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¿Qué es Bookworm?
Bookworm is now available in Spanish! I’m thrilled to finally have this up as Spanish was one of the languages I was most interested in adding.
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Major Bookworm release
Details over at O’Reilly Labs: New features and bug fixes for Bookworm. Most of these are (by design) internal and not user-facing, but at least two are notable and possibly quite fun. Feedbooks...
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Bookworm now supports inline video
This is an experimental new feature but of course a very cool one: Bookworm can now display and play ePub books with embedded video. Whether the video will actually play depends on the epub file’s...
View ArticleUsing Flash video in ePub
Since Bookworm has support for video you may want to experiment with creating your own video ebooks. Here’s how to do it and still create a valid XHTML 1.1/ePub. Assuming you have a Flash movie called...
View ArticleBookworm API
We’ve been quiet about it, but Bookworm has had an API now for some time, which developers can use to write library management clients or external reading systems. If users trust your site, you can ask...
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How big is the average ePub book?
One of the great things about sitting on 30,000+ ePub books (as uploaded to Bookworm) is the ability to look at what’s happening in real-world ebook production. Today I’m examining file size, which is...
View ArticleWhat’s in an identifier?
ePub books are supposed to have a unique identifier: the Dublin Core identifier found in the OPF file. Unfortunately, the ePub spec doesn’t have any mechanism to enforce the uniqueness of the ID, so we...
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Vertical text in ePub/CSS: not there yet
Languages aren’t just written right-to-left or left-to-right, of course. They can also be written top-to-bottom, as in Chinese. How can you indicate that a block of text should be rendered vertically...
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Languages in real-world ePubs
We were curious about the distribution of languages for ePubs on Bookworm (Ibis Reader doesn’t yet have enough titles to be representative yet.) The following information is derived from the...
View ArticleBookworm: an online ePub reader
To coincide with the first launch of ePub books by a major publisher, I’m happy to announce the open beta of Bookworm, a web-based reader for the ePub ebook format. Unlike most other ePub readers,...
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Bookworm mobile screenshots / OSCON
I’ll be in Portland, OR this weekend for the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, talking with people about future directions for Bookworm and other threepress projects. If you’ll be there and would like...
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Bookworm feature updates: sorting and pagination
It is now possible to re-sort books in your library by title, first author or creation date, and to re-order those in ascending or descending order: If the number of books in your library exceeds 20,...
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Recent posts to the O’Reilly TOC blog
On the O’Reilly Tools of Change blog recently: Processing the deep backlist at the New York Times, a report from OSCON Optimizing web content for the Kindle, using Bookworm screenshots The latter is...
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Bookworm feature update: remember where I left off
Bookworm will now remember and display the last-read chapter of each book, allowing you to jump right to where you finished reading. This feature applies to both the web and mobile versions of the...
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Bookworm library integration with Google Books Search
On September 22nd Google Books announced its expanded Google Book Search API, which includes the ability to preview and search Google Books content from other web sites. Bookworm now has integration...
View ArticleHow good are your ePubs?
Most of my work in maintaining the Bookworm ePub reader is keeping up with all of the variations of the format that people try to upload. There are some consistent problems that I’m seeing “out in...
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New release of Bookworm: improved user experience and public content
Bookworm’s public home page (the one you see if you’re not logged in) has a new look. This is just one of many changes in the largest update since the site launched in July 2008. Much more public...
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Bookworm now has full-text search and DTBook support
ePubs added to Bookworm are now fully searchable. When you add a book to your library, its text is automatically scanned and indexed in the correct language. You can search across all of your books...
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Bookworm in NISO Information Standards Quarterly
I was very pleased to be able to write an article for the Fall 2008 issue of NISO ISQ (volume 20, no. 4). The full text of the article is only available to NISO members, but here’s a quick excerpt:...
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Bookworm Mobile + Stanza integration
Bookworm Mobile now takes advantage of the Stanza linking protocol. When viewing Bookworm on your iPhone, “Read in Stanza” links now appear on the library list and at the bottom of each book page....
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Stanza integration has tripled Bookworm’s traffic
This graph compares books-added-per-day from the period after Stanza integration (in blue), to the same duration immediately preceding it (in green). It’s especially impressive given the holiday dips...
View ArticleOne-question survey for Bookworm users
Bookworm now has an active community of users. I’d like to know what features people are most interested in seeing added to the service. If you are so inclined, please take this very quick one-question...
View ArticleQuick ePub check
If you’re producing ePub files, take the time to ask yourself two simple questions: Are all the files I listed in the OPF file actually in the ePub archive? Are all the files in the archive in the OPF...
View ArticleBookworm survey results
I was disappointed to receive only 10 responses to the recent Bookworm poll, but four of those included thoughtful “other” answers and the response I expected to win did not. The question was: Which...
View ArticleBookworm server move scheduled for Wednesday February 4
There will be some downtime for Bookworm as content is migrated to a new server. I don’t have an exact start time but I expect it to begin in the morning and last several hours. More details will be...
View ArticleBookworm is now part of O’Reilly Labs
I’m extremely pleased to announce that the Bookworm project is now part of O’Reilly Labs. Like many software engineers, I learn best by building. Bookworm began as my way to learn the ins and outs of...
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The Tim O’Reilly bump
(Bookworm traffic before and after Tools of Change keynote. More metrics)
View Articledc:identifier in wild ePubs
Here’s some trivia about the use of the required dc:identifier metadata element in ePubs that have been uploaded to Bookworm to date. dc:identifier type Percentage of total None 0.5% UUID 81% ISBN 2.3%...
View ArticleBookworm on MacBreak Weekly
This week Bookworm was featured as part of a great discussion on ePub in the MacBreak Weekly Podcast (it’s the last topic in the podcast). Naturally, Bookworm was down. (It was a brief outage that — ha...
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Readability bookmarklet
I really like the Readability bookmarklet, an experiment in reducing visual clutter while reading online. It works perfectly with Bookworm: "Magic for Beginners" by Kelly Link in Bookworm It works best...
View ArticleGuaranteed Swahili: Bookworm now accepting translations
Over on the O’Reilly Labs blog I’ve posted instructions on how to help translate Bookworm into other languages. I’m excited about this initiative for two reasons: The ePub format is gaining ground...
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Bookworm: Reading Mode
Bookworm now features an alternate user interface for reading online. Reading Mode provides an immersive reading experience by stripping away the site navigation and book table of contents and focusing...
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Is ePub “ugly”?
There’s been some healthy discussion, instigated by Mike Cane, about whether ePub can provide a visually-appealing reading experience. I recommend the related discussion on TeleRead, especially the...
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Was ist Bookworm?
Bookworm is now available in German! Bookworm will switch to your preferred language automatically if it is available, or you can manually set your language by updating your user profile. Thank you to...
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“Tag på rundtur for at se et eksempel på Bookworm i brug”
Bookworm is now available in Danish! Thank you Marie Bilde Rasmussen! For more information on translating Bookworm, see the post on O’Reilly labs or join the Bookworm translators’ list.
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On 4700 lukijoita ja 11100 yksittäisiä nimikkeitä
Finnish joins German, Danish and English as fully-translated languages on Bookworm. Thank you Jussi Träskilä! I can’t say enough how thrilled I am that so many people have kindly volunteered to do this...
View ArticleThreepress at IDPF Digital Book, BEA and BookCampTO
I’ll be talking about Bookworm on Monday, May 11 at the IDPF Digital Book conference. I’m also looking forward to meeting people at Book Expo America later this month (and most especially the BEA...
View ArticleIDPF Digital Book 2009 talk: Open source ePub with Bookworm
Slides and notes from my 15-minute presentation at the IDPF Digital Book 2009 conference: Open-source ePub with Bookworm View more presentations from lizadaly. You can also download the slides as a...
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