of eBooks on iPad's, Kindle's and Nook's are really readers?
How many of them are reading for the pleasure of reading and how many are reading just because this new toy that "was bought 'cause everybody does it" has to be used for something.
I am not criticizing the wave of nice to have gadgets. The technology is really helpful and I am earning my daily living from it. The fact that people buy those tablets and readers it is actually a good thing because in the end they will really use them for something and all of us will benefit from it.
What I am criticizing is the fact that the ebook as it is right now it is not a real book and has no power to win real readers. A real reader buys a reading product and he enjoys the product and the use of that product.
When we read on a tablet or any reading device we enjoy the device not so much the book.
What is the relation between this and the Europe invention's portofolio.
Well ... I hope it has.
The eBook of today it is like the print before Gutenberg. It was invented before but it was not actually used.
The US citizens are open to new things. That's good for them and for the market they are living in. In Europe things are different.
I've just read a story today that was saying that in Russia the black market for eBooks is covering 100 000 titles. The legal market offers just 60 000 titles. Russia is not really a reference for Europe but it makes my point in the fact that there are readers but not buyers of ebooks.
It is not the about paying for something when you can take it for free. It is the fact that a lot of people do not see value in those books.
Let me give you a hint to support this concept of "no value".
A large part of my work is related with the are of publishing services. In this business I deal with lots of publishers who want to have the books converted in EPUB or kindle format ... the money ... peanuts.
For peanuts money you get .... well ... peanuts. That's what they get back from most suppliers and that's what the reader is supposed to buy.
May be not all readers are wiling to pay real money for peanuts related books.
May be this is the reason that European readers are not that much into eBooks.
Let's hope that somewhere not far into the future somebody with the same logic will manage to come up with an idea that will make the books real products. I have my reasons to think he will be from Europe.
Chocochoix
Not really related with the publishing business but an interesting idea anyway.
A long time buddy sent me the final product of a start-up that he envisioned for the last 12 months and now became real.
He is involved in advertising and his usual projects are production related ... customized campaigns, gifts, guest books and everything related. He thought that it will be a nice idea to come up with a product that is already destined to be customized and the product of choice was chocolate.
You can find out about his project following the link.
Hope you will enjoy the idea as much as I enjoy the chocolate :)
A long time buddy sent me the final product of a start-up that he envisioned for the last 12 months and now became real.
He is involved in advertising and his usual projects are production related ... customized campaigns, gifts, guest books and everything related. He thought that it will be a nice idea to come up with a product that is already destined to be customized and the product of choice was chocolate.
You can find out about his project following the link.
Hope you will enjoy the idea as much as I enjoy the chocolate :)
How many pages in a book
Just found a very interesting statement about the recommended book size:
“A book should be like a woman’s skirt—long enough to cover the subject but short enough to keep it interesting.”
Anything more than that does not worth mentioned :).
“A book should be like a woman’s skirt—long enough to cover the subject but short enough to keep it interesting.”
Anything more than that does not worth mentioned :).
Quark Xpress file stamp ... how to recognize file version
I am more than sure that you already know that you can recognize a quark file by looking at the beginning of the file with a notepad or other text editor.
Anyway, for anybody that needs to refresh this info here are the rules:
Enjoy.
Anyway, for anybody that needs to refresh this info here are the rules:
- If the string starts contains "PR3" this is a Mac file
- If contains a "II" this is a Windows file
- If the version code is "?" this is an Xpress 3.x file
- If the version code is "A" this is an Xpress 4.x file
- If the version code is "B" this is an Xpress 5.x file
- If the version code is "C" this is an Xpress 6.x file
- If the version code is "A" this is an Xpress 7.x file
Enjoy.
Apple textbooks and EPUB 3 vs. EPUB 2
It took some time to get back with a new post. May be the fact that nothing really interesting happens should be considered a reason.
Well .. actually things happen but are any of those things really revolutionary?
The last few days I was bombarded with information about the Apple textbook initiative. This really looks revolutionary but it is not. It is just a company that has enough power to try to disrupt what everybody thinks that it has to be changed. On the other hand they are trying to much to secure the revenue from this. This is too visible to alow the program to be revolutionary. They are just flexing some muscle.
On the other hand I can't say I don't appreciate the effort. At least they do something. This is not somethig to be said about anything in the commercial or open source / public area.
To be fair I did not even bothered to look for details about the format. I suppose they decided to do what it takes to have something viable and this is what they should. If you care too much about the standards nothing new will get in front. The format is just a matter of strategy ... Tim Cook is good at executing things and I'm sure it has the strategy. Considering the fact that they havea product on the market they definitely have also a vision .... whether this vision is correctly targeted with the strategy and aligned with the market capacity to absorb something new is another thing to be seen.
The apple textbooks offer text wrap around objects, multimedia content and .. and actually that's all we can say about them.
If we look at the features that EPUB 3 bring on, I don't see a good reason for them to depart too much from the standard:
Apple had anything at hand in the standard. May be they just played with the implementation. This remains to be seen.
Wish you all the best.
Well .. actually things happen but are any of those things really revolutionary?
The last few days I was bombarded with information about the Apple textbook initiative. This really looks revolutionary but it is not. It is just a company that has enough power to try to disrupt what everybody thinks that it has to be changed. On the other hand they are trying to much to secure the revenue from this. This is too visible to alow the program to be revolutionary. They are just flexing some muscle.
On the other hand I can't say I don't appreciate the effort. At least they do something. This is not somethig to be said about anything in the commercial or open source / public area.
To be fair I did not even bothered to look for details about the format. I suppose they decided to do what it takes to have something viable and this is what they should. If you care too much about the standards nothing new will get in front. The format is just a matter of strategy ... Tim Cook is good at executing things and I'm sure it has the strategy. Considering the fact that they havea product on the market they definitely have also a vision .... whether this vision is correctly targeted with the strategy and aligned with the market capacity to absorb something new is another thing to be seen.
The apple textbooks offer text wrap around objects, multimedia content and .. and actually that's all we can say about them.
If we look at the features that EPUB 3 bring on, I don't see a good reason for them to depart too much from the standard:
| Feature | EPUB 2 | EPUB 3 | Functionality |
|---|---|---|---|
| CSS3 support | No | Yes |
Better control over line break, hyphenation etc.
|
| Multiple style sheets | No | Yes |
Supports the ability to include multiple style sheets allowing for improved layout control
|
| Embedded fonts | No | Yes |
Allow fonts to be delivered along with the EPUB file.
|
| SVG support | No | Yes | Bring on the vector graphic functionality to EPUB area. It was strange not to have something like that in a pure electronic publication. |
| epub: type | No | Yes |
Support for semantic meaning
|
| epub: trigger | No | Yes | Support for creation of user interfaces for controlling multimedia objects. |
| XHTML 5 support | No | Yes | Inherits most of the definitions of semantics, structure and processing behaviours from HTML5 |
| MathML | No | Yes |
Direct embedding of MathML supported ... enables rendering of mathematics content as text instead of images
|
| Scripting | No | Yes | Support for scripted content, ie interactivity, using JavaScript language |
| Audio&Video | No | Yes | Inherits support for HTML5 rich media elements |
Apple had anything at hand in the standard. May be they just played with the implementation. This remains to be seen.
Wish you all the best.
How long the filename can be?
A friend asked me a very simple question.
And lucky me I had a computer in front to check my answer before telling him something stupid.
The question was: "I am on a Windows 7 machine. And it looks like I am not able to put my files in a deep subfolder. How many characters are allowed in a Windows 7 path?".
My first thought was to say: "around 32k". Before saying I've checked the info and it looks I was wrong.
The 32k is ok for the filesystem but the operating system is a different story. According to MSDN
"In the Windows API (with some exceptions discussed in the following paragraphs), the maximum length for a path is MAX_PATH, which is defined as 260 characters."
This is definitely something to keep in mind when you work with lots of files folders and data in general.
And lucky me I had a computer in front to check my answer before telling him something stupid.
The question was: "I am on a Windows 7 machine. And it looks like I am not able to put my files in a deep subfolder. How many characters are allowed in a Windows 7 path?".
My first thought was to say: "around 32k". Before saying I've checked the info and it looks I was wrong.
The 32k is ok for the filesystem but the operating system is a different story. According to MSDN
"In the Windows API (with some exceptions discussed in the following paragraphs), the maximum length for a path is MAX_PATH, which is defined as 260 characters."
This is definitely something to keep in mind when you work with lots of files folders and data in general.
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