Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffC
Am I incorrect in thinking that most books (of all genre) now start off in digital format...if so, then surely a publisher already has a potential e-book before they even start to go to print...
Geoff
(may be I'm way off with this thought but surely technology now suggests most writers and their editors use computors at some stage in a book development)
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Just about everybody in publishing expects a Microsoft Word document as the manuscript they will work from. (I know writers who despise Word but are forced to use it for the submission draft because of this.)
The Word document will be imported into Quark Express or Adobe InDesign for markup, typesetting, and the production of the electronic files (usually PDF) that the printer's prepress department will use as input to their imagesetters, which will create the plates used for printing.
Adobe Indesign can create ePub as output, and I've speculated before on a workflow that creates ePub files as well as PDFs to feed to imagesetters. ePub contains all of the elements needed for an ebook, and can serve as a base file for conversions to other formats. (Mobipocket's command line Mobigen tool can take an ePub file as input and produce a Mobi file as output.)
As more conversion tools become available, it's not unreasonable to think about a workflow where once markup is completed in InDesign, output to ePub, and conversion from ePub to Mobipocket, Sony LRF, EB1150 IMP, eReader PML, and other formats can happen automatically.
The barriers to publishers producing ebooks are not technological. They are issues of business model -- "How do we do this and make money?"
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Dennis