Re: EPUB 3 Justification

Folks, coming at this from my side of corporate enterprise.

Liisa, what’s missing from this list are #’s and $$s.  You have made very good points about the value-ad of 3X and your imprint has countered with “so what.?”
The reason they can do that is that the list does not quantify revenue update, revenue risk, etc.  Further, it is not really revenue that matters it is net revenue (factoring in the cost of migrating to 3X).
What you really are asking for is a business case.
We need this not only for your imprint but more broadly for any PR effort.  At the end of the day, someone’s budget gets affected by this decision.


  1.  Set of costs associated with a workflow change
  2.  Any savings associated with a change to 3X
  3.  Increased revenue opportunities with more robust formatting
  4.  Or, revenue at risk because competitors have more robust options

You get the gist – this is not intended to be the real list…

From: "McCloy-Kelley, Liisa" <lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com>
Date: Wednesday, May 23, 2018 at 7:34 AM
To: W3C Publishing Business Group <public-publishingbg@w3.org>
Subject: EPUB 3 Justification
Resent-From: <public-publishingbg@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Wednesday, May 23, 2018 at 7:33 AM

Hello colleagues-

I need your help with something. I have an imprint with client publisher who is still producing EPUB 2. We have been working with all of our clients to get to 100% EPUB 3x for newly produced ebooks. But this particular imprint doesn’t see any value in changing their workflow to do something different than what they are currently doing.


  *   We note that their ability to control navigation would be better.
     *   They say that their books are relatively simple and retailers are interpreting the ncx fine
  *    We note that they would have more robust formatting options.
     *   Again, the content is simple and what they have is fine
  *   We note that this is where the marketplace is going.
     *   They want to know if any retailers have given a date when they will stop accepting EPUB2
  *   We point out that it would make their books accessible.
     *   They say that no one is requiring this and it isn’t a legal obligation in the US

These rebuttals are pretty legitimate. This all goes to the PR campaign for supporting and getting wide adoption for EPUB 3x that we were discussing a month or so back.

What other arguments are there? How do we convince people to adopt the latest generation of ebook formatting so that we can all move beyond the limitations of EPUB 2?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

Best,


Liisa McCloy-Kelley
VP, Director Ebook Product Development & Innovation, PRH
lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com


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