Improving Ebook Data Quality: A Frank Assessment & The Path Forward

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.

–WILLIAM A. FOSTER

Book publishers are a fortunate lot, especially compared to those in other, more besieged media markets, such as the magazine or newspaper industries. In particular, book publishers benefit from a robust, digital formatting standard in EPUB. The EPUB 3 specification is a comprehensive technical standard for digital book content that includes not only a standard way for encoding book content (HTML5), but also a comprehensive set of specifications for metadata that define both the structure of a book as well as label its subject matter.