Quote:
Originally Posted by charleski
Of course when we're talking about Japan, 'ebooks' largely means comics, rather than long-form text.
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I would say that the catalogs contain just as many if not more long-form text books.
EPUB is not able to handle the vagaries of Japanese language publishing yet (being worked on now by JEPA -
http://www.jepa.or.jp/press_release/reqEPUBJ.html). Not to mention epub was not around when Sharp was working on electronic publishing (MDF format) back in 1985.
I've been reading XMDF (and MDF) books in Japanese on various devices for over 10 years. This is the predominant ebook format in Japan and the likelihood of it going away anytime soon is exceedingly slim. It will take time to introduce Japanese specific changes to the EPUB.
This is also the "supported" format of the electronic book publishers of Japan (EPBAJ) - newly formalized group to coordinate ebook activities amongst the market movers. A recent addition to the JEPA. Most of the major Japanese publishers belong to this group. Furthermore, The dynamics of the Japanese publishing and electronics markets will likely prevent any kind of truly "open" format. It will all be locked down with DRM.
This new revision of XMDF already has wide buy-in amongst most of the Japanese publishing ecosystem including printers, publishers and newspapers.
My prediction is that it won't catch on in the US market, though.