Other resources
This is a constantly evolving list of digital-publishing links and resources we find useful and/or interesting.
Background
Great article/ebook by John Siracusa on the history and future of ebooks
The International Digital Publishing Forum
The IDPF oversees the development of the specifications that make up epub. The actual specs are on their site. You will very rarely need these, but it’s good to know they’re there.
Concepts
“The Machine is Us/ing Us”: Brilliant video on the interlinked nature of the Internet
“Better than free”: Seminal essay by Kevin Kelly
Digital magazine concept video by Bonnier/Berg
Bookserver, a project to standardize ebook sales and lending online
Production
Epubcheck, the open-source tool for checking whether epubs are valid according to the relevant specs. If you run it yourself on your machine, you need to do so in a command line. Slightly technical, but really fast.
Liz Castro’s book focuses on creating epub from InDesign.
An example of how different CSS files applied to the same epub can radically change ebook design.
Software
Calibre (free; for managing and converting ebook formats)
Sigil (free; for creating and editing epub ebooks)
Faststone image editor (Windows)
Free, good at batch conversions
Blogs
Mike Shatzkin (business, strategy)
Michael Cairns (business, strategy)
Threepress Consulting (epub and web-based tech specialists)
Tools of Change (run by O’Reilly Media)
All those that Electric Book Works follows on Twitter/X are highly recommended.