Digital Book Standards

Big anouncement yesterday from the International Digital Publishing Forum, which is a consortium of major players in the digital book industry.

The fear driving the consortium is that the potential growth of the market could be frustrated if different companies adopted proprietary standards. For example, despite the growth of .pdf files, customers can’t read a Palm e-book on a Microsoft Reader.

Major software companies and device manufacturers have announced plans to support new electronic book standards developed within the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). The companies will support these standards in their next generation software and devices, alleviating many of the previous file interoperability and production issues affecting the eBook industry and its customers.

Draft specifications have been released. For further information, see Publishers’ Weekly.