Things are about to get exciting for readers, designers, and the eBook publishing business as new formats improve the format and interactivity of eBooks. Amazon has just announced a new KF8 format (Kindle Format 8). The KF8 format replaces Amazon’s .mobi format and adds over 150 new formatting capabilities, including fixed layouts, nested tables, callouts, sidebars, and scalable vector graphics. New specifications for the ePub format (used by Apple, Google, and many others) were recently finalized, but hardly mentioned by the publishing media.
The idea that a book is nothing more than a container for text data is anathema to anyone who appreciates the art of typesetting. Graphic design exerts a powerful influence on readability and also on more abstract considerations, such as how typeface choice affects the mood of writing. Today’s e-books sacrifice appearance for flexibility, allowing text to resize and flow from screen to screen without any relation to the original numbered page or type design. ePub and .mobi files are little more than packages of basic HTML pages. They are particularly bad for educational texts where sidebars and multi-column layouts are common. The KF8 and ePub3 standards will greatly improve the aesthetics of eBook design.
KF8 and ePub3 mean more attractive eBooks
The KF8 and ePub3 formats allow book designers to take advantage of powerful formatting technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3. Embedded fonts, drop caps, floating elements, text in background images, bulleted and numbered lists, and precise control of line spacing (leading) are just a few of the new design features that already improve the appearance of millions of websites. Now, they will lend their strength to electronic books. Add audio, video, and interactivity to a well-displayed eBook, and you’ll find publishers who believe that eBooks can be better than traditional books (although that premise will be hotly debated).
The potential for a new renaissance in book design is very real, and for designers, the timing is good. Adobe has already seen fit to include powerful HTML5 export capabilities in Adobe Flash. Tools like Adobe Muse make it easy for designers to focus on aesthetics without having to fiddle with cumbersome code. While print book publishers pack text tightly on the page to save paper and ink, e-book publishers have no such concerns. Once design is no longer constrained by economics, eBooks (of all things) will be free to restore the hot metal type’s glory. Will the publishers have the vision? We will see soon.
KF8, ePub3 and the e-book business
Amazon has chosen to use a proprietary .mobi format, while its competitors (including Apple) publish eBooks using the open ePub standard. The advantage is clear; Amazon’s ability to control their own eBook format positions them to quickly innovate and implement new standards without having to wait for a third-party standards body to propose, approve, and develop specifications, making them first to market “eBooks.” “enriched” books that are delivered as actual eBooks rather than as mobile apps. In addition, because Apple has restricted the use of Adobe Flash on its iOS (iPhone operating system) mobile devices, Adobe has a commercial incentive to develop design tools that support Amazon’s advantage. However, the ePub3 specifications (also based on HTML5 and CSS) were only recently finalized on October 11, 2001. We can assume that Apple and other ePub eReader developers have been working for some time to integrate the preliminary standards into their technologies. Tool makers will find an opportunity to meet the needs of ePub3 publishers.
No one knows how this will play out in the competitive e-book market, but clearly, e-books are changing (and at least when capable designers are involved, they will change for the better). In the coming years, we’ll see a host of new eReader devices incorporating the new standards along with innovations like color eInk displays and many of the features (like cameras, microphones, and web access) that we associate with tablets. devices like the Apple iPad. Adobe InDesign already exports to a variety of mobile formats; it stands to reason that those capabilities will align with current publishing standards.
What’s the trick?
Amazon’s Kindle Publisher Tools currently does not support KF8, but all currently supported content will continue to work. Information on how to update existing titles to take advantage of KF8’s capabilities will be available in a future Kindle Publishing Guidelines update. Amazon will release KF8 support for the new Kindle Fire eReader in November 2011. KF8 support will be added to next-generation Kindles and Kindle Software readers in the coming months. Older Kindles will not be updated to support KF8.
When it comes to ePub3, things are less cut and dry. Certainly the ePub3 format is standardized (ideally, eBooks can be developed to those standards), but there is no standards body that governs the extent to which eReader devices must support those standards. Apple, for example, does not support Adobe Flash in its mobile browser. They probably don’t support Flash content inside eBooks, even if the ePub3 standard does. ePub3 supports optional technical additions such as javascript; not bad in principle, but creating eBooks with features that are optionally implemented by eBook readers makes it difficult to implement one file for multiple vendors.
The IDPF (in charge of ePub3 standards) refers to an ePub3 file as a “website in a box”. Therein lies the problem. Despite the fact that an ebook is a completely different kind of animal than a website, there are enough variations from web browser to web browser in the way they render and display HTML, Javascript, CSS, and other “standardized” technologies to suggest that eBook reader devices are each likely to support different subsets of the ePub3 standard. Standards may be supported but are displayed differently. Please God. don’t let Microsoft come out with an eReader. Many publishers will overlook the poorly supported “special features” of ePub3 and keep their ePub offerings simple, or develop separate ePub3 files that match the supported technologies of different devices.
Strahinja Markovic, the developer of the Sigil ePub editor, makes some compelling points about ePub3:
I know I’m being cynical, but I can’t help it. The iPad arrived, it was declared “the savior of the publishing industry” and now everyone seems to be losing their minds.
Again, “HTML5?” Great for the web. Really awesome for the web. For ebooks? I can’t remember the last time I thought “this book really needs a video”.
The ISBN Factor
If different eReader devices require different versions of ePub files, in theory each will require its own unique ISBN (International Standard Book Number). Publishers are already chafing at the added costs and inconvenience of assigning unique ISBNs to a growing list of book variants in a publishing world where the requirement to associate eBooks with ISBNs is up for debate. (Amazon does not require ISBNs for eBooks and Google will assign an electronic ISBN free of charge upon request.) This will either be a boon for Bowker (the ISBN number manager in the US) or a trigger for a full ISBN eBook. rebellion, especially among small publishers. To what extent will the need to purchase another ISBN number deter small publishers from deploying ePub3 files across multiple platforms?
So who’s first?
The new ePub3 and KF8 standards represent great advances for book design and the publishing business. Designers will have new opportunities to make books more attractive. Competition is driving innovation as it should. Writers and publishers will see their work presented elegantly and professionally in all types of media, and of course, readers will benefit more than anyone.
It remains to be seen how eReader devices, software tools, and designers will adopt the new ePub3 standards. ePub3 could be a huge flop if different e-readers and content creation tools support different parts of the general standard. No doubt a great deal of development work will be required to make eReader devices compliant with such a broad set of features. Of course, that will make the current generation of electronic reading devices obsolete. How consumers of e-books will react is another unknown factor.
Where this is all headed remains a matter of speculation; there are many variables. Standards have come before the technology that will display them and the tools that create content for them. Ultimately, we may see a real blurring of the lines between mobile apps, websites, and eBooks, a kind of globalization of online content. Until the new eReader devices and the hype that comes with them hit the shelves, Amazon seems to be in the best position to offer a consistent eBook experience, while its competitors pick and choose between subsets of the ePub3 standard. Amazon is free to innovate and support all of his own KF8 standards; it’s a safe bet that a Kindle book will display correctly on a Kindle e-reader, and as mentioned in a previous post, Amazon is much less restrictive about the types of content its users can access in their browser than Apple is with its iPad users. If Amazon continues in that spirit with their KF8 books, they’ll have a leg up…for now.
Conclusion
It wasn’t that many years ago when nobody wanted their own computer or a mobile phone or an iPod or an e-book reading device. While it would be comforting to settle for a bunch of firm promises, standards, and expectations, eBooks are evolving too fast for that. It’s a brave new world. Editors need to keep their eyes on the ball.