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Choosing your electronic textbook format

A number of electronic publication formats exist which provide varying support for the requirements of the author and of the reader of the book. In choosing the format in which you wish to distribute your textbook, we believe you should consider the following requirements:

• Rights management - does the format allow you to encrypt and protect the content of the textbook so that you can maximise your investment?
• Wide range of content possibilities - can you incorporate rich media content such as Flash, video, audio?
• End-user benefits - does the format provide tools to allow the end-user or student to use the textbook in an efficient, and ultimately educationally helpful way?
  • Structured note-taking - highlight and annotate sections of the text, and browse annotations by topic
  • Annotation exporting - save annotations to a separate document to assist in revision cramming, or essay writing
  • Comprehensive searching - of the textbook content and annotations
  • Structured reading - clearly navigable contents structure and index
  • Offline reading - view the book when not connected to the internet
• Distribution network - by what means will you distribute your eTextbook in any particular format?

When we started out to develop tools to assist in the creation of eTextbooks, we examined the existing formats, such as HTML, PDF, Open eBooks and other eBook formats, and the associated software, such as Adobe eBook Reader, Microsoft Reader, SafariX and came to the conclusion that none of these really delivers on all of the author and end-user requirements. We therefore decided to extend the Open eBook format with a set of extensions to support these additional features, and a packaging format that would help to manage an author's rights to the content of the textbook.

We have no doubt that as the Open eBook specification matures, it will encompass more of these features. For instance, there is an ongoing project to define a packaging structure for Open eBooks. As these enhancements occur, we will continue to examine how best to progress our own format to incorporate these improvements in the open standard.

For a full list of eTextbookSuite features, both free and purchasable, please visit the Software page.