Major Publisher Adopts New Ebook Standard

Hot news from a report in Publishers Weekly on October 25th!

Hachette Book Group USA announced that it will release all of its ebook publications in the International Digital Publishing Forum’s new file format standard for ebooks. The format, Open Publication Structure 2.0, was adopted by the IDPF in September and allows publishers to create a single digital book file instead of many files for the multiple formats currently needed to make an ebook available for all retailers and on all devices. Hachette is the first trade publisher to adopt the standard. This should cut ebook publication costs and make more titles more widely available.

The underlying message here is that Hachette is telling retailers that if they want to sell in a specific format it is their own responsibility to convert it to that format: Hachette will
not burden itself with the cost of producing multiple formats. Not only are they the first to adopt the standard but also they're using their weight to overthrow any retailer's expectations that publishers will continue to provide multiple formats in the future. For example, eReader will now have to convert Hachette's files to .PDB with DRM at eReader's own expense before they can sell a Hachette publication to their customers. This is the start of a big publisher revolution to reduce conversion costs and spend more money on making more titles available!

We hope that Hachette is the first of many publishers to adopt this standard and we encourage all others to follow their lead.