IDPF Working Group Improving on EPUB Format for E-books
Extra: Do you see foresee this new file format affecting the cost for publishers to create e-books? And how will this affect end-users?
Conboy: That gets to the whole thing that drove us, starting in 2005, to advance the standard and create what's now EPUB. Before that effort, there was an earlier version of the standard that was implemented very differently by lots of different platforms. So publishers bringing out a trade press book in 2003 would create a lit file for Microsoft, a Palm file for Palm Digital Media, an eReader file, etc. There was probably five or six conversions that would have to be done for every book that you brought out. And each of those conversions could be a couple hundred dollars. To bring a book out, it would be five times more than seems reasonable.