Bookworm ePub Reader Gets Boost From O'Reilly

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Bookworm ePub Reader Gets Boost From O'Reilly

Posted by kdawson on Friday February 13, 2009 @04:15AM from the open-book dept.

stoolpigeon writes in with news that ought to kindle Amazon's attention: "O'Reilly announced recently that they are now hosting Bookworm, an online ePub reader. ePub is composed of three open standards (OPS, OPF, and OCF) that allow users a great amount of flexibility without any lock-in. Bookworm lets users upload ePub files, read them online from a PC or mobile device, and also export them to mobile devices that support ePub. Bookworm can also export directly to Stanza. Once a user has uploaded their ePub books to Bookworm, they can track progress through them even across multiple devices."

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O'Reilly -- he's looking out for you! by y86 · 2009-02-13 04:20 · Score: 0, Redundant

I guess he really is.
I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by quangdog · 2009-02-13 04:20 · Score: 2, Interesting

I used to work in the college textbook industry, and there was a constant background drum from the book publishers talking about switching everything to eBooks. However, all the students that I ever asked about it were very much in favor of being able to fold down corners, draw in the margins, use highlighers, etc. Personally, when I read, I *like* the tactile interaction with the book. I'm not all that familiar with the current eBook readers - are they very popular?
1. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by Bigjeff5 · 2009-02-13 04:37 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Frankly, it's much, much, much easier to find information you are looking for in an eBook. Being digital, they a generally searcheable, which is fantastic. Also, depending on exactly what you are doing, it can be much easier to have the book on a monitor and your work right in front of you. None of that is as easy with a textbook. Trust me, I've used textbooks with a PDF option. I don't even like PDF's and I think it's really nice to have the option.
  Also, if you just need to -read- the material, an eBook in an eBook reader is infinately more convenient than a large textbook (you know, standard 700+ page books ;)). While the tactile feel is nice in a book, the awkwardness of a large textbook completely negates it and then some, in my opinion.
  Plus, have you read on an eInk device? It's like reading paper, only it's small and compact and has a massive geek factor, they rock. Mine doesn't let me search, only flip to certain sections, so searchability is about the same as a textbook, but others like the new Kindle let you search. I'm personally waiting for the Plastic Logic device that has a massive 8x11 screen, perfect for technical documents.
  Cheers!
  
  --
  Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
2. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by rHBa · 2009-02-13 04:43 · Score: 1
  
  I love the dead tree variety of books as much as the next man, especially for anything I'm going to be reading for more than 30 seconds but while I'm working I always use an easily searched eBook version, preferably a CHM for code references.
3. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by Your+Pal+Dave · 2009-02-13 04:44 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I used to work in the college textbook industry, and there was a constant background drum from the book publishers talking about switching everything to eBooks.
  They're probably hoping to dry up the used textbook market.
  
  However, all the students that I ever asked about it were very much in favor of being able to fold down corners, draw in the margins, use highlighers, etc.
  It seems to me that this would be where eBooks would shine. Add a stylus to the reader and now all of your annotations, bookmarks, etc can be indexed and easily searchable. Add to this the obvious weight advantage and eBook texts start looking pretty good.
4. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by ColdWetDog · 2009-02-13 04:46 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Nope, not very. There is an interesting story on Ars about the rise and fall and rise again of eBooks.
  
  Interestingly, Safari OnLine (an O'Reiley site) doesn't mention this new initiative at all.
  
  --
  Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
5. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-02-13 05:01 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  It seems to me that this would be where eBooks would shine. Add a stylus to the reader and now all of your annotations, bookmarks, etc can be indexed and easily searchable. Add to this the obvious weight advantage and eBook texts start looking pretty good.
  So like the iRex then? http://www.irextechnologies.com/
6. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by Your+Pal+Dave · 2009-02-13 05:19 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly. If only they had a halfway affordable price. The newest Sony Reader also has a touch screen but even it clocks in at $400 which is way too rich for my blood.
7. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by drinkypoo · 2009-02-13 05:23 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  If you just quickly browse ebay for various types of tablet computers (try things like "ebook", "tablet pc", and so on) you will quickly discover that the old axioms about good, cheap, and fast apply best to "new" technologies like ebook readers/tablet PCs. If it's fanless it's dog-slow, has a tiny screen, costs a zillion dollars, or has some combination of these particular flaws (and possibly many others, typically including limited I/O.) If it's got a super-low-power display, e.g. e-ink or OLED, the cost flies through the roof. Even a transflective TFT tends to come at a substantial premium. Sometimes you can get units pretty cheap used, but usually they're missing some innocuous yet expensive item like the stylus that fits into the corner of the unit. Typically the battery is missing or about to die.
  If you want an older, smaller-screen unit you can get a Nokia V770 pretty cheap these days. But the only cheap units with big screens are Stylistics, and the screen is big but lousy (or so say the reviews.) Most used units have battery and/or accessory problems. Maybe someone else knows of some nifty counterexamples but I've just been looking, and I bought a DT Research DT360 for $275 shipped. It gets about 1 hour of battery time.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
8. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-02-13 05:35 · Score: 0
  
  I just wish they could come out with a simple eBook reader that uses some open standard (none of this DRM lock in crap) and is affordable. I don't need wireless internet, mp3 player, stylus, or any of the other stuff they always seem to tack on.
9. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by InlawBiker · 2009-02-13 05:39 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Personally I've been drooling for an eBook reader for a couple of years. The price-point and DRM is keeping me out though.
  I would LOVE to have so many books at my disposal with me at all times. I'd read a lot more, especially since the books are much cheaper and easier to get.
  But at around $400 the local library is a still a lot more attractive.
  The publishing industry needs to wake up innovate before Amazon and Sony become the new iTunes of print publishing and come steal their lunch money.
10. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by digitig · 2009-02-13 05:41 · Score: 1
  
  The course I'm doing at the moment makes the material available in paper and electronic formats, and I use both. The book for scribbling in, highlighting, folding down the corners, reading in the bath and so on. The electronic version is indispensable when doing assignments for finding that quote you remember was in there somewhere.
  
  --
  Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
11. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-02-13 05:44 · Score: 0
  
  I prefer ebooks for technical documentation that I would only ever read while at my computer. But for actual enjoyment - whether it be fiction or non-fiction - you can't beat a nicely binded set of paper and ink. It's easily portable, cheaper overall (just look at the price of ebook readers!), more flexible and generally just feels nicer.
  Books are here to stay!
12. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-02-13 05:58 · Score: 0
  
  When the pile of books you need start weighing in the hundreds of pounds, the tactile interaction isn't fun at all. But the real problem with books is that in any technical field they are outdated before the ink is dry.
13. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by andrewsavikas · 2009-02-13 06:12 · Score: 1
  
  While there's clearly a relation there, Safari is more like a premium cable channel for technical books, where Bookworm is used to manage your personal library of individual ebooks. Certainly I'd expect we'll learn things from Bookworm that can be applied to Safari.
  
  --
  Andrew Savikas VP, Digital Initiatives O'Reilly Media, Inc.
14. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by Thaelon · 2009-02-13 06:17 · Score: 1
  
  My problem with eInk is the lack of a backlight.
  It blows my mind that amazon went to all the trouble to get eInk going on the kindle, but you still need a kludgey booklight to read it in the dark.
  It's why I vastly prefer to use my Nokia N810 with FBReader over the kindle. It's tiny, customizable (think red text on a black background - night vision preservation - no light keeping your SO awake), and the N810 is ideal for one handed reading (a big deal when reading laying down on your side).
  Call me when amazon is selling a kindle that doesn't need a kludgey addon book light.
  For now I'm looking to buy a broken kindle so I can have the privilege of being able to buy ebooks from amazon. (You cannot purchase their ebooks without a kindle registered to your amazon account).
  
  --
  Question everything
15. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by vivek7006 · 2009-02-13 06:57 · Score: 1
  
  Local public libraries rocks! Usually local public libraries share their resources with all other public libraries in the county. Almost all of them have a website and online search facility. You get free access to unlimited books. Why not support you local public library instead of buying DRM laden crap from Sony or Amazon?
16. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by SanityInAnarchy · 2009-02-13 07:33 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah... when can I start buying O'Reilly books in a free ebook format? I'd settle for PDF, even, but it seems the best I can do is order a dead-tree version and hook it up to their Safari site, which is only accessible through a browser, only searchable through their search, and not possible to download.
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
17. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-02-13 07:38 · Score: 0
  
  I also love my eBook's and you'll have to pull my Cybook out of my cold dead hands.
  That said, will someone explain to me why all my ebooks (legit purchases from fictionwise and others) have so many more typos and other errors than my dead tree books.
  Mark
18. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by SanityInAnarchy · 2009-02-13 07:47 · Score: 1
  
  Searchability is a big one. Indexes don't even come close to just doing a fulltext search.
  Netbooks can be had which weigh under 2 lbs. I don't have one of those, but my current laptop is with me everywhere. Dead-tree books means I would have to carry at least one, if not two, for each class, plus that laptop -- it's just dead weight. In high school, at least, this was actually unhealthy -- backpacks weighing 20 to 50 lbs are no fun.
  The things you've mentioned are pretty much blown away by decent software. Folding down corners, as a poor-man's bookmark, resulting in dog-eared pages? Just save a "bookmark", or five. Drawing in the margins, I haven't really seen, though I'm sure it's been done. Highlighters? Just copy/paste an interesting passage into your notes.
  Pure nostalgia, I get. I've talked to people who love the smell of a book, new or old, who like the feel of that paper between their fingers -- and I understand that. It doesn't mean eBooks won't happen -- do you still get your news from the newspaper, or do you get it from sources like Slashdot? Do you ever miss the feel of newspaper between your fingers when you can read fresh news, about things you're specifically interested in, tied directly to a forum where you can read what other people have to say about it, and discuss it yourself?
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
19. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by palegray.net · 2009-02-13 08:03 · Score: 1
  
  Being digital, they a generally searcheable, which is fantastic.
  Generally, yes. I have, however, encountered a lot of technical documentation in a certain job that was celebrated for being available in PDF format, only to find that the PDFs were composed of full page scans of hard copy documentation (no OCR). Fun times.
  
  --
  512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
20. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by andrewsavikas · 2009-02-13 08:11 · Score: 1
  
  You can already buy 400+ O'Reilly books that come in an "ebook bundle" of three DRM-free formats (PDF, EPUB, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket). Several hundred other titles (including our Head First books) are available just as PDFs. Follow the link referenced in the main story for more details and a Slashdot-discount (see the first paragraph): http://toc.oreilly.com/2009/02/bookworm-now-part-of-oreilly-labs.html
  
  --
  Andrew Savikas VP, Digital Initiatives O'Reilly Media, Inc.
21. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by Obfuscant · 2009-02-13 08:23 · Score: 1
  
  ... only to find that the PDFs were composed of full page scans of hard copy documentation (no OCR).
  Ditto. Many of the books on archive.org are scanned no-OCR versions, typically HUGE, and the color versions don't work on my Sony 505. Some of them have bad PDF about ten pages in, which makes the reader reboot.
22. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-02-13 18:32 · Score: 0
  
  do you still get your news from the newspaper, or do you get it from sources like Slashdot? Do you ever miss the feel of newspaper between your fingers when you can read fresh news, about things you're specifically interested in, tied directly to a forum where you can read what other people have to say about it, and discuss it yourself?
  Actually, I'd rather read stale, misspelled and badly edited duplicates of articles that I have no interest in, tied directly to a forum where I can read the same old memes day after day.
  I'm only here for the hot grits.
23. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by Garwulf · 2009-02-13 19:34 · Score: 1
  
  "Nope, not very. There is an interesting story on Ars about the rise and fall and rise again [arstechnica.com] of eBooks."
  The Ars Technica article doesn't really get it right, though. I was there for the beginning of the first e-book "revolution," and while it is interesting to read what was going on at PeanutPress, that article doesn't cast the net far enough back.
  Publishers did look into the e-book quite a bit, but the big experiment, if you want to call it that, wasn't in 2002 - it was in 2000-2001. During that time, Pocket Books, along with a couple of other publishers, started up e-book pilot programs, trying to figure out what the best way to make this new format work actually was. Everybody else watched them very carefully.
  Put bluntly, the e-books tanked (I know - mine was supposed to be one of the major ones). Even Stephen King tried to make it work with his own test project, and he failed. By 2002, the time this article starts, the experiment was pretty much over, and the e-book had been more or less written off as a waste of time until the technology had matured.
  So, around 2002, PeanutPress was fighting an uphill struggle - they were trying to convince publishers to support a format that had already been tested and found wanting.
  
  --
  Robert B. Marks
  Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
24. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by jascallaw · 2009-02-13 20:02 · Score: 1
  
  Neither did my wife, an avid reader, when I bought her a Kindle... against her wishes, for her birthday. She has never put it down since. eBooks offer enormous advantages, and for those midguided college students paying $150 for a text book just imagine the possible savings if the cost of printing and distribution were eliminated and shared with the purchaser. Marking entries, bookmarking, notes, all have more useful analogies in the ebook world, along with many others, like automatic citations, copy and paste, bibliography creation, etc. In a generation books will no longer be printed, its a certainty. Between now and then there will be a lot of heat and light generated about formats and devices. But the economic and environmental pressure to move away from printing is too great to resist even if there were any real user advantages to sticking with print. Which there are not.
25. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by ion.simon.c · 2009-02-13 20:28 · Score: 1
  
  Okular allows you to scribble in, highlight sections in documents, and add bookmarks and notes. 'Fraid that it doesn't make your computer waterproof, though.
26. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by ion.simon.c · 2009-02-13 20:29 · Score: 1
  
  Why CHM over hyperlinked PDF?
27. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by ion.simon.c · 2009-02-13 20:31 · Score: 1
  
  What's the difference between PDF and "ebook format"?
28. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by ion.simon.c · 2009-02-13 20:37 · Score: 1
  
  Drawing in the margins, I haven't really seen, though I'm sure it's been done. Highlighters? Just copy/paste an interesting passage into your notes.
  Okular does highlighting, inline notes, and drawing in the margins. If you use Windows, look here http://windows.kde.org/ to try it out. If you use Linux, you'll have to install a chunk of KDE 4.1 or 4.2.
29. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by ion.simon.c · 2009-02-13 20:42 · Score: 1
  
  I'm only here for the hot grits.
  Naked and petrified?
30. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by abdelazer · 2009-02-14 16:28 · Score: 1
  
  What's the difference between PDF and "ebook format"?
  The PDF file format was developed to keep every item fixed based on its absolute position on a page of set size. PDFs are wonderful inputs for a printer.
  Reflowable "ebook format"s like ePub were developed to let content "flow" into a screen of whatever size was available with no correspondence to any "page" idea. ePubs are wonderful inputs for reading systems.
  Open a PDF, reduce the size of the window, all you get is the top left corner. There are the same number of pages, you just see a portion of the first and need to move your magnifying glass around the page to read everything (bad).
  If you instead opened an ePub file and reduced the size of the window, the content would become narrower and longer, but all you'd have to do more was to scroll/advance through the content (good). This is no different than your web browser.
  In addition to being more device-agnostic and reader-friendly, ePub files can also be vastly more accessible, convertable, and reusable than PDF.
31. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by ion.simon.c · 2009-02-14 16:39 · Score: 1
  
  Open a PDF, reduce the size of the window, all you get is the top left corner.
  *My* PDF readers are configured to make the text too small to read in this situation. ;)
  All kidding aside, was generating a new format entirely necessary? What about good 'ole HTML + CSS? (Or is ePub XML that gets transformed into HTML and CSS?)
  Anyway. Thanks for the info!
32. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by __aailob1448 · 2009-02-14 20:58 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks for the link dude. It's a good read. The stuff that makes Ars Technica great.
33. Re:I don't understand the allure of eBooks... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-02-15 05:23 · Score: 0
  
  ePub is XHMTL with CSS and a additional file handling the organization of the book.
  Look there for a better explanation :
  http://www.teleread.org/2008/05/16/epub-demystified-tomorrows-e-book-reader-the-web-browser/
Colleges can have it both ways by Ed+Avis · 2009-02-13 04:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

A large university can install a mini printing press (or in other words, a big printer that does bookbinding) in the library. Publishers (or authors) can distribute their books electronically, and for those students who want to pay for it, a print-on-demand copy will be fairly cheap. Other students might prefer to buy an ebook reader like the Kindle (or just use their mobile phone, in a couple of years' time when screens are good enough) or just spend as little money as possible by reading the book on a college PC.

--
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Good news for Sony by Anonymous Coward · 2009-02-13 04:36 · Score: 2, Insightful

Thats good news for the Sony Ebook Readers like the PRS-505 and what not. Currently the Kindle doesn't support ePub so it really is interesting to see how the ebook format war will shake out.
Re:Who is John Galt? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-02-13 04:51 · Score: 0, Offtopic

For twelve years you've been asking "Who is John Galt?"
I beg to differ. I only started this afternoon. Then about 30s later, I decided I didn't care, and stopped again.
Currently done that way here. by DrYak · 2009-02-13 05:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

Geneva university here.
Lots of university made material (professor's slides and notes, other documents written by the faculty staff, chapters from books that professors have authored and have the right to publish themselves, chapters of recommended books [the university libraries pay a tax that gives them the right to make books available to their students] etc.) are distributed in PDF format on a specialised website.
The students can either read it on screen or print it with the university's or their home printers.
Just throw in a low-power device able to read PDFs and it's exactly the situation you describe.
At least with university-produced documents.

--
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
1. Re:Currently done that way here. by drinkypoo · 2009-02-13 06:42 · Score: 1
  
  What is the low-power device you mention? I started to write about how it was a netbook, but they don't have the battery life. Maybe XOs? With their special screen they can serve as a pretty credible e-book reader, although the resolution is still a bit low perhaps.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
eBook vs Textbooks price? by Aqualung812 · 2009-02-13 05:39 · Score: 1

It depends on how the price the eBooks. For example, I remember a single semester that the textbooks were well over $400. So if the pricing of the eBooks reflects the reduction in production costs, it might be far cheaper to get a reader + eBooks instead of new (or used) deadwood books every 6 months x 4 years (if you're lucky).

--
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
1. Re:eBook vs Textbooks price? by Miamicanes · 2009-02-13 06:31 · Score: 1
  
  > So if the pricing of the eBooks reflects the reduction in production costs,
  > it might be far cheaper
  Keep dreaming. Read any forum about eBooks, and the #1 thing everyone complains about endlessly is the fact that they're usually the same cost as the printed book... maybe, MAYBE a buck less... if you're lucky. By the time the eBook price goes down, the paperback edition is already in the 70% off pile at Borders.
  I guarantee... when college textbook publishers jump on the eBook bandwagon, they'll drop the price a tiny bit at first, then eliminate printed editions, then quickly jack the eBook edition's price up to what it would have been ANYWAY had it been printed, instead.
  Right now, the ONLY thing keeping publishers halfway honest is the fact that used books can be purchased nationwide from Amazon.com and other sources. Take away second-sale rights, and they can jack the price up to extortionate levels within a few years.
  Remember, college textbooks are a fairly inelastic, noncompetitive market. By the time you find out what textbooks a professor wants you to buy, it's too late to go shopping for a new professor. Assuming, of course, that you'd even consider changing your schedule or a good professor on the basis of textbook prices. Most students aren't, and the textbook publishers KNOW it.
  The other problem is that current ebook readers basically suck for anything besides reading stories page by page. Just TRY jumping around in a programming book with an e-ink reader. The 700+ms it takes to go from page - to -- page --- to ----page will drive you insane.
  What we REALLY need is for someone like O'Reilly & Manning to throw their weight against Amazon to open up Kindle's UI architecture. In other words, treat the document as a black box that can have UI gadgets and notes overlaid on top, but otherwise enable anyone with a free SDK to rewrite the UI code so the buttons, touchscreen, etc do what THEY think they should do. Within a year or two, the better UI ideas will bubble up and become more popular, and the bad UI ideas (or compromised UI ideas that aren't really ideal for anything, in a "one size fits nobody" kind of way) fall by the wayside.
  All I can say is, god help us all if Microsoft ends up behind a dominant eReader platform. We'll end up having to navigate through 3 levels of menus just to jump to the next chapter or set a bookmark, 2/3 of each page will be filled with EULA-mandated legal notices, and the search won't allow explicit boolean operators or clauses... it'll try to guess what you mean, be egregiously wrong at least half the time, and force you to constantly try outsmarting it to get the results you want (anyone who's ever used MSDN's search engine knows what I'm talking about...)
2. Re:eBook vs Textbooks price? by Your+Pal+Dave · 2009-02-13 19:52 · Score: 1
  
  > So if the pricing of the eBooks reflects the reduction in production costs,
  > it might be far cheaper
  Keep dreaming. Read any forum about eBooks, and the #1 thing everyone complains about endlessly is the fact that they're usually the same cost as the printed book... maybe, MAYBE a buck less... if you're lucky. By the time the eBook price goes down, the paperback edition is already in the 70% off pile at Borders.
  That's my main bitch about eBooks. You lose the ability to sell or lend your copy, and yet you pay nearly as much as a dead-tree copy for something with nearly zero reproduction costs.
  IMO an eBook should cost about 1/3 of a physical copy to make up for these losses.
  Fat chance of that happening.
Interface! by Aladrin · 2009-02-13 05:45 · Score: 1

Reading eBooks is all about interface. This one assumes that you can override text-size on your browser. My G1 doesn't do that... It'll zoom in, but then you are constantly scrolling left and right to read.
And formats! This thing only accepts ePub format. I've never found a book in the wild in that format. Baen.com doesn't have it for sale.
I'm all about open formats, but ... You know, they have to be useful.

--
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
1. Re:Interface! by stoolpigeon · 2009-02-13 06:42 · Score: 1
  
  Well - I think that is part of why this O'Reilly thing is a big deal. Not only are they hosting the site, they are making a number of their books available in epub format. Hopefully this will help it gain momentum and we can get away from the nasty drm laden formats.
  
  --
  It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
2. Re:Interface! by abdelazer · 2009-02-13 06:50 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Yeah, we (O'Reilly) are so committed to the ePub format winning the war that we threw up 262 more ePub-available titles on Tuesday and now have more than 400 available. See http://www.epubbooks.com/ for other publishers (there are starting to be a _lot_).
3. Re:Interface! by Chelloveck · 2009-02-13 07:00 · Score: 1
  
  EPUB is pretty useful. It's an outgrowth of the Open eBook (OEB) format. If you have something in that form I expect all you'd need to do is change the filename to get an EPUB reader to open it. It's essentially XHTML plus some metadata, so it's pretty easy to convert existing HTML docs to the format. Likewise, Microsoft LIT files (non-DRM'd, anyway) can be pretty trivially translated to EPUB.
  It would be nice if Baen supported EPUB directly. It would also be nice if they were consistent with their metadata... At least their HTML is reasonably clean, and fairly consistently formatted. It's not hard to automate conversion of their stuff to EPUB.
  Cory Doctorow, on the other hand, distributes utter crap for HTML. It's not as bad as what MS Word produces, but it's close. (I think he uses OpenOffice and just dumps the doc to an HTML file.) No consistency whatsoever. No use of header tags. Lots of <font> tags and paragraphs with embedded style attributes. Hellish to try to convert to anything other than the malformed tag soup that it is. It took me 2 hours the other night to convert Little Brother to something useful, even with HTML Tidy and a good working knowledge of regular expressions.
  
  --
  Chelloveck
  I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Malware? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-02-13 05:52 · Score: 0

Oh, my first impression about bookworms was wrong. I thought that a bookworm is a piece of malware which is distributed through e-books.
Clearly of little interest to Slashdot readers by fprintf · 2009-02-13 07:40 · Score: 1

I post this three hours after this story hit the front page of slashdot and there are 32 comments. I take this as indicative of the interest among Slashdot readers in this new technology. Contrast that to the interest, a few days ago, in the Kindle and you can draw your own conclusions. My own conclusion is that this will not fare well, at least in this demographic, and O'Reilly/ePub may want to consider some additional marketing/buzz generation schemes.
Then again, I think someone said that about the iPod years ago, so maybe this post will go down in the historical lore of Slashdot. In 2012: "You remember when the Bookwork was first announced and no one on Slashdot was interested!?!"

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1. Re:Clearly of little interest to Slashdot readers by andrewsavikas · 2009-02-13 08:15 · Score: 1
  
  The coverage on Wired and CNET suggests at least *some* of this audience is interested: * http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/bookworm-gives.html * http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10161617-1.html And while we're thrilled to get the attention, this is more about supporting an important standards-based open-source project than about generating buzz.
  
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  Andrew Savikas VP, Digital Initiatives O'Reilly Media, Inc.
2. Re:Clearly of little interest to Slashdot readers by SputnikPanic · 2009-02-13 12:08 · Score: 1
  
  I hope I speak for the silent majority here in expressing my interest. :)
  I've actually been very interested in e-books in general for quite some time. Despite my longtime interest, it was only about 6 or 7 months ago that I finally invested in an e-book reader. Concerns about DRM certainly gave me pause, but I did end up going with a Kindle for reasons I briefly listed in another Slashdot discussion. One of those reasons was my (perhaps naive) belief that Amazon may ultimately be on the consumers' side on the DRM issues. You probably have a better perspective than anyone else here on whether that might truly be the case.
  There's no question that the Kindle has fired up interest in e-books, including among those for whom gadgets are not necessarily a way of life, but unfortunately as we see all too often in today's digital world, a burgeoning market frequently is an invitation to a format war, which can prevent or at least slow more widespread adoption. Like most of us here, I think open standards are the way to go, and I truly do hope that you can swing more of the e-book market, including Amazon, over to ePub; at the same time, however, I can also see the e-book market devolve into two camps: Amazon, which from an outsider's perspective seems to very quickly have become the heavy in the arena, and everyone else.
  I think it's important for open standards to take hold in the e-book world, but it's equally important that the market achieve the critical mass necessary for publishers that might not be as technologically aware as O'Reilly to really take notice.
Re:Another good feature for the average Slashdoter by Anonymous Coward · 2009-02-13 08:12 · Score: 0

Libraries are primarily staffed by polite and helpful women. Thus they are a non-threating environment to practice interaction with female adults you are not related to.
Re:Another good feature for the average Slashdoter by ion.simon.c · 2009-02-13 20:32 · Score: 1

"Mom's Basement" jokes in 3...
Re:Good news for Sony and Amazon by seanb · 2009-02-14 08:48 · Score: 1

Just tried it out, and the bookworm "mobile site" (http://m.bookworm.oreilly.com) works pretty well from my Kindle's browser.
Not "the future," just another blind stab at it. by Khopesh · 2009-02-17 10:24 · Score: 1

If you're so committed, why don't you have any free offerings? O'Reilly has tons of selections freely available online, and likely tons of books hidden in storage that are both out-of-print and never to return (at least without serious revision). Why not open up and share them?
The ePubBooks.com site says it wants ePub to be to books what MP3 is to music ... the only way that can happen is if there are tools to publish content, legal and questionable, and have free, questionable, and licensed media be easily shared. MP3 is what it is today because it was used for noncommercial purposes without restrictions. What resulted was a complete change in paradigm, putting the record stores almost completely out of business and then moving on to threaten the whole recording industry with a new model fronted by iTunes.
Is the book industry ready for such a transformation? You've got a bit of an advantage, with no easy way for users to "rip" books from bound tombs to ePub files, but that's only a temporary fix as user demand will push forward digital releases soon enough.
Brace yourselves and prepare. Is this the right path? Is there money to be made while still playing fair? Who will be the "iTunes" of books (and can they get there without DRM)? Take inspiration from Audible and friends, but also note the red flags waved around regarding what DRM does and why it is bad (and why even Apple ended up discarding DRM in the end).
You want ePub to take off? Take out the DRM. Offer books for free. Make it easy for users to publish free (and non-free) ePub books. Make it more accessible on everything from desktops to portable devices: standard readers across platforms, F/OSS ePub software (readers, converters, writers, and RSS/RDF-to-ePub aggregators) that leads the way rather than just limping along, etc.
Yes, you will start by losing money, just like MP3 did. But in the end, there will be a better product that can be shared and loved by all. And there's still profit to be had, too.

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