Hachette Digital has announced that the company is deploying new initiatives with ePub3. This new format allows greater flexibility to authors producing enhanced content, including interactive covers, embedded multimedia and interactivity, pop-up screens for end-notes, and melded audio and text, as well as improved navigation of reference content, creating a high-quality digital reading experience.
Hachette has publicly started that it will release twenty different ebooks in the next five months with the new ePub3 format. We will see titles by Po Bronson, Elton John, William Poundstone, and James Patterson. The real kicker is that these books are all a sign of what’s to come. Hachette intends on using the ePub3 format with ALL ebooks, starting March 2013.
Hachette Book Group President and COO Ken Michaels said “HBG’s goal is to get our authors’ works out to consumers as broadly as possible, with the most engaging experience for readers regardless of device or platform, along with high quality aesthetics and entertainment. To do this in a world of rapid technological change, the industry needs standards like EPUB3 that enable a wider range of publishing creativity in handling complex layouts, rich media and interactivity capabilities. This EPUB3 release is an exciting step forward in our publishing program and will greatly benefit our readers as the industry fully recognizes the potential and fully adopts this important standard.”
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
