RE: EPUB usage

Why disheartening Tzviya? 

The fact is that EPUB 2 was and still is good enough for most text-only trade ebooks in English language which is WAY  more than 70% of trade ebook sales. So I see that it’s good news that a trade retailer like Kobo is up to 17% EPUB 3 and 15% FXL. And this is incoming titles not volume, I suspect if you went by volume of sales since more big publishers have moved, the EPUB 3 % would be significantly higher.


Yes there are benefits to moving to EPUB 3 – a11y, in principle, more styling options, etc. But for all-text content it’s pretty subtle. So I take this kind of like the stats showing that old versions of Windows OS or old versions of browsers are still in widespread use – the switching cost is high, the perceived benefits small, so it is delayed to a point where it almost seems ridiculous to observers. But, it’s entirely rational from the economic perspective of those sticking with the old stuff.

 

I think we should focus more on understanding where EPUB 3 is or is not displacing PDF in workflows like EDU (where EPUB 2 wasn’t good enough). The ratio of EPUB 2 to EPUB 3 in trade is just not that big a deal in the big picture (by which I mean the picture that is not trade ebook specific but across all fields of publishing and looking forward to PWP/EPUB4). And EPUB has already superseded PDF almost entirely for trade ebooks, whether that’s EPUB 2 or EPUB 3 is just not such a big deal if you step back to 50K foot level (admittedly 50K foot level is not where practicing folks in book production live day-to-day).

 

Specifically I think that the EPUB2->EPUB3 transition while slightly, perhaps, slowed by some things that we didn’t do optimally in crafting EPUB 3, was pretty much destined to be what it was based on the lack of compelling need to go past EPUB 2 for many in trade ebooks, no matter what we did (unless we had targeted EPUB 3 *only* to address trade ebook needs as a very minor revision to EPUB 2, thus lowering switching costs). So I don’t think there is much to learn in this story to inform future work on PWP/EPUB4, and it would be a mistake to even think about PWP/EPUB4 as something that will help complete that transition. Maybe it will, if its broadly supported enough, but it seems highly unlikely it could lower switching costs and the issue is lack of compelling need to switch not the lack of bells and whistles – and OWP alignment not even being in the mix as a decision factor in most cases.

 

My $.02 anyway…

 

--Bill

 

From: Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken [mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com] 
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2017 5:58 AM
To: Cristina Mussinelli <cristina.mussinelli@aie.it>; Johnson, Rick <Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com>; public-publishing-sc@w3.org
Subject: RE: EPUB usage

 

Thanks, Rick. That is really interesting. Do you happen to have info on EPUB 2 vs 3? I seem to recall that VitalSource entered the game after EPUB 3, so I suspect you skew heavily toward EPUB 3. 

 

This article [1] by Ben Dugas of Kobo is related and a little disheartening. (If any of you want to write for EPUBSecrets, contact Laura Brady.)

 

[1] http://epubsecrets.com/from-inside-the-epub-ingestion-factory.php

 

Tzviya Siegman

Information Standards Lead

Wiley

201-748-6884

 <mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com> tsiegman@wiley.com 

 

From: Cristina Mussinelli [mailto:cristina.mussinelli@aie.it] 
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2017 8:41 AM
To: Johnson, Rick; public-publishing-sc@w3.org <mailto:public-publishing-sc@w3.org> 
Subject: Re: EPUB usage

 

Thank you very interesting!

Cristina

 

 

 

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Da: Rick <Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com <mailto:Rick.Johnson@ingramcontent.com> >
Data: giovedì 15 giugno 2017 14:23
A: "public-publishing-sc@w3.org <mailto:public-publishing-sc@w3.org> " <public-publishing-sc@w3.org <mailto:public-publishing-sc@w3.org> >
Oggetto: EPUB usage
Rinviato da: <public-publishing-sc@w3.org <mailto:public-publishing-sc@w3.org> >
Data rinvio: giovedì 15 giugno 2017 14:23

 

I’ve shared these numbers with you before (for 2016), but I just ran the 2017 ones, and I thought you would all appreciate them.

 

-Rick

 

EPUB vs. PDF usage on the VitalSource platform

 

In 2016

Top 25 titles: 24 EPUB, 1 PDF

Top 50 titles: 46 EPUB, 4 PDF

Top 100 titles: 77 EPUB, 23 PDF

Top 250 titles: 141 EPUB, 109 PDF

Top 500 titles: 233 EPUB, 267 PDF

 

 

In 2017 (to date)

Top 25 titles: 25 EPUB, zero PDF

Top 50 titles: 48 EPUB, 2 PDF

Top 100 titles: 81 EPUB, 19 PDF

Top 250 titles: 159 EPUB, 91 PDF

Top 500 titles: 239 EPUB, 261 PDF