Adoption of this standard removes significant barriers to entry into the book market. If the Kindle, Sony Reader, and Mobipocket-compatible and other e-book devices each require a separate document format, a publisher has to create at least three versions of each e-book it publishes. With the EPUB format, a publisher creates a single version, with the onus then on the retailer to ingest that format and create proprietary e-books if they so desire. It’s similar to the ONIX standard for metadata in that the essential information that a publisher transmits is fairly generic, and each retailer can display it in its own interface.
Laura Dawson is CEO of Numerical Gurus, LLC, consulting company providing services to the information, librarym and book industries. Dawson has consulted to numerous organizations in these verticals, primarily focusing on solving problems related to metadata, identifiers, Linked Data, semantic web applications, and structured content.