Arthur nails it. One of the many concerns I have for small and medium sized publishers is that they will simply lose the technical ability to service large parts of the market should that market start to demand more than just straight forward text:

But for publishers, these possibilities extend the technical skill level required to create market-wowing products. EPUB 3.0 has great bells and important whistles, but you’re going to need actual software-development skills in-house to use them properly. In other words, ebooks just took a big step towards becoming software, rather than elaborate text files.

This is huge for publishing businesses, many of whom are only beginning to get their teams’ heads around reflowable text. Add the need to cost for a software development process to compete in, say, the college market, and you’ve got instant editorial heart failure.

via New EPUB spec gives tech companies the edge | Arthur Attwell.

Sure that’s an alarmist perspective but it’s one worth planning to avoid!

Eoin