ePUB 3.0 Education and Training Opportunities

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’Tis the season of digital book publishing conferences, and with them come some opportunities to learn about ePUB 3.0 and receive some training on creating them.

Digital Book World 2012

Digital Book World 2012was last week in New York City, January 23–25. In the buildup to the conference, DBW posted “How Publishers Should Prepare for EPUB 3” by Jeremy Greenfield, which lays out the challenges and opportunities publishers face with the new ePUB format coming soon. If you work with ePUBs, you should read this post.

Among many sessions on eBooks at DBW, there was a workshop on “EPUB 3: What Publishers Know the Format Can Do, and Want to Work With Retailers to Achieve”  [More Info]  with Samantha Cohen, Director of Digital Content Development, Simon & Schuster, Dana Hayward, Senior Manager, Digital Content, HarperCollins Children’s Books, Peter Balis, Director, Digital Business Development, Wiley, and David Cramer, Hachette Book Group. The workshop demonstrated the specific needs for integrating author and publisher goals and retailer support. If you have a membership at DBW, you will be able to access many of these presentations in the DBW Member Content.

If you are looking through the archives of DBW, there was a panel discussion at DBW 2011 with Joshua Tallent, President of eBook Architects, Cristina Mussinelli, Digital Publishing Consultant with the Italian Publishers Association, Eric Freese, Solutions Architect at Aptara, and Kevin Watters, Director Pre Press Services, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, on “EPUB3.0: Updates and Enhancements.”

BISG and DBW Webcast Series

If you don’t have a membership at DBW, now might be the time because in addition to giving you access to the DBW 2012 session videos, your $99 will also give you a $120 discount on the BISG and DBW sponsored four-part Webinar series “Understanding ePUB 3.0.” The series schedule is:

WEBCAST 1: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 @ 1:00 pm Eastern
Introducing EPUB 3.0: Getting Under the Hood of the New EPUB 3.0 Spec

WEBCAST 2: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 @ 1:00 pm Eastern
Working with EPUB 3.0: How EPUB 3.0 Will Affect Your Workflow

WEBCAST 3: Tuesday, March 6, 2012 @ 1:00 pm Eastern
An Alternative to EPUB 3.0: Inside the New Kindle Format 8 (KF8)

WEBCAST 4: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 @ 1:00 pm Eastern
EPUB 3.0 in Action: Case Study Results Presented by Kaplan Publishing

O’Reilly’s Tools of Change for Publishing 2012

O’Reilly Media’s Tools of Change for Publishing Conference 2012 is February 13–15 in New York City. The TOC workshops are on Monday, February 23, and two of them will be of interest to anyone producing ePUBs. The first is Anne-Marie Concepcion’s “InDesign to EPUB: The Basics and Beyond” workshop. In it she’ll cover InDesign to ePUB Essential Steps, Using InDesign to Create Fixed-Layout ePUBs, InDesign>ePUB Gotchas and Their Fixes, Secret Scripts & Techniques of the InDesign>EPUB Jedi Masters, and a Q&A.

The second is “Down & Dirty EPUB 3.0: Building an an EPUB 3.0 From Start to Finish” with Amanda Gomm (Digital Bindery), Tom McCluskey (Digital Bindery). The workshop will first begin with a rudimentary EPUB 2.0 document and examine the specific files to bring everyone onto the same page; second, they will turn a simple EPUB 2.0 document into an EPUB3 on the most basic level; third, they will introduce new features that were not possible with the old structure, including multimedia, font control, text-to-speech functionality, aural renditions, media overlays, and scripting; fourth, they will build a complicated EPUB3 together that takes advantage of all of these new functions; and fifth, they will end with a Q&A.

On the first day of the full conference, Liz Castro will present “ePUB in the Wild”during the breakout sessions. In this session, Liz will look at the cool new stuff that works in EPUB—things like audio, video, multimedia in general, javascript, interactivity, read aloud, soundtracks, and more—in ereaders already on the market, right now. She will point out some features from the EPUB3 spec that are not yet supported (and may never be) and talk about the fact that what a standards body says should work in compliant readers and what actually works, or their method of implementation, is often quite different.

Publishing Business Conference and Expo 2012

At the Publishing Business Conference and Expo 2012 in New York City on March 19–21, there are three workshops that will help you with ePUB production. All are on the eBook Conversion Workshop book track. Part I is “Intro to E-books & the Evolving E-book Landscape” with Joshua Tallent of eBook Architects. In this session readers will Gain insights into and stay on top of trends in the evolving e-book market in this session covering the current formats, devices, apps, and retailers.

Part II is also with Joshua Tallent, and is titled “Intermediate/Business Overview: Creating Your Digital Strategy.” In this session, e-book expert Joshua Tallent will take you through a variety of issues that may or may not affect your digital strategy, including: XML workflows, InDesign workflows, outsourcing vs. in-house development, sending ePub files to Amazon, apps vs. eBooks, ePub2 vs. ePub3, and more.

Part III is with Joshua Tallent and Michael Calleia of Vook, and is titled “Advanced: Designing for Ebooks, Enhanced E-book Ideas and Implementation.” In this session, Michael will join Joshua to discuss some of the enhancement options available in the current e-book market, as well as practical tips on high-quality e-book design.

PePcon: The Print + ePublishing Conference 2012

The Print + ePublishing Conference 2012take place on May 14–16 in San Francisco this year. There will be many sessions on the creation of ePUBs. These will be of particular interest to you if you use an InDesign to ePUB workflow. Liz Castro and I will be presenting “The Future of eBook Publishing: EPUB3.” Join us to learn what you need to know about EPUB3 in 2012 and beyond, including: what readers are available to view EPUB3, how Apple’s ebook implementation is different than Amazon’s, and what we should expect from Adobe?

What conferences have you attended or will you be attending in 2012? What session on ePUB creation and ePUB 3.0 are you looking forward to? What information do you need most?

5 Responses to “ePUB 3.0 Education and Training Opportunities”

  1. Matthew says:

    If you are looking for some training on creating eBooks through iBooks Author, MacBitesLearning.co.uk is offering “iBooks Author – The Future of Learning” on Thursday February 2, 2012. It is a free Webinar (though you can also pay for the recording of the live session). Register at http://macbiteslearning.co.uk/ibooks-author-the-future-of-learning/

  2. […] this change nearly rendered me paralyzed until I attended two ePUB3 presentations in 2012: The Digital Bindery’s presentation at Digital Book World and Matthew Diener and Liz Castro&#82…. At these presentations attendees learned that there doesn’t have to be a vast difference […]

  3. […] this change nearly rendered me paralyzed until I attended two ePUB3 presentations in 2012: The Digital Bindery’s presentation at TOCCON and Matthew Diener and Liz Castro’s present…. At these presentations attendees learned that there doesn’t have to be a vast difference […]

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