Re: EPUB 3 Justification

Looking ahead, it may be helpful if we can also list similar compelling reasons for encouraging publishers for moving to WP/PWP/EPUB 4 from EPUB 3/EPUB 2.
There are good reasons for scholarly publishing that have been discussed in PWG calls. It would also be good to list down the reasons for traditional publishing industry that do not have scholarly publications as their main business model. 
It may help in planning of the new specs.

With regards
Avneesh

From: Ric Wright 
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2018 22:28
To: AUDRAIN LUC ; McCloy-Kelley, Liisa ; W3C Publishing Business Group 
Subject: Re: EPUB 3 Justification

This thread smells like the basis for a nice white paper, to me.

Ric


From: AUDRAIN LUC <LAUDRAIN@hachette-livre.fr>
Date: Wednesday, May 23, 2018 at 6:27 AM
To: "McCloy-Kelley, Liisa" <lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com>, W3C Publishing Business Group <public-publishingbg@w3.org>
Subject: Re: EPUB 3 Justification
Resent-From: <public-publishingbg@w3.org>
Resent-Date: Wed, 23 May 2018 13:28:23 +0000


Dear Liisa,

In Hachette Livre we have identified these pros for EPUB3 vs EPUB2 :
  a.. Formatting quality with CSS3 
    a.. Text typography more similar to paper quality
  b.. Any glyphs on the planet (Unicode support) 
    a.. Any Unicode scripture : not only latin characters (we do have French books with greek, chinese, etc glyphs)
  c.. Better user experience 
    a.. Popup footnotes (no loss of the reading context)
  d.. Better structural semantics 
    a.. EPUB3 has more informations on the nature of the HTML chunks 
    b.. This enables business cases for chapter selling (Sigil has a menu entry for that)
  e.. Accessibility is EPUB3  
    a.. DAISY Consortium has developed EPUB3 with IDPF for accessibility 
    b.. DAISY tool Ace work only on EPUB3 
    c.. I am surprised that there is no legal obligation in US, in Europe the European Accessibility Act will be adopted this year and include e-books
  f.. Complete acceptance from all retailers 
    a.. Yes we checked it in 2015 !
  g.. Open source DRM LCP 
    a.. LCP will be available only on EPUB3
  h.. Open source reading system eco-system  
    a.. Readium 2 is an open source SDK that works on EPUB3
  i.. It is affordable 
    a.. Starting from their existing workflows, Hachette Livre suppliers have switched in 2016 to EPUB3 at NO COST
  j.. EPUB2 production forbidden 
    a.. For all Hachette Livre group imprints, we do not accept any EPUB2 files any more since April 2018

As for costs :
  a.. Open source is cost saving in the eco-system 
  b.. We had no increase in cost production from our suppliers 
    a.. It took me sometime to write and test the new specifications
  c.. Accessibility is a market opportunity  
    a.. Visually impaired people are willing to benefit from the end of the book famine.

Hope this helps,
Luc

Luc Audrain
Head of Digitalization
Hachette Livre
Mobile : +33 (0) 6 48 38 21 41


De : "McCloy-Kelley, Liisa" <lmccloy-kelley@penguinrandomhouse.com>
Date : mercredi 23 mai 2018 à 13:32
À : W3C Publishing Business Group <public-publishingbg@w3.org>
Objet : EPUB 3 Justification
Renvoyer - De : <public-publishingbg@w3.org>
Renvoyer - Date : mercredi 23 mai 2018 à 13:33


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. 

 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->-          <!--[endif]-->We note that their ability to control navigation would be better.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o    <!--[endif]-->They say that their books are relatively simple and retailers are interpreting the ncx fine

<!--[if !supportLists]-->-          <!--[endif]--> We note that they would have more robust formatting options. 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o    <!--[endif]-->Again, the content is simple and what they have is fine

<!--[if !supportLists]-->-          <!--[endif]-->We note that this is where the marketplace is going. 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o    <!--[endif]-->They want to know if any retailers have given a date when they will stop accepting EPUB2

<!--[if !supportLists]-->-          <!--[endif]-->We point out that it would make their books accessible. 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o    <!--[endif]-->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