EPUB 3 Viewers for Japanese, EPUB 3 adoption cases including Manga

Mr. Hiraku Inoue, Vice President Software Engineering, Digital Reading Business Division（DRBD） Sony Corporation Director and Senior Executive Officer Rakuten, Inc.
Mr. Yutaka Tashiro, Digital Business Division – Deputy General Manager SHUEISHA Inc.
Mr. Masashi Okamoto, Digital Business Division – Manager SHUEISHA Inc.

На конференции в Токио IDPF обсудит в том числе и EPUB 3 для манги. Логично

Intelligent Encyclopedia, которую Боб Штайн с Аланом Кеем из Atari и Гленом Кином из Disney придумали в в 1982 году.
По виду больше похоже на нетбук ;-)

One Big Six executive told me that ebook sales in their shop had reached the mid-30s as a percentage of units sold. That broke down to about 50% of fiction units and 25% of non-fiction.

Nonetheless, that same executive noted a real slowdown in the rate of ebook growth. This is to be expected as the base of sales grows, of course, but it slowed down faster than this house expected. They had seen a 120% increase in ebook units in 2010 and figured they’d see an 80% growth in 2011; it came in at 60%. In short, the rate of increase was cut in half.

These numbers gave this particular executive reason to believe that print demand was begining to stabilize and that it was reasonable to assume that 50% print units might persist into the future, with commensurate new stability for brick-and-mortar stores. I have since been told that a leading executive at another of the Big Six houses shares the same expectation, or hope. Perhaps they all do.

On the other hand…

Another publisher, substantial but not Big Six, has seen much more explosive growth continuing in ebooks and, for that publisher, unit sales for fiction have already gone to well beyond 50% digital.

То есть, короче говоря, 50% — ориентир баланса электронных и бумажных книг на ближайшее время.

It’s not the only overdue cessation of a print product, of course, but a genuine milestone in the history of shared human knowledge.

А ведь, казалось бы, могли бы печатать как «вещь» — для интерьера, например. Видимо, даже на это спроса нет. Печалька.

There is undoubtedly a boom in ebooks at the moment. The opportunity for businesses and individuals alike cannot be ignored and many are hoping to benefit from the democratisation of publishing. Whilst we have some fantastic tools for writing, such the wonderful Scrivener, other parts of the production workflow are woefully underserved. Here’s hoping that this is the year some of these problems are solved!

Очень может быть, что автор прав. Смешно же, что нормального инструмента до сих пор нет. Нелепо.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski on Wednesday challenged schools and companies to get digital textbooks in students’ hands within five years.

План неплохой. Ещё бы стандарты были. А то K8 в лес, а iBooks по дрова.

We make a high-quality cloud-based e-book reader for publishers.

Вот ещё вариант: фирма предлагает издателям получить свою “собственную” облачную читалку, которая, естественно, будет работать во всех устройствах с современными браузерами.
Попросил прислать демо-доступ, посмотреть — как же это оно изнутри. Заодно поинтересовался и ценами. Жду ответа.

Симпатичная визуализация функции «Какие книги покупают те, кто купил эту».