Book Server

Internet Archive EBook Platform

http://www.archive.org/bookserver

Feb'2010 audio presentation by Brewster Kahle.

Sept'2010 audio interview with Peter Brantley.

relationship to Open Library?

My term for a WebApp or WebSite that brings the Book to the Web

These notes started Sept23'2010.

Context/goals/complaints:

• I hate DRM.
• I hate having a different reading app for each EBook Book Store.
• I want to be able to Copy And Paste excerpts (Highlighting And Annotating), whether for personal use or public Sharing. (I want those excerpts to end up in the tools/space I choose.) Even better, I'd like those excerpts to link back to the appropriate place in the original/full text.
• 2007-04-25-ReadingMachineIWant

Summary: every book needs to be part of the World Wide Web. Books In Browsers!

• I'm concentrating at the moment on in-print commercial titles. And current works where the EBook is really just a digital equivalent of the Printed Book.

Product/feature list:

• Full Text of book needs to be available online via the World Wide Web
  • integrate into rest of Web Browser experience: Copy And Paste, BookMark, TypeKit/WebFont-s, etc.
  • ideally, generate from definitive EPub file
• need a definitive URL for a book
  • at the moment, that probably means it should have its own Domain
    • who should control that domain? the author, the publisher?
• Book should be Paragraph Addressable, so Dialogue and Sharing can be at a granular level.
  • should be able to start from a very narrow view around the Paragraph, then easily zoom out to the containing "section", then "chapter", etc.
    • have a ShareThis button for every paragraph?
    • note how some sites already have a feature that when you Copy And Paste their text, the paste includes the page URL.
  • probably want a Url Shortener
    • boy you'd use up a lot of nodes awful fast
    • you'd want it integrated into the Book Server (with a unique-but-short Domain?) so that you could trust the URL to be permanent
      • if definitive EPub for the book has unique paragraph ID-d, and we develop a standard URL pattern/template for nodes, maybe that's not needed?
• Should be largely Device Independent - supporting Mobile (online) devices, Tablet-s, Lap Top-s, DeskTop-s.
  • break up text into small-enough chunks to avoid choking Mobile Web Browser
    • possibly Pre Fetch Next Page to reduce irritating latency/delay in transition?
  • separate HTML file (or db record) for each FootNote, open in Pop Up?
  • device-appropriate image handling
    • size thumbnails for appropriate content-flow
    • Pop Up for full image - leave it to the Web Browser to handle scaling, panning, etc.
• Revenue Model, Intellectual Property protection, etc.
  • Sell web access to Full Text. (Use Metered Pay Wall.)
    • Also makes sense to be able to buy individual chpters, but must have an option for full/unlimited access.
    • Probably also makes sense to also provide EPub file to purchaser, so they feel more confident that the Book Server won't go away. (And encourage development of Browser Based Ebook Reader-s.)
    • Loan A Book, Library Licensing, Group Purchasing (corporate license), etc.
  • Sell Printed Book, other EBook formats
    • directly, through publisher, through various retailers, etc. - see 2010-09-23-BookStakeholdersPickingChannels
    • hmm, give "free" online access to anyone who buys Printed Book or EBook? Only if they buy that "from" you?
  • Pay Affiliate Program sales to sites that send you traffic that results in revenue?

Other features

• BookMark clusters - 2010-09-18-InstantTempEbookBookmarking
• remember current reader position - at least at Page level, ideally at near-Paragraph level
  • note how this lets user move from device to device without thinking about it much
• Book Index whose entries link to paragraphs - Paragraph Addressable!
• Search Engine
  • if selling books by the chapter, probably have to have option to filter results to only chapters the user owns
• extra content - glossary, character profile, etc. (like Neal Stephenson MetaWeb without Crowd Sourcing)
  • or maybe link to this elsewhere?
    • Oct'2010: Peter Meyers says EBook-s starting to help readers: latest Kindle app features "Book Extras" which embed Shelfari-powered character lists, plot summaries. (Note that Amazon owns Shelfari.)

Features to leave out(?)

• Discussion Forum?
  • I'm tempted to say this should be uncoupled from book delivery. There can be many discussions around the web, with each pointing to the reference document on Book Server.
  • On the other hand, it can make sense for the author to host a Virtual Community around a book-like content base. See Teaching Sells Paid Site model. Or, for free engagement, the Author Platform concept.
    • hmm, I see potential in some cases for multiple tiers of membership - maybe a way to do individual Coaching/Consulting on the same platform. That might require much-more-complex software, though... spin out to Thinker Web - 2012-06-26-ThinkerWeb.
• Note Taking, Annotation - better to leave it to Web Browser and whatever tool the user wants to use across the web (Personal Web Archive, etc.) (having Paragraph Addressable hooks to bring along helps tie it all back together).
  • Peter Meyers gives other examples (even though he talks about wanting them in a dedicated ereader device, which is totally backwards)

Hmm, did I just re-design a subset of the Open Hyperdocument System?

Possible BusinessModels - I want to make this!

Start Up to build and sell to multiple publishers (Book Publishing Enterprise)

• sell to publishers (Enterprise) who self-host.
• sell hardware appliance that they hold but you control - when contract ends they keep the box and that version of software
• host centrally as White Label ASP
• for anything not hosted centrally, do you run into issues if you use any Open Source software (e.g. your WebApp Framework, Search Engine, etc.)? I haven't tracked the reality here.

Become an employee/contractor of a single publisher, build it just for them.

• a University publisher might make sense

Become an employee/contractor of a Non-Profit (hello Internet Archive!), build it Open Source. (See top of this page, I'm not sure how my ideas intersect with Internet Archive Book Server project.)

• do this as a University project? With students as developers? Sometime I should share my Thinking Tools Lab idea...

Become employee/contractor of online Book Store, build it just for them.

Become an online Book Store. Live off the same margins as Amazon and ITunes but at 1 zillionth the volume.

Variant of the above: focus on Self Publishing market. ASP service for authors to run their Author Platform.

Other ideas?

Conversion process

Make X/HTML plus images. (With EPub as starting point, this is easy.) Review next to PDF, edit HTML as necessary for style.

Create thumbnail versions of images if don't have them already. (EPub doesn't seem to support the idea of having a thumbnail that links to a separate full-sized Pop Up.)

Edit HTML where images are calls to use Thumb Nail and Pop Up. (Maybe some image-file-naming standards plus JavaScript can make this generic? Hmm does JQuery have something for that?)

Create Table Of Contents if necessary (chapter/section).

Make separate HTML file for each chapter (if not there already).

• review sizes of chapter files, split if desired (preferably along Section boundaries if available).
• make sure every Section header has appropriate heading-level tagging plus a-name

Update Table Of Contents to link to chapters/sections.

Run code to insert Purple Number-s.

Handle standard headers, next/prev/up navigation, etc. (not sure what approach to take yet - render static or not?)

Run code to take original index and re-generate linking to every matching Purple Number?