EPUB in the Wild at Tools of Change for Publishing

I spent the early part of last week in New York City at the Tools of Change for Publishing Conference. It was really great. There were lots of interesting presentations, from the theoretical to the more hands-on, and I was thrilled to meet folks in person who I had heretofore only chatted with via Twitter and Skype. I find it very compelling how much you can begin to know someone on Twitter, and then how important it is to make more solid connections face to face.

I gave a talk on Tuesday called “EPUB in the Wild”, which aimed to explain the difference between what is laid out in specifications and manufacturer guidelines and what really works in real life (the ‘wild’). I advocated for a workflow that concentrates on ebook features that work well cross-platform, with some minor adjustments automatically generated with media queries and that can thus take advantage of the creation (and subsequent updates) of a single EPUB file that is designed to also be easily ported to Kindle/mobi and KF8. And when that's not possible, because a platform simply does not support an essential feature (say, video), that's when you make informed choices about leaving that platform behind.

I call this method "one file to rule them all".

Here are my slides. I'm hoping that #TOCCON eventually posts the video from my talk as well. If they do, I'll let you know.

Epub in the wild

You can download the “one file” in EPUB format, or as converted to Kindle/mobi and KF8 with Kindle Previewer 3.