February 3, 2014
by InstaScribe
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EPUB Reading Apps (Part 1)

We have talked about ebook reading devices like Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader and Kobo eReader on this blog. We have also discussed their corresponding reader apps. But this is not where the choices end for readers. There are a bunch of e-book reading apps available for various electronic devices and platforms, including PCs, Apple devices, Android phones and tablets and Linux operating system. We will talk about these apps from time to time and this is the first post in “EPUB Reading Apps” series, where we will discuss some of the popular and important apps available.

Before jumping to the list of apps, let’s do a quick review of what all to look for in an app. Displaying EPUB files is a basic requirement, of course. Apart from that, apps can be differentiated based on following:

  • Support for advanced features of EPUB. For example audio, video, fixed layout, custom embedded fonts.
  • Library management
  • Syncing across devices
  • Cloud storage
  • Ability to highlight text, add notes
  • In-built dictionary
  • Sharing
  • Support for purchasing
  • Support for DRMed files
  • Overall reading experience

In this post, we will check out two important EPUB reading apps:

  1. Adobe Digital Edition, and
  2. Aldiko

Adobe Digital Edition

Adobe Digital Editions is the ebook reader from Adobe, available for Windows and Mac OS X. It can read EPUB and PDF files. It has a library management feature. It has highlighting and bookmarking features, but as far as we could see, syncing across devices, dictionary, sharing or cloud storage were not available.

Despite being from Adobe, it doesn’t look like it is a very popular e-book reader. However, it is important because Adobe’s renderer as well as DRM technologies are used by many e-book sellers, e-book libraries and e-readers. To be able to borrow from these libraries, or to read books bought from such sellers, you may need to mandatorily install Adobe Digital Edition.

If you are the creator of an EPUB file, you can use Adobe Digital Edition as a previewer. If the book looks fine here, there are high chances that it will look fine on Nook, Sony Reader or Kobo eReader because they also use Adobe’s rendering technologies. There is no guarantee, however, because each of them may also have their custom display.

Aldiko

Aldiko is a popular EPUB reading app for Android. It also reads PDF and it support Adobe’s DRM technology making it possible to borrow e-books from libraries and read DRMed e-books. It lets you add highlights and notes, but does not have any cloud storage or ability to sync across devices. The in-built dictionary takes you to Google search (define operator). It supports sharing through the usual Android sharing options. It lets you adjust the brightness, background and text-color to your convenience.

What are your favourite e-book reading apps apart from the devices? Let us know and we would love to cover it in upcoming posts in this series.

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January 24, 2014
by InstaScribe
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Writing Advice: 45 Ways to Avoid Using the Word ‘Very’

So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose – N.H. Kleinbaum

Writers Write has a superb list of words that helps you avoid the clichéd and lazy ‘very’. Trust us, it will make your writing much more effective. Some examples

  1. Instead of “very afraid”, use “terrified”.
  2. Instead of “very valuable”, use “precious”.

See the complete list in the original article.

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January 22, 2014
by InstaScribe
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Tool Info: MS Word

It is unlikely that anyone using a computer today is not familiar with Microsoft’s ubiquitous word processor “Microsoft Word” (MS Word). It is used for wide variety of document creation tasks. Professional designers and printers will scoff at the idea of using MS Word for any serious designing or printable file creation, but MS Word is a powerful common man’s tool.  Its learning curve is not steep and features have become increasingly rich over time. Today most of the common formatting requirements of most books are easily covered by MS Word. Hence, a large number of writers use MS Word for writing and even formatting their manuscripts.

MS Word 2007 and later versions have native support for converting the documents to PDF. HTML conversion has been in place for much longer. But conversion to EPUB is tricky. There are a few roundabout ways of converting your Word documents into EPUB. This includes

  • Using a tool like Aspose.Words Express: This tool takes a Word documents, interprets the styles and creates an EPUB from it. You might need to make adjustments to the converted files. You can use a tools like Sigil or directly manipulate  HTML/CSS to achieve this. Now, you can also import this EPUB to InstaScribe and make changes!
  • Word to HTML to EPUB: You can save your word file as HTML, import it in Calibre and then export as EPUB. The quality of EPUB generated might not be great. But you can make adjustments as above.
  • Convert and sell through Smashwords: Smashwords has some strict formatting requirements in Word. If you can satisfy those, you can upload your files there. They do automatic conversion to various formats and also help in distribution.

InstaScribe plans to have a Word Import feature soon. After that you can make changes and adjust the formatting directly in InstaScribe’s WYSIWIG editor. For the time being, you will have to copy-paste the content.

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January 20, 2014
by InstaScribe
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Fixed Layout EPUBs

The most important reason EPUB and Mobi came up as the widely accepted formats for e-books is their support for reflowing of text. This makes it easy and comfortable to read the content on devices of different screen sizes. Since text reflows to fit the screen size, the reader does not have to zoom or pan around to read the entire page, as would be the case with a PDF. Most e-book reading apps also allow readers to change the typeface, font-size etc. to suit themselves. So, people with weak vision can increase the font-size. One can also use assistive technologies like screen reader to consume the content.

These formats work well for most books which have text-heavy content. But there are categories of books that have relied on the fixed layout of print medium for correct presentation of content to the users. For example, image-heavy coffee-table books, comics and graphic novels, children’s picture books, photo-books etc. Typically these are the books which are image-heavy and exact layout and design is a major part of the appeal apart from the content.

To handle such books, we need to give up on the reflowability  of the e-books and have fixed layout e-books. PDF is one way to do it. Initially EPUB did not have support for fixed layout (FXL). But now EPUB3 specifications include support for fixed-layout EPUBs. Almost all major e-book selling and reading platforms also support it, including Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iTunes. The obvious disadvantage of fixed layout e-books is that if viewed on a screen smaller than the one it is designed for, it will not be easy to consume.

Creating fixed layout EPUBs from scratch essentially means including some metadata that identifies it as such, and using HTML and CSS to set the exact width and height of the pages. Each page needs to be a separate HTML file in the EPUB. There are ways to specify how the reader should handle spreads.

InDesign and some other tools support creation of fixed layout EPUBs. InstaScribe currently doesn’t support it, but we would keep an eye on user feedback and accordingly decide the priority for this.

One word of caution: Some designers and publishers use fixed-layout EPUBs as a short-cut to designing an e-book properly. They just put the pages of printed book in fixed layout. This is not good idea. It hinders the distributability of e-books. Reflowability is an important property that makes e-books tick. Fixed layout should not be used unless there is an absolute, unavoidable need for it.

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January 16, 2014
by InstaScribe
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Tool Info: Adobe InDesign

InDesign is a desktop publishing software application from Adobe. It is widely used by designers and publishers for typesetting books and is almost an industry standard in publishing industry. As a publishing Software, it is much more feature-rich and involved compared word processors like MS Word. Give the cost and learning curve, it can typically only be used by specialized, trained professionals.

The software works very well for print publishing. It comes  with many advanced features that help in creating print-ready files that almost all printers accept. In recent versions, Adobe has also added the ability to export the books created in InDesign to EPUB formats.

However, the exported files are often not usable as is. Since the tool and its file format are designed for print, they may not have the information necessary to create good e-books. Designers often export EPUB files from InDesign and make adjustments to the HTML and CSS.

If your book is already being prepared for print, you most likely have an InDesign file. So, it is a good place to start creating your e-book files too. You can make changes to the exported EPUB files using other EPUB editing tools, including InstaScribe now 🙂

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January 10, 2014
by InstaScribe
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Tool Info: Sigil

Sigil is a free and open-source EPUB editor, that let’s you create a new EPUB file from scratch or edit an existing EPUB file. Sigil is good and bad because of the same thing. It exposes the structure of EPUB file and let’s you edit each part including HTML, CSS and specific files for table of content and metadata information. If you are a technically inclined user who understands and is willing to work with files at such low-level, the tool would work for you. But if you prefer a simpler way of creating e-books without being exposed to technical nittigirtties, you might not like it. One way to use Sigil, in such cases, is not to create EPUB from scratch in the tool, but use it only to make minor changes to the EPUB file you have from some other source.

Apart from exposure of technical goriness, another disadvantage of Sigil is that you can only create EPUB using it and no other format. For creating mobi or PDF files, you will have to resort to some other tools.

Finally, while it is quite a stable tool, currently not a lot of development is happening on it. So, as the EPUB editing becomes more and more sophisticated, Sigil might not be able to meet the needs of users.

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January 8, 2014
by InstaScribe
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Tool Info: Calibre

Calibre is a very interesting multi-purpose tool for e-book users – readers as well as writers. It calls itself an e-book library management application and among other things helps you do following

  • Library management of e-books
  • Conversion between various formats
  • Syncing your files to various devices
  • Reading e-books of various formats

You will need your e-book files to be DRM-free to be able to use them with calibre, which means that books purchased on the likes of Kindle, Nook or other DRMed e-book sellers can’t be used with Calibre. But books downloaded from places like Gutenberg, or purchased with O’Reilly media would work very well.

Here are some of the things readers and writers can do with Calibre.

Calibre for readers

  1. Manage all your non-DRMed e-books in one place. You can sort and search through your books.
  2. Convert to a different format to read on a specific device. For example, if you have purchased a file in EPUB format, but want to read it on Kindle, you can use Calibre to convert it to Mobi format, which is Kindle-compatible. Calibre can also help you sync the converted book to your Kindle.
  3. Use Calibre as an e-book reader. Calibre as an in-built viewer which can be used for reading the e-books.

Calibre for writers

  1. Including/Updating Metadata and Cover: If you have an EPUB or some other calibre-compatible format file for your e-book, and want to include or update its metadata or cover, you can use Calibre to do it very easily.
  2. Generating different e-book formats: Calibre will also convert your e-book to various formats, which you can use to publish it on different platforms or sell different formats through your own website.
  3. Editing HTML/CSS: If you are so inclined, you can explode an HTML/CSS-based file like EPUB using calibre and edit it at HTML/CSS level. This will be useful only for the technically-inclined though.

If you look around, you will find other usage too. Although, as a writer, do keep in mind that Calibre is an e-book management system, not an e-book writing on creation system. Editing and conversion features that writers can use are incidental. So, if it doesn’t do all that you want, don’t blame the tool 🙂

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January 6, 2014
by InstaScribe
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Reader Apps: An Alternative to E-book reading devices

We have talked about e-book reading devices on this blog, including Kindle, Kobo eReader, Sony Reader and Nook. Typically these devices are connected to the respective e-book stores run by their companies.  On Kindle, for example, you can buy books from Amazon’s Kindle store.

The prices of e-book reading devices typically start from $59 and go up to a few hundred dollars. If you want to buy a few books from each of these stores, this may seem like a lot of money to shell out. Or you might first want an experience of e-book reading before investing in the devices. Do you have an alternative?

Thankfully you do. Most of these companies also release their reading apps for various platforms. You could download these apps on your personal computer, tablet or mobile and read the books bought from their stores. These apps are typically free as well. Here is a list of reader apps which are alternatives to the readers we have covered:

  1. Kindle Reading Apps: Alternative to Kindle e-book readers, Kindle reading apps are available for
    • Windows PC
    • Mac
    • iPhone, iPod touch and iPad
    • Android smartphones and tablets
    • Windows smartphones and Windows 8 tablets
    • BlackBerry smartphones
    • Any browser (called Kindle Cloud Reader)
  2. Nook Reading Apps: Alternative to Nook e-book reading devices, Nook reading apps are available for
    • Windows PC
    • Mac
    • iPhone and iPad
    • Android smartphones and tablets
    • Windows 8 smartphones and tablets
  3. Kobo eReading Apps: Alternative to Kobo eReader, Kobo eReading Apps are available for
    • Windows PC
    • Mac
    • iPhone and iPad
    • Android smartphones and tablets
    • BlackBerry 10
  4. Sony Reader Apps: Alternative to Sony Reader, Sony Reader Apps are available for
    • Windows PC
    • Mac
    • iPhone and iPad
    • Android smartphones and tablets

So, you don’t need to wait for acquiring an expensive hardware device before you can get started on your e-book reading journey. Just download the apps for the devices your already own and read away.

Would you still want to own a dedicated e-book reader, given that apps are available for various platforms? If you are a voracious reader, the dedicated devices do give you some advantages. For example

  • E Ink screens are easy on eyes compared to the LCD screens of smartphones, tablets and computers.
  • You can read without distraction of facebook, e-mails etc. if you are on a reading device.
  • Unlike a PC or Mac, you can actually curl up in the bed with a Kindle or Nook reading devices and carry them around more easily.
  • Even large screen smartphones may not have screens large enough for serious reading.

But if you are someone who needs to do online research while reading, reading on a PC or Mac or a tablet might just be fine.

Options galore. Take your pick. Or try them all!

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January 4, 2014
by InstaScribe
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Understanding EPUB

In an earlier post, we talked about PDF as a file format for e-books.  We discussed an important limitation of the format. It is a fixed layout format, which works very well for print, but not for e-books. Since reading devices some in different sizes, reflowing of text is an important criteria for a file format to be acceptable for e-books.

Over time various formats came up to address this issue. The one that has emerged as a standard is EPUB. EPUB uses HTML and CSS to store the content and styles respectively. It also has provision for including images, audio and video resources. It lets you include table of content and other navigational lists as well as meta-data in the EPUB file itself.

Since the specifications for EPUB are open and the basic content is stored as HTML and CSS, for anybody familiar with HTML and CSS, it is theoretically possible to create an EPUB from scratch. However, it is not a very convenient way of doing so.

Most of the e-book reading devices including NOOK, Kobo e-reader, Sony Reader etc. support EPUB as the primary format. The notable exception is Kindle, which works on its own proprietary format. However, Amazon provides tools for the conversion of EPUB to the format supported by Kindle. Hence creation of EPUB suffices for publishing on all major platforms. Plenty of EPUB readers are available for different devices, a large number of them free. So, EPUB is going to become even more popular in future.

While reflowable content is good for most part, there are certain kinds of books, where a fixed layout is the only way it can work. Comics and Graphic novels, for example. Or photo-books. What are the file-format options available for such books? We will discuss them in a separate blog post.

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