IDPF Working Group Improving on EPUB Format for E-books
Extra: Are book publishers ready to deliver the functionalities that the new EPUB file format will allow for?
Conboy: I think we may actually be pretty well-timed in that there's been tremendous adoption of EPUB, albeit fairly simple EPUB, over the last couple of years. Most publishers and conversion houses now are only doing EPUB as it goes out to the sales and distribution channels. One thing we're certainly aware of is there's varying levels of veracity with which the various reading systems have implemented the standard. I hope one thing that will happen this year is that all these reading systems —be it Amazon or eReader or Sony, whomever—will all come to a pretty solid implementation of EPUB 2.0. While that effort is going on, the development group of EPUB is working on the 2.1. So if we have a base by the beginning of next year where everyone has got the current standard implemented pretty well, we can take the next step forward.