How to Find Information on the ePub book format used by the iPad

The ePub format allows content to be adapted for display on a variety of reading devices.

Apple Inc. is now using the ePub format, the most popular book format in the world, for its iPad iBooks app. According to the Apple website, you can add free ePub titles to iTunes from your Mac or PC and then sync them your iPad. Perhaps you are wondering about the ePub format, who is responsible for it and what working group is overseeing its maintenance and continued development.

Instructions

1. Find out about the early history of the ePub format in the work of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), a nonprofit digital publishing trade and standards organization. In 1999, IDPF produced an Open eBook Publication Structure standard that eventually evolved into the Open Publication Structure. The current ePub format used for ebooks is composed of three open publishing standards all produced by the IDPF: the Open Publication Structure, Open Packaging Format and Open Container Format.

   International Digital Publishing Forum
   P.O. Box 215
   Toronto, Ontario M3C 2S2
   Canada
   905-235-4373
   idpf.org

2. Discover how flexible this freely available format can be. Files have the extension .epub. The format internally uses XHTML or DAISY Digital Talking Book (DTBook) to represent the text and structure of the content document. Developed by the DAISY Consortium, the DTBook is an accessible file format similar to HTML, with special regard for the requirements of the visually impaired. The ePub allows content to be adapted for display on a variety of reading devices with screens ranging from phone-size to large computer display-size. It offers a single acceptable format that major as well as small publishers can use for distribution and sale for digital versions of their books.

3. Learn more about the IDPF and recent ePub usage developments. Today the IDPF membership includes representatives from over 120 companies and organizations involved in digital publishing. Commercial and university presses worldwide now use the ePub format for the digital versions of their books. On Aug. 26, 2009, Google Books announced it was offering free downloads of more than one million public domain books in the ePub format. Apple followed in 2010 with an announcement of its choice of the ePub format for the iBooks app for the iPad.

4. Consult the IDPF website about for details on changes and improvements to the ePub format. On Aug. 16, 2009, the IDPF announced the formation of the ePub standards maintenance working group, with the DAISY Consortium offering to provide resources and staffing to assist. Companies participating in the working group include Adobe, Barnes & Noble, BookNet Canada, Bowker, Cambridge University Press, Digital Divide Data, EasyPress Technologies, eBook Technologies, Educational Testing Service, EPUB Users Group (UK), Follett, Hachette, HarperCollins, Ingram Digital, Innodata Isogen, John Wiley & Sons, LibreDigital, McGraw-Hill Professional, O'Reilly Media, OverDrive, Pearson, Penguin, Random House, TexTech, The Publishers Association, University of Montreal, Vision Australia, Wiley/Blackwell and the World Health Organization. The working group will play a vital role in the ePub format's future within digital publishing.

References

• Apple iBooks: a novel way to read and buy books
• IDPF: International Digital Publishing Forum
• DAISY Consortium
• Download Over a Million Public Domain Books from Google Books in the Open EPUB Format
• Charter for EPUB Standards Maintenance Working Group