We've been having a few problems with the Apple iBookstore on iTunes lately, so if you are looking for the iBooks version of The Pitching Bible by Paul Boross then this link will take you right to it:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9780956535894
Showing posts with label iBook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iBook. Show all posts
Saturday, 1 October 2011
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
Amazon Kindle - Winning the Content War?
We received an email this week from our Apple content distributor. Here it is:
Is this true? Unlikely. It is more likely that Apple are pushing their distributors for sales forecasts, to test the impact on the market of their decision to prevent app developers from selling content direct to the actual person who owns the iPad outright and should be able to do whatever the hell they want with it.
Here is our reply:
Cast your mind back a few years... What killed off Betamax in favour of the technically inferior VHS? Content. The studios licensed their content to the consortium of VHS developers, not Sony's Betamax. People couldn't get films, so they didn't buy the machines. Sony learned quickly, and bought Columbia Pictures so that they would never be denied content again.
Random House recently announced that they are putting their entire catalogue of 17,000 books onto the iPad. But for any publishers who don't deal direct with Apple, the Kindle is a much easier and more reliable option. Will this fragment the market? Or will it polarise the market into serious readers who will see the Kindle as a clear winner, or people who primarily want to play games and waste time on Facebook, and dip into the odd ebook here and there, who will go for tablet PCs. Note: Tablet PCs, not necessarily the iPad.
About 20 years ago, the mobile phone companies realised that whoever owned the device in your hand owned what you saw and heard. But wireless Internet is moving the goalposts again. That device could be any one of a number of things, from your phone to your tablet PC, even your television. This favours the content distributors.
Apple have played a very risky strategy; giving content and app development over to third parties, and then trying to control them with restrictive, unfavourable contract terms, based on the belief that Apple owns the world, therefore the developers have no choice but to comply. You want to sell your products? You have to play by Apple's rules, because they control the market.
Except, they don't.
They have scored some early wins by getting customers to fall in love with their products, but this will absolutely not last forever. How do we know?
When Ford's iconic XR3i ruled the suburban backstreets, every product had an 'i' on the end of its name.
When Sony's Walkman ruled the subways and classrooms, every product had 'man' on the end of its name.
When McDonalds ruled the world of crap jobs, every crap job became a McJob.
When Yahoo became My Yahoo, every website became 'My' website.
When the Internet came into the home, every tenuously related product had an "e" at the beginning of its name.
When Apple's iPod took the Walkman's crown, every product had an 'i' at the beginning of its name.
Apple is tightening its grip on the market. And what can you expect to happen next? The tighter Apple squeezes, the more of that market will slip through its fingers.
As the demand to get content distributed and sold on Apple's iBookstore continues to grow, [distributor] is striving to meet our publisher partners' needs in the most efficient manner possible. In order to help plan and meet expectations, we'd like to ask your assistance. Please e-mail the number of titles that your company plans to distribute to Apple for the remainder of the 2011 calendar year to [someone's email address].
Is this true? Unlikely. It is more likely that Apple are pushing their distributors for sales forecasts, to test the impact on the market of their decision to prevent app developers from selling content direct to the actual person who owns the iPad outright and should be able to do whatever the hell they want with it.
Here is our reply:
In response to the email I received asking for [distributor] projections, I would like to say that I will be publishing 8 books between now and the end of the year, however I am supporting the Amazon Kindle platform as a priority because of the unexpected and unnecessary cost and complexity of supporting iBooks.
Specifically, I went to great lengths to ensure that my first iBook was fully compliant with the epub standard, only to find that Apple themselves don't comply with it, so I had to pay for [distributor] to make the conversion, and your technical people couldn't actually tell me what was wrong with the original, so I have no chance of correcting these errors myself, of which I am capable given the right information. So Apple have enforced a standard that they don't comply with, and they guard the information that is required for me to fix the problem, and I am not prepared to pay to have you convert every book for me when the conversion process for Kindle is quick, easy and reliable.
Please do pass this on, because I'm sure I'm not the only publisher with this problem.
Cast your mind back a few years... What killed off Betamax in favour of the technically inferior VHS? Content. The studios licensed their content to the consortium of VHS developers, not Sony's Betamax. People couldn't get films, so they didn't buy the machines. Sony learned quickly, and bought Columbia Pictures so that they would never be denied content again.
Random House recently announced that they are putting their entire catalogue of 17,000 books onto the iPad. But for any publishers who don't deal direct with Apple, the Kindle is a much easier and more reliable option. Will this fragment the market? Or will it polarise the market into serious readers who will see the Kindle as a clear winner, or people who primarily want to play games and waste time on Facebook, and dip into the odd ebook here and there, who will go for tablet PCs. Note: Tablet PCs, not necessarily the iPad.
About 20 years ago, the mobile phone companies realised that whoever owned the device in your hand owned what you saw and heard. But wireless Internet is moving the goalposts again. That device could be any one of a number of things, from your phone to your tablet PC, even your television. This favours the content distributors.
Apple have played a very risky strategy; giving content and app development over to third parties, and then trying to control them with restrictive, unfavourable contract terms, based on the belief that Apple owns the world, therefore the developers have no choice but to comply. You want to sell your products? You have to play by Apple's rules, because they control the market.
Except, they don't.
They have scored some early wins by getting customers to fall in love with their products, but this will absolutely not last forever. How do we know?
When Ford's iconic XR3i ruled the suburban backstreets, every product had an 'i' on the end of its name.
When Sony's Walkman ruled the subways and classrooms, every product had 'man' on the end of its name.
When McDonalds ruled the world of crap jobs, every crap job became a McJob.
When Yahoo became My Yahoo, every website became 'My' website.
When the Internet came into the home, every tenuously related product had an "e" at the beginning of its name.
When Apple's iPod took the Walkman's crown, every product had an 'i' at the beginning of its name.
Apple is tightening its grip on the market. And what can you expect to happen next? The tighter Apple squeezes, the more of that market will slip through its fingers.
Changing My Mind About the Amazon Kindle
A while ago, I said that the Kindle is a pointless device given the price difference between something that only displays ebooks and a tablet computer that can do pretty much anything that any other computer can do.
However, I am beginning to change my mind.
Earlier this week, Apple announced that it is going to start enforcing its rules that mean that content must be acquired through iTunes, where Apple can of course make money. It would be like being forced to only by a BMW through a BMW dealer. OK, you might be able to live with that to get a BMW. But then you are also forced to buy your petrol (gas), car washes, bags of sweets and pine tree shaped air fresheners through the BMW garage too. You might feel that BMW were taking advantage of your allegiance to their brand.
Personally, I feel that Apple's philosophy is, "You bought an Apple. You love Apple. Apple is your life. You don't need anything else. We own you." They're like a paranoid, clingy, dependent lover that just happens to be holding a gun to your head.
Here's a snippet of the story from The Bookseller:
To explain this simply, here's what has happened.
You go to the iTunes store, looking for ebooks. To read an ebook, you have to BUY an ebook app such as iBooks. Of course, the majority are free because the developer wants to make their money on ebook sales, not on the app itself. So you download the app.
You BUY some books for the app from iTunes, on which Apple makes a profit.
Inside the app is a link to find more books, which you can buy direct from the developer's website, which saves all the hassle of having to buy through iTunes, which normally involves the download failing half way through, you not getting a refund and not being able to re-download, so you have to buy another copy and then chase Apple for a refund.
So you buy the book on the developer's site and read it on your iPad.
Not any more. Apple are now forcing you to buy all content through iTunes and preventing you from buying content elsewhere.
Hang on.... We just paid £600 for the thing, and you're going to dictate where I can and can't get the stuff that I use it for?
Sorry, Apple, I just don't feel the same way about you any more... Now, put the gun down.
However, I am beginning to change my mind.
Earlier this week, Apple announced that it is going to start enforcing its rules that mean that content must be acquired through iTunes, where Apple can of course make money. It would be like being forced to only by a BMW through a BMW dealer. OK, you might be able to live with that to get a BMW. But then you are also forced to buy your petrol (gas), car washes, bags of sweets and pine tree shaped air fresheners through the BMW garage too. You might feel that BMW were taking advantage of your allegiance to their brand.
Personally, I feel that Apple's philosophy is, "You bought an Apple. You love Apple. Apple is your life. You don't need anything else. We own you." They're like a paranoid, clingy, dependent lover that just happens to be holding a gun to your head.
Here's a snippet of the story from The Bookseller:
Apple is finally getting round to enforcing its new app purchasing guidelines after reports emerged over the weekend of direct purchasing links being removed from some third-party apps
E-book companies now have the option of selling direct through Apple's iTunes store at a cost of 30% per transaction, or hoping customers buy direct from their own stores and use the app only for reading the purchased material.
The simple fact it that no third-party aggregator can afford to pay a 30% fee for being the middle-man on a platform it does not own itself, meaning that in the short term the e-book market is going to be a less interesting environment for book readers and a less useful place for those interested in developing e-book apps.
To explain this simply, here's what has happened.
You go to the iTunes store, looking for ebooks. To read an ebook, you have to BUY an ebook app such as iBooks. Of course, the majority are free because the developer wants to make their money on ebook sales, not on the app itself. So you download the app.
You BUY some books for the app from iTunes, on which Apple makes a profit.
Inside the app is a link to find more books, which you can buy direct from the developer's website, which saves all the hassle of having to buy through iTunes, which normally involves the download failing half way through, you not getting a refund and not being able to re-download, so you have to buy another copy and then chase Apple for a refund.
So you buy the book on the developer's site and read it on your iPad.
Not any more. Apple are now forcing you to buy all content through iTunes and preventing you from buying content elsewhere.
Hang on.... We just paid £600 for the thing, and you're going to dictate where I can and can't get the stuff that I use it for?
Sorry, Apple, I just don't feel the same way about you any more... Now, put the gun down.
Friday, 13 May 2011
Light at the end of the Apple Tunnel? No it's Another Train Coming...
We previously posted our experiences of getting a title up for sale on the Apple iBookstore, and at that point we thought that we had reached the end of that long, winding and painful road.
How wrong we were.
We stripped out all of the extraneous formatting from the raw html file and it passed both epubcheck and preflight verifier. Those are the tools that Apple say must verify your file in order for it to be accepted into the iBookstore.
But, guess what? Although Apple insist on your epub file passing the epubcheck formatting standard, Apple don't follow the standard properly, so when your file passes all of the checks, Apple still reject it.
Worse still, they don't actually tell you why.
If we wanted to find out, we would have to buy an Apple Mac computer so that we could run the Apple software that talks to the Apple iTunes store. And, not surprisingly, we're not keen on that idea. So we had to get our distributor, Ingram, to rebuild the file from scratch. They know how to get the file to pass Apple's entrance exam, even though they can't tell us how to do it or even explain what the problem was.
Money for old rope, as they say.
How wrong we were.
We stripped out all of the extraneous formatting from the raw html file and it passed both epubcheck and preflight verifier. Those are the tools that Apple say must verify your file in order for it to be accepted into the iBookstore.
But, guess what? Although Apple insist on your epub file passing the epubcheck formatting standard, Apple don't follow the standard properly, so when your file passes all of the checks, Apple still reject it.
Worse still, they don't actually tell you why.
If we wanted to find out, we would have to buy an Apple Mac computer so that we could run the Apple software that talks to the Apple iTunes store. And, not surprisingly, we're not keen on that idea. So we had to get our distributor, Ingram, to rebuild the file from scratch. They know how to get the file to pass Apple's entrance exam, even though they can't tell us how to do it or even explain what the problem was.
Money for old rope, as they say.
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
ebook adventures
We've been working long and hard to get two new ebook formats into production; Amazon's Kindle format and Apple's iBooks format. They're similar but different enough to create a whole host of file conversion problems.
Some of this post is rather technical, which is aimed at anyone who is having similar problems and understands what we're babbling about.
Our first ebook release is The Pitching Bible by Paul Boross. It's a 70,000 word book with around 100 images, so it was quite a challenge to format it correctly.
ebook readers such as iPads, Kindles and a whole host of less popular devices as well as software readers for PCs share a fundamental design principle; they display text. Because the file format used for web pages, HTML, is a ubiquitous and simple text formatting language, it's perfect for use in ebook readers. An ebook is essentially a mini website stored locally on the ebook reader. Whilst Apple's iPad is a complex product capable of displaying many different file formats on its high definition screen, Amazon's Kindle uses e-ink technology. Its power consumption is tiny, giving you enough battery life to last through your summer holiday, but it can only display text and greyscale images.
The majority of ebooks are text only, so support for images in an ebook format is actually quite messy.
Here's the meandering and torturous route that we took to finally get everything working.
First; Amazon. Amazon like to hold their cards very close, so they let you upload a 'raw' HTML file which they kindly convert for you. A helpful hand? Maybe, or another way to look at it is that all Kindle conversions go through Amazon which means that they have total control over distribution and therefore royalties. You can't load an ebook onto your Kindle without going through Amazon. Whilst we could debate Amazon's business practices, from a technical point of view, this ebook was relatively easy to set up. The only downside is that you can't fiddle with the formatting; once it's uploaded, you have to wait for it to be approved before you can then upload a revised file, so if the formatting isn't quite right then it's easier just to leave it alone. Amazon don't make life easy when you're a perfectionist.
Apple's iBooks are far more complex. Apple use a 'standard' format called epub which, apparently, is the future of the ebook format. It's much more complex, so what can it do that good old HTML can't? So far, we can't find anything. It is, however, much more difficult to set up.
We use OpenOffice for the actual writing and formatting, and export the book as a HTML file. Then we used a piece of software called eCub to convert the HTML book to an epub file. Then we used another piece of software called epubchecker to tell us everything that was wrong with the ebook. Finally, a piece of software called Sigil allowed us to make the changes to correct the errors.
We went through about 20 file conversions before realising that the strange and meaningless errors displayed by the iPad were caused by exporting the book from OpenOffice as HTML instead of the more complex XHTML, even though eCub is supposed to convert HTML to epub. An epub file is actually just a renamed XHTML file, with all of the supporting files such as images packed inside.
OpenOffice fills the exported XHTML files with an unbelieveable amount of junk; formatting and styles, peculiar 'span' tags that only contain apostrophes and other miscellany. This creates two problems. Firstly, all of this hidden text doubles the file size. Secondly, the hidden text isn't actually hidden. Whereas a web browser wouldn't display all of the formatting, the iPad displays lots and lots of empty space instead. So, we went through and manually took all of the unecessary formatting out. Perfect!
The next problem was images. We create images for books using Inkscape, a SVG drawing program. Images are output in .png format and imported into OpenOffice. Being lazy, I make the images bigger than necessary and size them in OpenOffice so that their resolution is always more than 600dpi for printing. The problem with this is that when OpenOffice converts the file to HTML or XHTML it exports them at full size with image 'width' and 'height' tags to resize them. On the iPad, the images looked terrible. The first solution I tried was to resize all of the images manually and then take out the width and height attributes of the 'img' tag, however this just resulted in the iPad not being able to display the book at all. So we bit the bullet and re-inserted all of the images back into OpenOffice at the correct size so that OpenOffice would format them at 100% of their original size. In OpenOffice, the images were tiny and most were completely illegible. Yet when exported to XHTML, they all displayed at the correct, glorious size. In future, we'll be creating images at just the right size in the original document.
Once we had the image size issue fixed, we went through the OpenOffice - eCub - epubchecker - Sigil sausage machine again and the iPad opened the epub file perfectly.
So, finally, we have our first working epub iBook. The next challenge is to get Apple to accept it into the iBookstore, so we'll keep you posted with our continuing adventures.
Some of this post is rather technical, which is aimed at anyone who is having similar problems and understands what we're babbling about.
Our first ebook release is The Pitching Bible by Paul Boross. It's a 70,000 word book with around 100 images, so it was quite a challenge to format it correctly.
ebook readers such as iPads, Kindles and a whole host of less popular devices as well as software readers for PCs share a fundamental design principle; they display text. Because the file format used for web pages, HTML, is a ubiquitous and simple text formatting language, it's perfect for use in ebook readers. An ebook is essentially a mini website stored locally on the ebook reader. Whilst Apple's iPad is a complex product capable of displaying many different file formats on its high definition screen, Amazon's Kindle uses e-ink technology. Its power consumption is tiny, giving you enough battery life to last through your summer holiday, but it can only display text and greyscale images.
The majority of ebooks are text only, so support for images in an ebook format is actually quite messy.
Here's the meandering and torturous route that we took to finally get everything working.
First; Amazon. Amazon like to hold their cards very close, so they let you upload a 'raw' HTML file which they kindly convert for you. A helpful hand? Maybe, or another way to look at it is that all Kindle conversions go through Amazon which means that they have total control over distribution and therefore royalties. You can't load an ebook onto your Kindle without going through Amazon. Whilst we could debate Amazon's business practices, from a technical point of view, this ebook was relatively easy to set up. The only downside is that you can't fiddle with the formatting; once it's uploaded, you have to wait for it to be approved before you can then upload a revised file, so if the formatting isn't quite right then it's easier just to leave it alone. Amazon don't make life easy when you're a perfectionist.
Apple's iBooks are far more complex. Apple use a 'standard' format called epub which, apparently, is the future of the ebook format. It's much more complex, so what can it do that good old HTML can't? So far, we can't find anything. It is, however, much more difficult to set up.
We use OpenOffice for the actual writing and formatting, and export the book as a HTML file. Then we used a piece of software called eCub to convert the HTML book to an epub file. Then we used another piece of software called epubchecker to tell us everything that was wrong with the ebook. Finally, a piece of software called Sigil allowed us to make the changes to correct the errors.
We went through about 20 file conversions before realising that the strange and meaningless errors displayed by the iPad were caused by exporting the book from OpenOffice as HTML instead of the more complex XHTML, even though eCub is supposed to convert HTML to epub. An epub file is actually just a renamed XHTML file, with all of the supporting files such as images packed inside.
OpenOffice fills the exported XHTML files with an unbelieveable amount of junk; formatting and styles, peculiar 'span' tags that only contain apostrophes and other miscellany. This creates two problems. Firstly, all of this hidden text doubles the file size. Secondly, the hidden text isn't actually hidden. Whereas a web browser wouldn't display all of the formatting, the iPad displays lots and lots of empty space instead. So, we went through and manually took all of the unecessary formatting out. Perfect!
The next problem was images. We create images for books using Inkscape, a SVG drawing program. Images are output in .png format and imported into OpenOffice. Being lazy, I make the images bigger than necessary and size them in OpenOffice so that their resolution is always more than 600dpi for printing. The problem with this is that when OpenOffice converts the file to HTML or XHTML it exports them at full size with image 'width' and 'height' tags to resize them. On the iPad, the images looked terrible. The first solution I tried was to resize all of the images manually and then take out the width and height attributes of the 'img' tag, however this just resulted in the iPad not being able to display the book at all. So we bit the bullet and re-inserted all of the images back into OpenOffice at the correct size so that OpenOffice would format them at 100% of their original size. In OpenOffice, the images were tiny and most were completely illegible. Yet when exported to XHTML, they all displayed at the correct, glorious size. In future, we'll be creating images at just the right size in the original document.
Once we had the image size issue fixed, we went through the OpenOffice - eCub - epubchecker - Sigil sausage machine again and the iPad opened the epub file perfectly.
So, finally, we have our first working epub iBook. The next challenge is to get Apple to accept it into the iBookstore, so we'll keep you posted with our continuing adventures.
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