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November 14, 2009
New blog: Books 2.0
As noted earlier, I will be leaving Adobe soon. I will continue to write about digital publishing on a new personal blog, "Bill McCoy: Books 2.0". From my introductory post there:
...my work at Adobe these last three years has been centered around a relatively prosaic objective: establishing open standards that enable multi-channel/cross-device distribution of eBooks. For all intents and purposes, this work is done: epub is now firmly established as the industry standard for reflow-centric eBooks. That took a considerable effort, on the part of many people, and I'm really proud that we did it. But... that was the easy part: essentially migration of print to digital. epub does take portable documents to the next level - breaking past beyond PDF's paper-replica model. But that's only the beginning of the fundamental reinvention of the book that digital content and the Web will enable. In other words: now it's really going to get interesting. I expect my future work, and this blog, to focus on this transformation.
To all of you who have checked in with me these last few days - thanks! Restructuring is always tough, and my thoughts are with other affected friends and colleagues, but on balance this is a positive transition for me personally. And that Adobe is expanding its investment in digital publishing should be the high-order bit for customers and business partners. The incredible team I've worked with now has significant additional resources and enhanced business focus.
Signing out here.
November 11, 2009
Leaving Adobe
I will be leaving Adobe in the near future to pursue other opportunities "to be determined". It's been a heck of a ride these last several years! I'm particularly proud that epub is now firmly established as the open standard eBook format, with a boost from Adobe's leadership in IDPF as well as from the solution set that we've put in place including Adobe Reader Mobile SDK, Adobe Content Server, Adobe Digital Editions, and the authoring support in Adobe InDesign.
While my transition comes as Adobe is restructuring, it's really more about Adobe creating a new, expanded organization focused on digital publishing media monetization. My team is the nucleus of this group, and the additional wood that Adobe is putting behind this arrow should be great news for our customers and business partners. We've got a lot of exciting stuff on our roadmap, and it's been an exceptional honor to have worked with such an incredible group of people. But, it was a logical time for me to move on.
I will be taking a little bit of time off, but there is no doubt that I'll continue to be involved in the future of digital books, especially where that future intersects with web standards and open source. I believe that Adobe will continue to play a critical role as an enabler of interoperable solutions, but I also believe that the community needs to stay vigilant to ensure that for-profit corporations don't just talk the talk about being open, but also walk the walk. I've certainly tried my level best to do this from the inside, but look forward to the opportunity to push for open standards and interoperability from a completely neutral perspective. I can be reached at whmccoy "at" gmail.com.
October 20, 2009
Adobe and Barnes & Noble eBook Collaboration
Adobe and Barnes and Noble announced today a partnership to advance the open eBook platform standard. This was part of a broader announcement by B&N featuring their new nook device - which is very sweet - definitely the highest techno-lust quotient of any eReader device to date.
The adoption of EPUB, PDF & ACS4 by B&N is an extremely significant milestone. First, it puts to rest concerns that B&N would adopt EPUB as a base format but frustrate consumer expectations of interoperability and confuse the marketplace with a non-interoperable content protection solution based on their Fictionwise eReader acquisition. Instead, B&N is adopting the cross-platform Adobe solution that is already used by Sony, OverDrive, and nearly a hundred others. And, by adding support for password-based content protection for EPUB, Adobe is addressing the need to deliver a more lenient "social DRM" option as part of our solution. And from the perspective of the overall ecosystem, today's announcement is huge: we have, within the last two months, seen two "legacy" proprietary eBook formats - BBeB and eReader - superseded by the open standard EPUB solution with Adobe's cross-platform content protection. In essence, there is now a clear "DVD of eBooks" format standard, and everyone significant has adopted it (with now only one remaining exception).
This partnership is a double win-win: a win for both companies involved, as well as for the rest of the ecosystem and consumers. It's clearly a good move for B&N and Adobe, it's going to help accelerate consumer adoption of eBooks by cementing the standard eBook platform - EPUB and PDF with the option of ACS4 DRM - and giving consumers content portability across their choice of devices.
While Adobe and Barnes & Noble work at very different levels of the value chain, I feel we really have a shared vision, one that William Lynch, President of BN.com, emphasized at the nook launch: "Any Book (Magazine, or Newspaper), Any Time, Anywhere (On Any Device)". Today, we all took a big step towards realizing this vision.
October 8, 2009
Adobe eBooks - Update on Accessibility Support
A few inquiries have come in about a press release earlier this week by the Reading Rights Coalition noting that the Los Angeles Public Library has suspended purchasing eBooks compatible with Adobe Digital Editions, because there is no accessibility support in our solution. This post is intended to clarify the situation and provide an update on our roadmap.
The basic concern of the Reading Rights Coalition is legitimate. Adobe Digital Editions is a PC application that replaced the eBook support that was present in older versions of Adobe Reader. While there are many new capabilities in Adobe Digital Editions, most importantly support for epub in addition to PDF, and overall its more consumer-focused user interface, Adobe Reader did support screen readers and a "read out loud" feature, neither of which is presently in Adobe Digital Editions. This is a regrettable situation. It stems from the fact that, for a number of reasons, we made the decision to build Adobe Digital Editions in a technology called Adobe Flex, targeting the Adobe Flash desktop runtime that became Adobe AIR. While the browser-based version of Flash Player has for quite some time included accessibility support, the desktop configuration has not, and neither the AIR team nor our Digital Editions team was able to incorporate accessibility support in our respective version 1 implementations.
We agree completely that eBook accessibility is critical. Adobe is helping to create the cross-platform standard for interoperable eBooks. Clearly, accessibility support is a fundamental requirement. One of the key motivations for supporting epub was that it was a more structure-based and thus more inherently accessible file format makes. So, the current situation is simply unacceptable.
So what are we doing about it?
First, the next major release of Adobe Digital Editions, expected within the coming year, is going to support accessiblity features. Earlier this week, Adobe previewed AIR 2, and we disclosed that screen reader support was going to be included. This will be a key enabler for us.
Additionally, Adobe has begun working with several vendors of accessibility-oriented software and devices to get them access to Adobe eBook rendering and DRM technology via our Adobe Reader Mobile SDK, so their solutions can consume Adobe eBooks. Our Reader Mobile SDK is not a revenue generator for Adobe; our standard terms are focused on proliferation (and with 17 announced licensees so far this year we are doing pretty well on that front). This is similar to the Open Screen Project for Flash licensing. But since many accessibility vendors are either nonproffits or have limited financial resources, we have gone even further in extending extraordinarily favorable terms to get them access to our portable document technology. I expect we will be able to make some specific announcements around this very shortly, but the bottom line is that there will soon be multiple means for visually-impaired end users to consume Adobe eBooks.
One still controversial issue is that some publishers are concerned lest non-visually-impaired consumers get access to "read out loud" functionality that would potentially undercut sales of audio books. Adobe plans in this regard are to support in our DRM system a permission setting that will enable publishers to disable "read out loud" functionality in software systems that are NOT focused on the visually impaired. But, we plan to default this permission setting to "enable" and recommend strongly that publishers not set it to "disable". As well we plan to exempt accessibility-oriented software from being limited by this setting. We feel this approach will strike an appropriate balance between giving publishers the rights to determine how to distribute their copyrighted content, and ensuring that accessibility is provided.
Again, the current situation is unfortunate. As someone who has helped foster the adoption of epub, including the decision to support DAISY as a type of basic content within epub, it is a black eye for me personally that Adobe's solution does not presently provide accessibility support. I am grateful that the Los Angeles Public Library has only "suspended" purchasing Adobe eBooks, and I look forward to working with our partners to, in short order, remedy the situation.
August 14, 2009
WSJ on eBook Format War
Geoffrey Fowler has a good piece today in the Wall Street Journal's Digits blog: Format War Clouds E-Book Horizon . The tone is perhaps overly ominous - while I agree that "the burgeoning marketplace for e-books is riddled with inconsistent and incompatible formats", there are definitely signs that the clouds are starting to break up. But overall it's a thoughtful take on the current situation and trends (full disclosure: I talked with Geoffrey and was quoted in the article).
August 13, 2009
Sony Going 100% EPUB
Sony announced today plans to convert its US eBook Store to the EPUB format, using Adobe Content Server protection technology. NY Times article - TeleRead coverage..
This important announcement marks significant progress towards the goal that Brad Stone summarized well in his article: to "give e-book buyers more flexibility by rallying around a single technology standard for the books".
August 12, 2009
Seventeen eReaders Now Compatible With Open eBook Platform
Seventeen reading devices from nine different vendors are already compatible with Adobe's eBook platform, supporting EPUB, PDF, Adobe Content Server protection technology and our Adobe Digital Editions eBook reading software for desktop computers. This is faster take-up than even this optimist had hoped for, given our launch less than six months ago of the enabling Adobe Reader Mobile 9 SDK that's been integrated into all of these products. This rapid adoption highlights the growing demand for an open eBook platform, based on industry standards not proprietary formats: a platform that gives consumers content portability across multiple reading devices, smartphone and PC applications, and the ability to choose among multiple online retailers and libraries..
August 9, 2009
Skyrocketing Growth in Smartphone eBook Adoption
A recent report by mobile analytics concern Flurry (covering 60M users) indicates that in the US eBooks on smartphones now have "nearly three million active users", with "steep growth, over 300% from April to July". Of course the bulk of this growth coming from iPhone & iPod Touch: the Flurry report notes that, per Apptism, "eBooks represents the second-largest category in the App Store, with 14% share, only behind Games, which comes in at 19%"
May 6, 2009
Amazon, Others License Adobe Reader Mobile SDK
I'm excited to be able to announce four new licensees of the Adobe Reader Mobile 9 SDK: Neolux Corporation (Nuutbook), Netronix, Tianjin Jinke Electronics, and last but not least Amazon.
Amazon today announced their new large-screen Kindle DX, including that they have integrated PDF via Adobe's Reader Mobile technology, giving users instant access to millions of business and personal documents. The integration of PDF technology allows users to simply email PDF files to their Kindle email address or quickly move them to the device using a USB connection. The Adobe SDK also supports PDF reflow, so that text can automatically adapt to the screen size, allowing users to consume PDF documents with an enhanced reading experience.
The Adobe Reader Mobile SDK has previously been licensed by leading device makers worldwide including Bookeen, iRex Technologies, Lexcycle, Plastic Logic, Polymer Vision Ltd, SONY Electronics, Spring Design and others.
Adobe Reader Mobile SDK supports reflowable PDF technology and the EPUB file format, an open eBook standard with broad support from the publishing industry. The Adobe software engine also offers support for Adobe Content Server 4, Adobe’s popular content protection technology that allows publishers to securely distribute eBooks and other digital publications..
I do want to clarify that Amazon’s integration of the Adobe Reader Mobile SDK into the Amazon Kindle DX only includes PDF support, and not support for EPUB or Adobe Content Server 4 protected content. I'm encouraged that this is a first step by Amazon toward open file formats and interoperability, but it is just that: a first step. I find the new large-screen form factor attractive, but as a consumer, I don't like products that lock me in to a closed architecture. On that basis, I'm afraid I can't yet recommend the Kindle family, since the commercial eBook support is limited to Amazon's proprietary format and DRM, for which content can only be acquired from their online store. And, this content is not interoperable with any other reading systems. By contrast the Sony Reader product line offers complete compatibility with both PDF and EPUB, including unprotected and ACS4-protected publications that can be acquired from many different online retailers and libraries. And, this content can be transferred and used on PCs, with Adobe Digital Editions and Sony EBL software, as well as to other compatible devices that will be released soon by other Adobe partners. That's the open, interoperable ecosystem that Adobe and its partners are working to foster.
April 8, 2009
Announcing Open Publication Distribution System
Stanza, the leading iPhone eBook software, includes an excellent online catalog system that enables users to seamlessly acquire free and commercial content from within the application. The Lexcycle team built this system in an open, extensible manner using Atom. Adobe and Lexcycle have been working together on Adobe PDF and EPUB eBook support, and now we are deepening that collaboration in working together, along with the Internet Archive and others, to establish an open architecture enabling widespread discovery, description, and access of book and other published material on the open web. The Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS) is a generalization of the Atom approach used by Stanza's online catalog. I'm grateful to the Lexcycle team as well as my friend and colleague Peter Brantley for their efforts on behalf of open access and interoperability.
This work is at a relatively early stage, as evidenced by the "DRAFT" notice on the specification wiki and the intentionally lightweight process (i.e. not yet involving a de jure standards body), We are taking a page from the way Atom itself was nurtured in the early going. If you are a reading system provider, or a distributor of free or commercial digital publications and are interested in signing on as a supporter and contributing to the definition of OPDS, get in touch with Peter, myself, or Marc Prud’hommeaux at Lexcycle.
I believe this effort has the potential to be a critical enabler to the growth in access to and adoption of digital books., For consumers, OPDS will deliver seamless integration of convenient acquisition from many sources, on any device or reading system, without lock-in to "One Store to Rule Them All". For content distributors, ODPS will enable reaching consumers across multiple reading systems and devices: not as a replacement for online Web stores, but as a valuable supplement and on-ramp. For reading system developers, OPDS will make your device/application more useful and valuable. Stay tuned for more soon about how OPDS will be utilized within the Adobe digital publishing solution set.
March 18, 2009
500,000 free Google Books available for Sony Reader - in EPUB!
The news is out that Sony will be offering free public domain eBooks from their only bookstore, from Google Books (Forbes, WSJ, NYT). Google already offers free online viewing and PDF downloads of the public domain books they've scanned: the real news here is that these ebooks (over 500,000 of them) will be made available as EPUB downloads. This means they will be able to reflow and adapt to different size screens. On the Sony Reader and EBL software, it's Adobe Reader Mobile technology that implements the EPUB rendering, so these eBooks will be fully compatible with the many other devices and smartphone applications that are also planning to integrate Adobe's technology, as well as with Adobe Digital Editions. This marks a major milestone in the rapid adoption fo EPUB as the standard format for reflow-centric publications, and a further step towards recognition that with PDF for paginated documents, and EPUB for reflow-centric documents, the industry is ready to move on from the "Tower of eBabel" of proprietary eBook formats that have plagued publishers and impeded consumer adoption.
March 17, 2009
Adobe Buzzword - now with EPUB support
I'm jazzed that Adobe Buzzword, the cloud-based document editor that's part of our free Acrobat.com service, now supports EPUB export. For more on this and all the other new features check out the team's What's New document (open access - no Acrobat.com account required).
A big shout out to Aspose, who develops the file import/export filters used by Buzzword. They did the work to add EPUB export to their commercial engine, which you can license to embed in your own server or client application.
Some folks are wondering how best to utilize the EPUB export. If you post EPUBs as web links or attach to emails, compatible software such as Adobe Digital Editions that registers for the .epub extension / MIME type enable users to directly open these files. If you have a Sony Reader model 505 or 700, you have native EPUB support, and can directly transfer EPUB (and PDF) documents to your device from Sony's EBL software or Adobe Digital Editions. In the coming months, many device and smartphone applications will be coming onto the market that support EPUB via the new Adobe Reader Mobile SDK. Depending on the device, email and/or browser support for EPUB may be available.
Of course if you are using Buzzword to create a commercial eBook, you probably are already aware that EPUB has quickly become the preferred format for submission to aggregators and distributors, and is fully supported, along with PDF, by Adobe Content Server 4, and all of our Content Server solution providers.
February 11, 2009
Adobe eBook support coming to iPhone via Stanza
Lexcycle announced today at O'Reilly Tools of Change that they are incorporated support for Adobe EPUB and PDF eBooks into the Stanza reader for iPhone, with support for Adobe Content Server DRM. This is a great step forward for our vision of enabling consumers to enjoy content on whatever device they choose, and publishers distributing EPUB or PDF via Adobe Content Server will gain significant additional reach, with no additional work. Lots more to come soon on this, and on other mobile device partnerships. Meantime, link: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/lexcycle-announces-support-adobe-ebooks/story.aspx?guid=%7b783FD2BD-46D6-4C7D-A568-7000F854CE5B%7d&dist=msr_1January 5, 2009
New Technologies For "Green" Displays
A NYT article today, Bright New Phone Displays That Don't Guzzle Power, reviews several emerging technologies contending to transform the mobile phone display landscape. Covered are E Ink's color electronic paper, LEDs, and the intriguing Qualcomm MEMS solution (micro-mirrors that selectively reflect colors). I find it hard to handicap this technology horse race, and it's certainly too soon to count out the incumbent LCD, which has the advantage of huge economies of scale. The OLPC XO laptop, with it's gray-scale "eBook mode", demonstrated that display controller tricks could make a conventional LCD display reflective and far more energy-efficient. And this technology is now being commercialized by the for-profit OLPC spin-off Pixel Qi.
The main takeaway for me is that, one way or another, we are within a few years of ultra low power displays being mainstream. And while the driving mass-market use cases will be internet browsing, video watching, and gaming, devices using these displays will also be great for immersive reading. Already the iPhone is preferred by some for eBook reading, over purpose-made E Ink based device like Sony Reader and Kindle. The tradeoff of small size, less resolution, poor battery lifte, and the harder-on-eyes light-emitting display is, for these folks, outweighed by no additional cost and the convenience of not having an additional device to carry around. And a substantial amount of eBook reading is still taking place on notebook PCs, as evidenced by the rapid adoption of borrowing of PDF eBooks from public libraries . How will this equation adjust when next-gen mobile phones and future netbooks-cum-tablets have high-readability displays and batteries that last for many days?
November 25, 2008
15,000 EPUB eBooks from Random House
Random House yesterday announced an expanded eBook program, increasing from 8,000 to over 15,000 titles within the next few months. As noted in the related Publishers Weekly article this initiative is based on EPUB. Given adoption of this magnitude, the PW article may be the last time EPUB is referred to as "the emerging standard format for the industry". Kudos to Matt Shatz and the Random House team!
November 24, 2008
In Defense of eBook DRM
I rashly volunteered to take part in a ' Point - Counterpoint' on digital book DRM, over on ToC. Peter Brantley got to argue the popular side (especially on an O'Reilly blog) - i.e. DRM is "Bad, bad, bad". Peter and I may not see eye to eye on this issue, but I have tremendous respect for him, and think this is a critically important dialog for our industry to have. Hopefully advancing that dialog will be worth all the slamming I'm about to receive for daring to argue the upside of eBook DRM.
October 23, 2008
Samsung Unveils Carbon Nanotube E-Paper Color Display
Samsung recently demonstrated for the first time a new carbon nanotube color active matrix electrophoretic display (EPD) e-paper display, in an impressive 14.3 inch size. This new technology springs from a partnership between Samsung and Unidym, the company that developed the carbon nanotubes used by the device. The usual benefits of e-paper are touted: readable in bright sunlight, very low power consumption, no need for continual refresh. How this display technology stacks up vs. others I can't say, nor do I have a real clue how the carbon nanotubes fit in. The reason I'm writing about it is mainly to highlight that we are still in a stage of rapid innovation in this segment of display technology. So don't get hung up on the small 6" display of today's Sony Reader or Kindle, the lack of color, fragile glass frontplate, or the stately and black-flash accompanied refresh. These are within a few short years going to be distant memories, totally transcended by future devices. I've had a chance to see some of the enhanced display technology coming in the next year or so, and it's already going to be light years ahead.
We need pioneers to start this virtuous cycle of CE refinement going, and we need early adopters to buy the Mavica's and DynaTac's. But as we consider what ultimate mass-market adoption will look like, we need to look beyond the limitations and quirks of today's "breakthrough" devices. It's hard, and as an early-adopting digital reader and industry participant I often fall into the "tomorrow is going to look like today" mental trap. I don't have a great cure, although re-watching Minority Report seems to help...
October 20, 2008
InDesign CS4: EPUB export with NIMAS-ready DAISY XML
We squeezed EPUB export into InDesign CS3 before the final IDPF standard was approved, when even the name of the format was still in doubt ( thus the feature name: "Export for Digital Editions"). The just-released InDesign CS4 takes EPUB support to a whole new level, adding embedded font support and TOC generation (which we had made available as a separate update after CS3 shipped), as well as floating anchored images, option to emit CSS for local (non-style-driven) formatting, and improved mapping of TOC structure to XHTML heading levels. But the biggest feature by far is the new option to choose DTBook (aka DAISY XML) content within EPUBs, compatible with the NIMAS standard that has been mandated in the U.S. for providing access to K-12 instructional materials for the visually impaired. Our lead tools developer writes about the new features here, in our digital publishing tech blog. A very important next step on the client SW side is enabling "screen reader" support for DRM-protected eBooks, something we are committed to doing ASAP.
October 17, 2008
Sony Reader Model 700 Raises the Bar
Sony recently announced a new touch-screen Reader model PRS-700. Having gotten a little hands-on time with the new Reader, I'm sold! It is by far the most polished eReader product have yet used. Touch-screen works well, and to me is far more appropriate for a reading device than a space-consuming keyboard like the Kindle, and the back-light makes total sense and eliminates the one arena where traditional light-emitting displays have been superior - reading in the dark. CNET published a first look review here. I won't repeat its points, other than to confirm that, yes, the touch screen does not yield the same instantaneous swoosh as the iPhone (the 700 uses a totally different technology, not to mention being handicapped by the E Ink display's sluggish refresh rate). Yet, the touch screen is still a vast improvement over buttons, and I quickly got the hang of it.
Both the PRS-505 (with latest firmware) and PRS-700 fully support the PDF and EPUB standards, both open access and protected with Adobe ACS4 DRM, which means commercial eBooks can be purchased from hundreds of retailers and borrowed from thousands of public library systems. To me this is table stakes interoperability for a device worthy of my investment and attention. As a consumer, lock-in sucks. Sony has their own Connect eBook store, which they have been steadily improving, but I am not stuck with it as my only choice.
I'm on record as saying there isn't going to be an "iPod of eBooks" - that the market will evolve more like digital cameras, with devices from many vendors meeting different sets of requirements. I still think that's the way things will play out, especially with the desire to read on smartphones and notebooks as well as dedicated reading devices. But, from a pure consumer electronics lust perspective, the Sony Reader PRS-700 comes the closest of any offering yet released to causing me to change my mind. No doubt about it, it is worth the price bump from the PRS-505 model (which is still available) - that would be true just for the faster CPU alone, much less all the other additional features.
October 15, 2008
Rapid Adoption of Adobe Content Server 4
I don't like to be overly commercial on this blog, but will make an exception to express how delighted I am that our new Adobe Content Server 4 solution is being quickly embraced by publishers and content distributors worldwide. ACS4 (as our marketing folks prefer we not refer to it), is server software for copy protection (DRM) of PDF and EPUB publications for use with Adobe Digital Editions and compatible devices (such as the Sony Reader models 505 and 700).
The major content aggregator Ingram Digital last week announced that they are already delivering secure e-books via the Content Server 4 technology. Since we only shipped ACS4 on Sep 22 (US), that means they were live in production within a matter of days of commercial release. Anyone familiar with enterprise software integration and deployment timelines will realize that this implies a light-speed rollout. And only a few days after Oct 10 worldwide availability, we already have gained ACS4 customers worldwide, including regions like Scandinavia and the Middle East as well as the US and Europe.
Content Server 4 represents a tremendous achievement by our engineering team. Despite the "4" suffix it is not in any direct way a successor to the previous Content Server 3. The underlying DRM protocol and cryptographic technology was modernized and extended to support new features and a more seamless consumer experience, and both the client and server implementations were all new. The server code is now portable Java which can run across platforms and integrate with a variety of back-end databases and content repositories.
Now, Adobe is not advocating that DRM is an essential element of a digital publishing strategy. There are a lot of situations where online consumption may be a good alternative, or where a publisher has a trust relationship with users or a marketing angle that makes non-copy-protected downloads suitable. But I do think that those who suggest the book publishing industry should learn from the music industry and "Think Beyond DRM" are making false analogies and suggesting a path that could be highly deleterious to publisher revenue and, ultimately, availability of quality commercial content to consumers. Authors and publishers are what make great books, and they ultimately need to get paid or they won't create. A certain level of copy protection is common to most forms of digital content, be it electronic games, DVDs, or general software. The music business set itself on a path to a poor outcome by making their pure-digital physical product (audio CDs) completely DRM-free, and thus able to be easily copied by legitimate software and hardware devices. Books of course can be duplicated or even re-keyed without too much trouble, so there's no point in insisting on draconian hard-core DRM, but they are not "snap your fingers" copiable. So as publishers start to make their books available digitally, especially in a world where paper books remain the lion's-share of the revenue and cannibalization is an important concern, supporting a reasonable level of "copy resistance" in the digital product, essentially to help honest people stay honest, seems like common sense for the baseline case. I think of it like DVDs: almost every DVD uses a basic level of DRM ("CSS"). Those who really really want to copy such DVDs can easily find illegitimate SW to do so; but that basic DRM protects billions of dollars of business, and by staying lightweight and reasonable, doesn't get too much in consumers' faces. Many of those who rant about how "evil" DRM is probably are consuming DRM-protected DVDs every day, content they simply wouldn't have (legitimate) access to without basic anti-piracy support.
How this will all evolve over the real long haul is anybody's guess. Perhaps in the ultimate fully-connected world we won't need downloadable content at all, and the issue will shift to access control over online consumption. Perhaps we will find ad-based and other business models displacing paid content. But in the forseeable near-term future I think DRM is going to remain a "necessary evil". Adobe is committed to giving publishers, online retailers, and libraries the tools they need to create and distribute content, and they certainly are asking for DRM. A couple of years ago we even thought we should phase out the Content Server product line: the ultimate test of customer demand is to stop selling something and see how beat up you get. In this case it wasn't just "black and blue" - more like "torches and pitchforks". So I'm extremely happy about our shipping Content Server 4. As a reader, I'm confident that the experience is going to be great, and that I will have access to a lot more digital content, fairly-priced: a decent tradeoff IMO for accepting reasonable limitations on my ability to make and distribute copies of the content I purchase.
July 29, 2008
Sony Reader Firmware Update & UK Release
Last week Sony announced the long-anticipated firmware update for the Sony Reader PRS-505 model, improving its PDF support and adding EPUB support. This new model includes compatibility with Adobe Digital Editions Windows PC software, which can transfer secure and regular PDF and EPUB to 505's via USB. This represents a major step forward for EPUB adoption. Sony PR - Mobileread coverage - ZDNet's Matthew Miller
As well Sony and Waterstones announced the forthcoming availability of Sony Reader in the U.K.. Waterstones will represent one of the first major EPUB-focused online booksellers. Sony PR
More on all of the above after I dig out from the aftermath of a completely disconnected vacation.
February 24, 2008
Dear Author: eBook Format Wars Are Over
Dear Author's Jane has posted a timely article It's Time to End the Format Wars in the eBook Industry I completely agree that:
It doesn’t make sense to me to have a retailer like Amazon dictate to a publisher the market for their product. Having an agreed upon standard that is open to other manufacturers creates competition and can serve to open the market for digital ... An end to the format wars is a win for publishers. It’s a win for consumers
However, it would appear that Jane is not fully aware of of recent progress toward this goal.
Of course, PDF is already the clear winner as the open standard for final-form paginated content. The "eBook Format Wars' of which Jane speaks were never about alternatives to PDF for print-fidelity content, they were about formats to represent reflow-centric content. It would be nice if we could have had one file format for all eBook purposes, and indeed Adobe was insistent for quite some time that PDF was that format. Yet, while PDF became the most popular eBook format, it has always fallen down when it came to mobile device support. In a world where content will be consumed on a wide variety of screen sizes, binding to a particular paginated representation is unhelpful. Arguably the PDF "capabilities gap" and Adobe's stubborness helped foster the eBook format wars, as a plethora of reflow-centric formats emerged.
Those who took the other extreme - arguing that PDF is entirely unnecessary for eBooks - missed the point that some content is heavily designed around a particular paginated representation, and may not make sense to recast in a "liquid" representation. Many textbooks and children's books may just not make sense to target for reading on a 3 inch mobile screen. Digital publishing is not just about linear texts such as novels.And printing is not going away any time soon. The preferred representation for many books, magazines, and newspapers will remain high-fidelity PDF .It's not that PDF is bad, it's just not sufficient. And, for many eBook use cases such as novels, it's not necessarily the best solution as a distribution format.
But now we finally have a distribution-ready standard for reflow-centric conten to complement PDF: IDPF EPUB . EPUB evolved from the existing OEBPS interchange standard, and was approved as a final standard last Fall by a unanimous vote of the IDPF membership, and is rapidly gaining adoption. EPUB adds single-file packaging - the lack of which was the Achille's Heel of OEPBS - as well as support for structured table of contents, SVG vector graphics, DAISY DTBook support, and embedded fonts. So EPUB supports design-rich distribution-ready publications, wtihin a reflowable structure-centric content model.
I'm hearing more and more from eBook conversion vendors who are being asked by publishers to create EPUB, as well as from publishers who want to directly create EPUB. And Adobe's going all-in on supporting both PDF and EPUB for digital publishing. Adobe supports EPUB export from InDesign CS3, which we have been actively enhancing. We are also working with the open source community to develop EPUB validation tools and scripts to convert other XML formats such as DocBook to EPUB. Adobe Digital Editions natively supports both PDF and EPUB, and we've had over 1 million downloads of Digital Ediitons 1.0 since its launch last June (a beta of Digital Editions 1.5, which supports content portability with our DRM solution, is now out on Adobe Labs).
We aren't quite over the hump yet - we still need to establish a significant EPUB inventory gaining retailer and library support, deliver on device support, etc.. And there are still a few additional issues to be attacked - such as DRM interoperability. Meantime, publishers need to remain vigilant and reject any "yet another eBook format" attempts (whether from Redmond, Cupertino, or elsewhere). But the big picture is that the industry is finally on track to end the eBook format wars of the last decade, and start reaping the publisher and consumer peace dividends. Tellingly, one major eBook retailer, despite promoting their own proprietary format, has quietly begun accepting EPUB submissions from publishers. To me, that says it's all over but the shouting.
January 2, 2008
Kindle - The Reading Experience
I posted earlier today about intensively using Kindle on a Mexico trip. While it was a positive experience overall, I definitely encountered some issues with the reading experience. In no particular order:
- Painfully slow current-location-relative navigation. Going to any but the next or previous page is a real chore. There’s a non-reliable “type ahead” with repeated presses of the page buttons, but with the almost full-second time to show a page it can most charitably be described as “stately”. Any mostly you end up in a “press-wait-press-wait” loop. Even with fiction I found this problematic, especially given the propensity to accidentally press the awkwardly located next/prev page buttons. But with non-fiction this was an out-and-out hair-pulling experience. A paper book of course is quickly
- Cumbersome menus. For example, pressing the font-size button brings up a menu, warping the “cursor” on the LCD stripe up to the top of the screen, with the “Close” menu item selected. So you need to move your eye focus from the very bottom (where the font size button is located) up to the top, move your thumb up to the cursor roller-button, take note of the current value (which has an arrow indication), roll the cursor down to the desired font size, then click to select. The Sony Reader’s simple font-size button function simply increments around the set of sizes, providing immediate visual feedback via the updated page view. In contrast, the Kindle implementation seems incredibly cumbersome. Implementing a volume control on an MP3 player by popping up a modal menu would be crazy – the font size feature seems analogous for a reading system.
- Slow text input, which makes searching a chore. If I raced a person reading a paper book to read all the pages containing a given index term, I’d lose by a country mile. The fact that searches always return results from all content was also distractive. Digital should kick butt over paper in searchability – so this is almost shameful. The frequently-displayed tip on using accelerators like "@store" to constrain searches was almost laughable - given the s-l-o-w typing experience, the term "accelerator" hits an ironic note.
- No intrinsic lighting, plus glare with focused light sources. Let's face it, a lot of reading goes on in bed, much of it next to a sleeping spouse. The opaque reflective display that makes E Ink excel in sunlight leaves it no better than paper in the dark. I had thought that the lack of an edge LCD was just a cost issue, but after more use I think there may be deeper issues. Using various book lights and flashlights, the glass frontplate of Kindle caused a lot of reflective glare. Best results with Kindle were obtained from diffuse light sources at a wide angle; but these days most portable book lights tend to be of the high-intensity LCD variety and angled acutely to the display surface.This was a situation where I found paper still delivered a significantly superior reading experience.
For most of these issues the Amazon Kindle team at Lab 126 can't be blamed; they are hamstrung by the limitations of the current generation of E Ink display subsystem and overall Kindle is a very usable breakthrough device. And, pioneers are destined to take some arrows. Luckily, this display technology is rapidly improving, especially in refresh rate, so these issues should be much improved even within just the next year.
One suggestion for the Kindle team: you went to all the trouble of putting a quick-refresh LCD “strip” on Kindle, why don’t you use it more? For example, why not support navigating to a location by using the LCD as a scroll bar, which it already resembles: e.g. hold down the “ALT” key and the strip shows your relative position in the current book, and as you roll whenever you pause it moves the page view to that location – bingo, fast navigation, like thumbing through a paper book. Hit back button and you are back to your previous reading view. BTW after a week of heavy use it seems obvious that the separate LCD strip is more clever hack than fundamental user interface concept; Scoble's Kindle review was overly harsh but I completely agree that a touch-screen UI is eventually going to be a much better way to go - and even with the current E Ink technology the iRex iLiad delivers a nice experience with touch screen.
eBooks Storm the Beach
On a holiday visit to beautful-but-isolated Yelapa, Mexico, I took along an Amazon Kindle for a real-world test. I read 5 books on Kindle, along with several more on paper (I had to time-share the Kindle with the family), and I can now say definitively: eBooks have arrived! I was a little concerned about Kindle in the salty, sandy beach environment but it never faltered or felt fragile, readability in bright sunlight was great, and battery life was excellent - lasting over 6 days before needing a charge (wireless off, since the Sprint network wasn't available anyway).
But I'm already a convert - the real evidence was the attention I received from a procession of people wanting to know what I was doing, which invariably led to the inquirer getting excited and expressing keen interest in adopting eBooks. Never once did I get an "oh, OK" kind of response. And it's clear why: the gringos of Yelapa are truly desperate for reading material! Yelapa is accessible only by a 30 minute open boat ride, and the local book supply is a few slim shelves of left-behind paperbacks at various restaurants and casitas. Even those who only spend a week at Yelapa are likely to exhaust the reading supply they are able to reasonably include in their luggage budget - and there are people here who stay months on end or year-round. So these folks - by no means gadget-philes, after all this is laid-back car-free Yelapa that only got electricity 4 years ago - immediately realized that eBooks were a compelling, practical solution to being able to read what they want, wherever they are.
I did come up with a laundry list of usability issues with Kindle that I'll post about in a separate review, and will compare and contrast with the Sony Reader, but to me the bottom line is that I finally feel confident in saying that eBooks have really arrived as a consumer-relevant media type. Market forces and the continuation of Moore's Law will lead to radically improved reading systems in the coming years, but it's already become a no-brainer. My ever-practical spouse questioned whether it was a good idea to bring an eBook reader on this trip. It's clear that next time she'll be questioning whether we should take up space and weight with any books of the paper variety.
July 31, 2007
Video: the eBook Future
Possible ou Probable?... is a thought-provoking video short from leading French publishing conglomerate Editis. It's in French but vision is almost entirely visual.
I found the presentation of digital reading, and reading-optimized devices as an integrated part of daily life, very compelling. Of course, this may be because it tracks very closely to how I see the future unfolding.
One thing that wasn't so compelling to me, at least in terms of the long-term vision, was the portrayal of digital content acquisition at the traditional "High Street" bookseller, via display copies of paper books. The idea of coming across a desired physical book and then instantly "beaming" the content to a personal device certainly sounds cool. But by the time digital books are widely adopted I believe that they will no longer be merely text and pictures - the integration of rich-media content and interactivity will ultimately make digital publications a new and distinct category of content, not merely a digitized version of paper. And after all most of us don't acquire songs for our MP3 players by going down to Tower Records and rummaging in CD racks. And online browsing of books is already here.
Yet there will surely be a transitional period where most books are still sold as paper products, and marketed in large part via bookstore display, and where most digital works still have essentially the same content as their paper editions. During this perhaps lengthy period integration of digital and paper bookselling may well transpire as portrayed. As someone who loves bookstores, I would like nothing more than to see things play out this way.
April 5, 2007
E-Books: An All-Time Top Flop Technology
Computerworld yesterday nominated 21 failed technologies for reader voting for biggest all-time technology flop. The article by David Haskin is worth a read for amusement value, the rogue's gallery includes all the obvious suspects: Newton, DAT tape, DIVX, Flooz, Microsoft Bob, IBM OS/2 and PC Jr. and... of course... e-Books. I doubt e-Books will win top "honors", but I think the description in the article is relatively fair (albeit a bit hard on the Sony Reader):
E-book readers started being sold about 10 years ago and are still being developed. The most recent entrant into the market is the Sony Reader. But they're still a flop.The idea is attractive because, theoretically, e-book technology allows you to load many books and periodicals on a reasonably small handheld device, making it easier to travel with lots of reading matter. Also, e-books are easily searchable, another huge advantage over paper books.
However, e-books are much in need of standardization. Specifically, the number of potential formats for e-books remains huge -- the Wikipedia entry for e-books lists more than 20 formats. It's not pleasant to contemplate buying an e-reader and then finding out that a book or periodical you want is available only in an incompatible format.
Furthermore, the devices themselves just aren't good enough yet. Some folks find them unwieldy; others say they're difficult to use. And for many people, there's just no replacing the old-fashioned, reassuring feel of paper.
To me the real punch line of this article is that almost every listed flop has subsequently given rise to major technology successes. DAT tape paved the way for CDs, Newton for PDAs/smartphones, even the PC Jr. arguably was a forerunner, at least conceptually, of the very successful iMac. The paperless office hasn't exactly come to pass, but I sure get a lot less inter-office mail, and I print way less than I used to.
As far as the sucessor to e-Book failures: a large-scale digital publishing market is inevitable and it's starting to happen. Yes devices need to get better: they are. Yes, we need format standardization: it's happening. And (sigh) yes, many people will never want to replace the "old-fashioned reassuring feel of paper"!
But habituated bookophiles are getting older and a digital-centric generation is coming up. And globally there are billions of people who have no practical way to get books: I can't imagine the feel of paper being very reassuring if you have to share one outdated textbook with 10 other students. And many people like the reassuring feel of a V-8 engine in a full-size SUV too, but that's fundamentally an elitist perspective: irrelevant for most of humanity, arguably irresponsible for the rest. I love books, and don't want or expect paper to go away entirely, but I won't have any regrets if we achieve a world in which access to all the world's content is instantly available on a global basis, without killing trees, burning diesel, or building warehouses. Especially if authors and publishers are making more money, because more premium content is being consumed, by more readers.
(thanks to the indomitable Jon Ferraiolo for the tip).
February 6, 2007
Steve Jobs: "Eliminate Music DRM!": So, What About eBooks?
A provocative thought piece by Steve Jobs today, arguing that the industry as well as consumers would benefit from the elimination of DRM on music sold online. It's covered here by Forbes.
Whether or not this is an entirely serious proposal or more in the way of a smokescreen for Apple's refusal to license its Fairplay [sic] DRM to other device and music store vendors is open to debate. And Jobs pointedly limits his discussion to music, where as he points out more than 90% of the sales of digital content are entirely DRM free CD audio. DVD videos have a sort of DRM with copy protection and region coding, and physical books arguably have this as well given the inconvenience of scanning paper.
Nevertheless Jobs has clearly elevated the DRM debate to a new level. His offer to stop selling DRM protected music altogether on the iTunes Store, if the top four music companies agreed to eliminate the DRM requirement, certainly raises the ante. As a consumer and advocate for maximum access to information, I hope that the "Jobs Principle" that DRM hurts content publishers as well as consumers spreads, not just for music but for other forms of content. For eBooks, I really like the "social DRM" approach of The Pragmatic Programmers, who "stamp" PDF eBooks with a "For the Exclusive Use of ..." and the name of the purchaser. Given that they are making more than 30% of their total sales on eBooks, far more than any other traditional publisher, it's hard to argue that this approach is infeasible.
Adobe is committed to continuing to supply DRM technology in our solutions as required by our publisher partners. We will continue to work to make DRM as seamless as possible for end users, while also protecting rights holders from piracy or unauthorized use, and we are poised to deliver some innovative new capabilities in this regard.
Yet, I would like nothing more than to have DRM technology just fade away. After all the main challenge we have in digital publishing is to get it adopted by mainstream consumers. And the main challenge 98% of book authors and publishers have is to get people to be aware of their books, not to prevent piracy. So my challenge to print publishers and authors: why not support "social DRM", rather than heavyweight DRM? If that's a direction you are willing to go, Adobe will back you up, 1000%.