Another format for e-books

The situation in the market of electronic readers in recent times only disappointing. And the reason for this - the lack of interest in the open standards of electronic books. All these start-ups are developing new products to fit into the niche of digital education (which is undoubtedly important and good that it appeared) by creating another e-book format and another store for selling them.

All of this applies to ePUB. He is undoubtedly one of the best, but the result of his practical use is complexity and incompatibility with ordinary books that look awful in his Procrustum bed. We can assume and understand what prompted Inkling or Kno to refuse to support this standard. Why shouldn’t companies with giant resources proclaim or promote a new standard, since ePub doesn’t meet all the requirements?

What is the situation with e-books now:

• All readers display HTML in one form or another.
• HTML5 is just perfect for developing great books.
• It is a widespread standard and now there are enough open engines for use in electronic readers.
• Graceful degradation methods can be used to maintain compatibility with older readers.

Therefore, there is no need to invent your own formats. Although this is a dangerous consequence.

The truth is that many traditional publishers do not have enough knowledge about new technologies and the approximation of digital content. They understand that something is happening and that they should jump on the steps of a rapidly moving train, but they do not fully understand how to do this and why.
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Achieving proprietary formats investment agreements means that open book versions will be given less attention for some books and they will never see the light.

Some applications (for example Widescript) already support the format zhook . On his example, you can see that beautiful books are possible and easy to do with the help of open standards today. It remains for the small - companies must assist to create a healthy ecosystem of e-books.

via Widescript