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StartWithXML: Why and How
Andrew Savikas
September 12, 2008
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XML-related sessions and tutorials have proven quite popular at our annual TOC Conference, and recent developments including the introduction of the Kindle, the iPhone 3G, and the IDPF's EPUB standard have made understanding XML more important than ever for smart publishers.
But to get the most from an XML workflow, it must be seen as much more than just a tool or a technology: there are serious organizational and cultural issues that are in many ways even more challenging than the technology itself. To better understand these issues and to help publishers deal with them, we've teamed up with the Idea Logical Company on a project we're calling "StartWithXML: Why and How."
StartWithXML is an effort to understand and spread the knowledge publishers need to move forward with XML. It's about the business issues driving the "why" of XML in publishing and the technical and organizational issues, strategies, and tactics underlying the "how" of getting started. The project includes:
- An open online survey meant to capture a broad overview of the issues surrounding XML for publishers.
- A one-day forum scheduled for Jan. 13, 2009 at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in New York. Through panels and presentations, you'll spend the morning understanding the "why" of XML, and the afternoon learning about "how" to move forward. (Space is limited, so save your seat now.)
- A research report that will include background info, case studies, best practices, technology and vendor profiles, and interviews discussing the factors that make a "StartWithXML" workflow both useful and tricky.
- An online conversation, including a blog, an open comments area for you to weigh in on the report's outline while it's in progress, and a general discussion forum (built out as a group within the new TOC Community).
Idea Logical CEO Mike Shatzkin is detailing the project at today's annual meeting of the Book Industry Study Group, which is providing support for the project and forum. Mike will be blogging on the StartWithXML website, alongside Brian O'Leary, Ted Hill, and Laura Dawson, who are all participating in the research behind the project.
We're trying to cast a wide net with the survey, so even if you're not currently doing much with XML, we want your input.
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News Roundup: Sony Reader Arrives in UK, Google Scanning Newspaper Archives, Blanket Copyright Licenses vs Fair Use
Mac Slocum
September 12, 2008
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UK Reaction to Sony Reader Release
Sara Lloyd discusses the impact of the Sony Reader's recent release in the United Kingdom:
Anecdotally, Waterstones store staff report a great deal of interest from customers, and the rumour mills (or well-planned leak??) put a 6 figure number on the Sony Readers sold by the morning of Thursday 4th September.
As I'm sure all of those working in the digital publishing departments of trade publishing houses will agree, it's nice finally to have a major high street bookselling brand pitch itself into the ebook ring so wholeheartedly - and the Sony device is the most compelling (and competitively priced) there is of the dedicated devices so far available here in the UK. I must say it did make my heart leap just a little bit to see huge POS displays promoting the Sony Reader and the associated ebook catalogue from Waterstones in the Tottenham Court Road and Picadilly branches, and it was fun to go in and do some underground detective work to discover that the Waterstones staff seemed quite clued up about it all. (Continue reading)
Google Scanning Newspaper Archives
Google is extending its scanning efforts to newspaper archives. From the New York Times:
Under the expanded program, Google will shoulder the cost of digitizing newspaper archives, much as the company does with its book-scanning project. Google angered some book publishers because it had failed to seek permission to scan books that were protected by copyrights. It will obtain permission from newspaper publishers before scanning their archives.
Google ... will place advertisements alongside search results, and share the revenue from those ads with newspaper publishers. (Continue reading)
Colleges Weigh Blanket Copyright Licenses vs Fair Use Rights
The Copyright Clearance Center is extending its offer of blanket licenses to larger universities. In a 2007 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), some school administrators expressed concern about the implicit waiver of fair use assertions:
But some librarians are ambivalent about blanket licenses, Mr. Rehbach [Jeffrey R. Rehbach, the library-policy adviser at Middlebury College] says, because they fear that colleges will pay for copyright licenses instead of asserting their rights under fair-use doctrine. "We debate back and forth whether this is the best model for us," he says. "As we move toward more licensed products, are we giving up basic rights under the law?"
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TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
September 11, 2008
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Digital Newspapers and Digital History (Adam Hodgkin, Exact Editions)
A Kindle for books, a Plastic Logic napkin for newspapers, and no doubt an iMag reader of some kind for magazines. That way lies madness. Google have a better plan [to] try to deliver everything through a web browser. That should work in the direction of universal access. I hope Plastic Logic realise that their device needs to run a standard web browser before they commit everything to a Kindle-like proprietary device.
I Am Trying To Believe (that Rock Stars aren't Dead) (Jim Stogdill, O'Reilly Radar)
... "sell records" was not some complex business model come down from on high. I can't help but think that if there was an equally effective replacement someone would have thought of it by now. That's not to say I don't think new and better music distribution and monetization models won't be invented, I just don't think they will capture and concentrate as much value as the one that is dying before our eyes did. I suspect the balance between linear (touring) and leverage (selling stuff while you sit at home) has simply and irrevocably shifted toward the linear.
A unified field theory of publishing in the networked era (Bob Stein, if:book)
Reading and writing have always been social activities, but that fact tends to be obscured by the medium of print. We grew up with images of the solitary reader curled up in a chair or under a tree and the writer alone in his garret. The most important thing my colleagues and I have learned during our experiments with networked books over the past few years is that as discourse moves off the page onto the network, the social aspects are revealed in sometimes startling clarity. These exchanges move from background to foreground, a transition that has dramatic implications.
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[TOC Directory] Recent Additions
Mac Slocum
September 10, 2008
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18 new listings have been added to the TOC Directory in the last week, including:
Visit the TOC Directory to add your own listings and events.
Join the TOC Online Community
Andrew Savikas
September 10, 2008
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If you've been to the TOC Web site lately, you might have noticed the link up top labeled "Community." We recently did a quiet launch of a social networking site built with Ning. It's meant to provide additional ways to communicate and connect with other folks facing the same challenges around the future of publishing and paid content.
In addition to standard features like Forums and Member Profiles, there are also Groups -- public and private spaces for conversations on specific topics. You can also upload photos and videos, as well as "friend" fellow community members.
When you sign up, you also get your very own blog (we'll be featuring posts from members here on the TOC blog).
I'm thrilled to say that there's already a small but impressive membership list, including Peter Brantley, Joe Wikert, David Rothman, Mike Shatzkin, Laura Dawson, Michael Cairns, and of course Tim O'Reilly. There will be a lot of opportunities for discussion in advance of the 2009 TOC Conference, and we're also cross-posting our "Open Question" blog posts there for additional feedback.
Like any Web community, it's a work-in-progress, but we'd love to have you join the conversation. For the time being, we're moderating new signups to minimize spam. Also note that during signup, you're asked for your age and gender -- these questions are part of the Ning registration, and aren't seen by me or anyone else in the community unless you choose to share them.
What Does Esquire's E Ink Cover Mean for Print Publishing?
Mac Slocum
September 10, 2008
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I've been noodling on the implications of Esquire's E Ink cover (video available here), and for the life of me I can't see how this is anything more than a small change in a mature technology. It's on par with terrestrial radio's embrace of HD Radio and the music industry's attempts at super-high-fidelity discs (SACD and DVD-A).
Esquire deserves credit for experimenting with E Ink, and I certainly think E Ink itself has a variety of uses (Kindle and Sony Reader owners would agree). But the merging of E Ink displays and traditional print formats garners the same level of interest as National Geographic's hologram covers: neat idea ... nice execution ... but beyond the publicity and potential newsstand sales, what's the long-term point?
Future E Ink screens are projected to be ultra-light, interactive and updateable via Web connections (the Kindle offers a variation on this), but millions of consumers already own mobile devices with the same functionality. Even if these features come to pass, why would I purchase a print-digital hybrid or a separate digital-only device when I have easy access to content on a device I already own?
Bolting digital elements onto an analog medium may yield new ideas -- and there's value in that -- but there's something to be said for adaptation within a format. Radio has survived by adapting its content. Television, newspapers and magazines are in the midst of their own adaptations, and what these formats become will be influenced by the content they deliver, not the technological add-ons they incorporate. E Ink may someday emerge as a vital aspect of print material, but only when it furthers the essential elements of storytelling, information delivery and clear consumer value.
What's your take? Do you see opportunities in the merging of E Ink and print material? Please share your thoughts in the comments area.
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Maintaining a Web Community is as Hard as Building One
Mac Slocum
September 9, 2008
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Finding the balance between the content you take from users and the value you give back is tricky business, especially since "value" and "money" are rarely synonymous in the user-generated space. Yelp, a volunteer-driven hub of local business and restaurant reviews, is one community that seems to have struck the right chord with its most active members. From the New York Times:
Yelp identifies its most consistently praised, prolific and witty reviewers as members of the "Yelp Elite Squad." The company says it looks for those possessing "a certain je ne sais quoi -- we call it Yelpitude." I find that it saves time to read the reviews submitted by the Elite Squad and ignore the rest.
Singling out the best and the brighting contributors in the early days of a community is putting the cart before the horse. You need critical mass -- or a route toward critical mass -- before the natural audience strata appear. Nonetheless, it's smart to develop a notoriety plan in the off chance you catch lightning in a bottle. This could be a complicated mechanism like Yelp's Elite Squad or Slashdot's moderation system, or it could be driven by organic relationships between community moderators and promising users.
Note: Some community systems associate coy user types with users who've met certain thresholds -- i.e. post 100 comments and become a vaunted "Senior Member." Auto-generated user types have a degree of value, but a true notoriety initiative requires a lot more effort.
Even with adequate notoriety tools, the most successful communities still suffer from turnover and diminished interest among key users. When I developed my first few communities I mistakenly assumed that once the audience was in place, the natural organization within the community would replace my development efforts. But that's not how it works. Most members have a lifecycle within a community -- it's a linear progression with an endpoint, not a constant user pattern. It's important to acknowledge this natural line and counter inevitable user drift with ongoing user development.
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Open Question: Do You Re-Read Books?
Mac Slocum
September 8, 2008
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Proponents on both sides of the ebook debate point to the archival/re-read nature of their chosen format, but I'm curious to see if re-reading is a common activity or one of those things we'd all like to do but can't find the time. Here's a few questions toward that end:
- Do you re-read books?
- If yes, how often? (i.e. You re-read 1-2 titles per year.)
- Which titles or genres do you re-read?
- Does a book's format -- print or digital -- make you more or less inclined to re-read a title?
Please share your thoughts in the comments area.
News Roundup: Digging Around Amazon's Topaz Format, Twitter Novels, June Ebook Sales Up 87% Over '07
Mac Slocum
September 5, 2008
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Digging Around Amazon's Topaz File Format
Late Night Code is popping the hood on Topaz, that mysterious "other" file format used on the Kindle:
Mobipocket files purchased from Amazon have an AZW extension (which presumably stands for Amazon Whispernet - the name of the Kindle wireless download service). Mobipocket files from other sources will have a MOBI or PRC extension. Topaz files will have an AZW1 extension if downloaded directly to the Kindle, and a TPZ extension if downloaded from Your Media Library on Amazon.com.
ReadWriteWeb has a brief survey of mini serialized novels in the U.S.:
In Japan, mobile phone novels called "keitai shousetsu" have become so successful that they accounted for half of the ten best-selling novels in 2007. Here in the Western world several would-be novelists are attempting to use Twitter to create the same phenomenon. Some of the novels tweeted so far have been interesting and engaging, but others, sadly, appear to be abandoned. Will micro-format fiction ever take off here as it did in Japan?
June '08 Ebook Sales Up 87% Over June '07
Wholesale trade ebook sales accounted for $4.9 million in June '08, according to industry stats from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). This is an 87 percent increase over June '07. Year-to-date ebook sales are up 43 percent over last year.
Note: The AAP/IDPF stats aggregate information from 12-15 trade publishers and reflect wholesale sales figures in the U.S.
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TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
September 4, 2008
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Create Digital First (Martyn Daniels, Brave New World)
Today we are the start of a digital consumer offer but it is in the main based on yesterday's physical cost model, processes and perceptions. Merely taking the finished book and generating a digital rendition that mirrors the physical one is what music did with CDs. Is it logical to merely replicate the book and create just another rendition? We don't envisage the same demand change as music experienced in selling just fragments (tracks), but it is possible to see the selling of installments or part works, where all the complete 'book' may not be bought.
(Via the Reading 2.0 list)
The Elements of a Perfect eReading Device (Dear Author)
I think that there is a technological gap between what readers would like in the perfect ereader and what can actually be done. If you don't like LCD screens, then you are limited by refresh rates and the inability of eink technology to actually perform some multi function device programs. If you don't like to be limited by refresh rates, want a backlight, and ability to play video, browse the web, and even do a lot of typing (or editing of manuscripts), then eInk devices aren't for you.
(Via Electric Alphabet)
Google Chrome is Bad for Writers & Bloggers (Edward Champion, Edward Champion's Reluctant Habits)
Anyone who uses Chrome will technically own the copyright, but who needs copyright when the Chrome user effectively gives up her right to distribute this content in all perpetuity and without royalties? So if Joyce Carol Oates is using Chrome and types an email to someone, she "owns" the copyright. But Google has the right to use anything that Ms. Oates types into Chrome for any purpose. Google responds. (Via Jose Alonso Furtado's Twitter stream)
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Levels of Quality and Revenue Streams
Mac Slocum
September 3, 2008
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In a New York Times piece looking at a new batch of Web shows, Mike Hale writes:
Oddly enough, waiting through the commercials at the beginning of each snippet didn't bother me. I could have avoided them by going to YouTube, but the lower video quality and ugly viewing environment there -- still insulting after all these years -- made the ads at the CBS site seem palatable.
Last month, experts at the RBC Capital conference said advertisers were still wary of associating their brands with user-generated videos, but there's a demand for professional content. From News.com:
Video ad executives said that while YouTube has a lot of inventory that's hard to monetize, sites with professional content such as Hulu.com don't have enough inventory to serve demand from brand advertisers.
Consumers are also interested in professionally produced material. A 2007 report (pdf) from the Pew Internet and American Life Project found:
Overall, 62% of online video viewers say that their favorite videos are those that are "professionally produced," while 19% of online video viewers express a preference for content "produced by amateurs." Another 11% say they enjoy both professionally-produced video and amateur online video equally.
Connecting the dots, it seems there's an opportunity for publishers to link ad-based revenue streams, levels of download quality, and audience experience. For example:
- A studio could post low-fi versions of its Web shows to YouTube, social networks and other Web destinations. The free videos would include branding and links to higher-quality versions of the same material on different sites. These low-quality videos would act as a brand campaign for the show, reaching out across a broad base of users to increase awareness and (hopefully) motivate a percentage of the viewing audience to access the high-quality videos. This is the same technique TV networks use when they advertise upcoming shows during popular broadcasts (e.g. anyone watching Fox lately knows the network is hedging its bets on "Fringe.").
- High-quality downloads would be available through a studio's own site or through upper-tier services like Hulu. These videos would include pre- and post-roll advertising from sponsors. If the show proves successful, studios could take a note from Joss Whedon's recent Web effort, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and sell related downloads, soundtracks and merchandise.
This process extends to other media areas. On the print side, publishers could push basic material out to a wide audience through Scribd and other text-centric services, while also driving a percentage of the audience toward high-quality digital and print editions available through established retail channels (Web-based and otherwise). Earlier this year, Trent Reznor employed a similar tiered strategy with the Nine Inch Nails album "Ghosts I-IV" and the results were positive.
I realize this is back-of-the-envelope analysis, but this emerging mix of low-fi brand building and consumer/advertiser demand for professional-level content bodes well for publishers experimenting with digital delivery.
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[TOC Directory] Recent Additions
Mac Slocum
September 2, 2008
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20 new listings have been added to the TOC Directory in the last week, including:
Visit the TOC Directory to add your own listings and events.
Web Analytics Primer for Publishers
Mac Slocum
September 2, 2008
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Web content allows for a level of tracking and analysis unseen in other forms of media, but I get the sense some publishers are a little hazy when it comes to the established analytic measurements. This primer touches on the main measures I've used in my own efforts, but it is not exhaustive. I encourage other analytics folks to chime in with their thoughts and techniques in the comments area.
A few notes before we get into it:
- Note #1: If you check stats religiously and you're a whiz with your analytics tools, this post will be elementary and quite dull. You're better off perusing the excellent conversations at Webmaster World.
- Note #2: The term "hits" was outdated in 1999. I won't be using it here and I implore you to avoid this word -- and anyone using it within a Web traffic context -- at all costs.
With that out of the way, let's dive in ...
Visits -- When you access a specific Web site, that counts as one visit. If you leave and return, that usually counts as a second visit. I say "usually" because most analytics tools use a timer. For example: If you leave and return to a site running Google Analytics within 30 minutes, one visit is logged. But if you return after 30 minutes, a second visit is added to the tally.
- Caveat -- "Visits" should not be equated with "people." Even with a timer in place, it's possible for a single person to rack up multiple visits to your site.
- Recommendation -- Track visits over a period of months, not weeks. Long stretches will reveal the overall growth of your site and your audience.
Unique Visitors -- Unique visitors represent individual visitors to your site (in theory). This is an important metric because it gives you a sense of your audience size.
- Caveat -- Analytics tools rely on cookies to track unique visits, but cookies can be deleted or rejected by the user. There's also no way to differentiate between people using the same Web browser. Public terminals, lab computers and family PCs will all register as single users.
- Recommendation -- Limits on privacy (a good thing) and technology (not so good) prevent analytics tools from achieving the 1:1 visitor tracking utopia. For the foreseeable future, the unique visitors metric offers the best approximation of audience size. Just make sure bosses and advertisers understand the limits.
Page Views -- A page view represents a single view of a single page under a certain Web domain. If you click to another site and then click back to the original site, you'll log another page view. If you refresh the page you're viewing, another page view will be counted.
- Caveat -- A single visitor can log dozens of page views, especially if they've got an itchy refresh finger.
- Recommendation -- Page view figures should be used for general analysis. Their real value comes from the manual parsing of page view data. Close examination will reveal popular pages and topics, which can help guide future editorial efforts.
Pages Per Visit -- The Web's built-in context makes it possible to attract visitors with one piece of content, then present them with additional material on the same site through related links, embedded links, recommendations, etc. A high pages per visit average (3+ pages is quite good) means visitors are interacting with your content. A low average means visitors are viewing one page and quickly moving on to other sites.
- Caveat -- Want to see how the pages per visit average can be manipulated? Visit any major media site and look for the photo galleries. Placing a single photo on a single page and then encouraging users to click the "Next" button is an easy way to boost the pages per visit number. Pages per visit is also influenced by traffic spikes. If you receive an inbound link from a popular recommendation site (Slashdot, Digg), you'll likely see a huge increase in page views but a dramatic drop in pages per visit. Most visitors from these sites look at one piece of content and then move on to the next popular destination.
- Recommendation -- Like most analytics measurements, the pages per visit average should be examined over multi-month stretches. Traffic spikes should be disregarded -- not ignored outright, just disregarded in this case. If you see the average go up by a full page over the course of 3-6 months, you're doing something right.
Average Time on Site -- The more time users spend on your site, the more you can assume they're engaged with your content and your brand ... and your sponsors' brands. Given the hyperactive nature of Web browsing, holding visitor attention for a full minute or more is considered a success.
- Caveat -- As the Google Analytics FAQ notes, some visitors leave unattended browser windows open. Analytics tools make no distinction between an engaged viewer and a distracted viewer with messy browsing habits.
- Recommendation -- Analysis over a multi-month period is the best use for this measurement (sound familiar?). Consistent growth = good. Consistent decrease = bad.
Again, this primer is the tip of the analytics iceberg. There are many related topics worth further discussion and inquiry, including search engine optimization and Web advertising models.
There's an interesting shift that's also worth monitoring. Some publishers are looking beyond site-based statistics to gauge their overall reach across social networks, recommendation engines, RSS, mobile applications and other distributed platforms. Douglas McLennan, the founder and editor of ArtsJournal, touched on this topic in a recent interview:
I've come to the realization that ArtsJournal is not just a Web site anymore. Only 25 percent of our users ever come to the Web site, the rest get it through newsletters. We have 35,000 newsletter subscribers. Others get ArtsJournal through "newsbeats" that we provide on other Web sites. Some people get ArtsJournal through RSS feeds. In the course of an average day, there are 45,000 to 50,000 visitors -- people who use Artsjournal every day. The unique visitors per month is probably 250,000. We probably get 500,000 to 600,000 visits a month and a few million page views. So ArtsJournal is not huge by the scale of large Web sites, but it's substantial.
We may eventually see Q scores -- or a variation on that concept -- integrated into future analytics toolsets.
Related Stories:
- Google Analytics FAQ
- About.com: "Web Analytics Basics: Learn to Measure Your Web Site"
- Avinash Kaushik: "Data Quality Sucks, Let's Just Get Over It"
- Matt Belkin: "Unique Visitors or Visits - which metric should you use?"
- Joe Wikert: "The Booksquare on ePublishing"
- TOC DVD: "Search Engine Optimization for Book Publishers"
- Digital Experiments and Useful Analytics Must Go Hand-in-Hand
News Roundup: Amazon Acquires Shelfari, Hyper-Local Author Events, The Myth of the Level Digital Playing Field
Mac Slocum
August 29, 2008
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Amazon is turning its investment in Shelfari, a book-centric social network, into a full acquisition, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Financial details haven't been released, but Shelfari CEO Josh Hug confirmed the acquisition on Shelfari's blog:
We've got some big plans ahead. With more resources and Amazon's expertise in building a platform where people come to share ideas, there are a lot of new opportunities in the future that will benefit each of you. In the meantime, you'll continue to have access to the great community and tools that you've always known and used on the site. (Continue reading)
BookTour and IndieBound Make Author Events Hyper-Local
BookTour, which provides author-generated pages and a listing of author tour events, has integrated their database with IndieBound. This is an interesting model, which obviously could expand in its breadth. From the BookTour blog:
... the trouble is neighborhood bookstores are all different (that's what makes them great). That made it hard to dump all their data into our hoppers in one go ...
Now, throughout BookTour, events taking place at IndieBound-represented bookstores will be added automatically to our database. Equally important, on both author and venue pages, when an event is taking place at an IndieBound-repped store, you'll have the option to purchase the book directly from that store.
The Myth of the Level Digital Playing Field
In response to Kassia Krozser's post about authors and electronic publishing rights, Joe Wikert notes that the sources of digital content influence discoverability:
One of the myths of the e-publishing world is that all books are on a level playing field, so you'll sell just as many with publisher X as you will with publisher Y. This simply isn't true, at least not in most cases. This is very similar to the complicated world of Google search results. Just because you love chocolate and you launched a website all about chocolate doesn't mean you'll immediately climb to the top of the Google results for a search on "chocolate."
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How To Read O'Reilly EPUB eBooks on your iPhone with Stanza
Andrew Savikas
August 29, 2008
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Since we released 30 of our books as ebook bundles (including EPUB, PDF, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket format) as a pilot program, a steady stream of customers has been asking how to view them on their iPhone.
The quickest and easiest way is to use the BookWorm EPUB reader, which has a slick iPhone interface; however, that still requires you be online to read your books. We are actively exploring several options for deploying standalone iPhone Apps (Houghton recently did the same with several reference titles, like the American Heritage Dictionary), but in the meantime some recent updates to the Stanza iPhone App mean it's now possible to transfer your O'Reilly EPUB ebooks to your iPhone for offline reading.
This post will show you how I did it on a MacBook Pro with an iPhone 3G. My attempts to do the same with Windows were unsuccessful, and I haven't tried it with an iPod Touch. As always, your mileage may vary. These instructions assume you've purchased at least one O'Reilly EPUB ebook, and saved it to your Mac, and that your Mac and iPhone are on the same wireless network (alternatives described on the Stanza site).
- Install the Stanza iPhone App and the Stanza Desktop Reader.
- From the Desktop Reader, open one of your EPUB books
- From the Desktop Reader, choose Tools→Enable Sharing
- Again, make sure both your iPhone and Mac are on the same wireless network
- Fire up the Stanza iPhone App, which should bring up the main Library screen:
- Choose "Shared Books," which should display the EPUB book you have open on your Mac:
- Next, select the book you want to download to your iPhone. Once it's finished downloading, the icon will change from the green down-arrow to the blue right-arrow as shown above. You can now read your book on your iPhone, offline or on. Here's a screenshot from the iPhone Missing Manual:
There's more info on the Stanza website, but a few things to note about reading these on the iPhone:
- A lot of the formatting isn't (yet) supported by Stanza, including lists and tables. The text appears, but without bullets or clear indentation.
- Images, on the other hand, look great
- Searching only operates on the current section
- Internal and external hyperlinks are not active
There will continue to be improvements among iPhone-based ebook readers, and I expect to see even more experimentation and innovation around turning book content into actual applications. (And if you do manage to get this working on Windows, let me know in the comments.)
On a related note, the response to our ebook pilot has been quite positive, and we're working hard to get many, many more O'Reilly books available very soon as full ebook bundles (in the meantime, remember that if you buy the PDF version or print-plus-PDF bundle, you'll get all of the ebook versions as a free update as soon as they're available).
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