An apple a day, is keeping foreign language ePubs away!

Apple as of August 2010 supports English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese and Swedish. 

Don’t see your language listed? As of March 2011, the iBookstore does not support the following languages-

Persian, Old (ca.600-400 B.C.), Persian, Samaritan Aramaic, Amharic, Arabic, Official Aramaic (700-300 BCE), Imperial Aramaic (700-300 BCE), Burmese, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Arabic, Central Khmer, Lao, Mon-Khmer.

Just because the iBookstore does not support the above mentioned languages, doesn’t mean that iBooks itself does not support them. iBooks renders exceptional foreign language support in ePub 2 and ePub 3. Japanese looks great being displayed vertically and rendered in a right to left orientation. Arabic flows right to left. Chinese characters are flawless using the ruby tag. 

Confused? Me too. This raises another big red flag in the market. How are publishers to sell books in foreign languages to Apple users?

AEL Data has devised a solution that will enable you as a publisher to reach out to Apple users with foreign language content without selling the books via iBookstore. 

“I don’t understand the reasoning behind Apple’s thought process in regards to not supporting foreign language in the iBookstore. Nevertheless, we are always there to provide solutions to our publishers to cope with such market anomalies,” says Mohammed Sadiq, V.P of AEL. 

The solution. Foreign language eBooks can be sold online via the web in the form of ePub 2 and ePub 3 and accompanied with a mobile app customized for individual publishers. In other words, the ebooks will be made available on an eCommerce platform and the purchases being made online through a credit card or a payment gateway. The customized reader app will be available for free on the iTunes store and once downloaded and installed on the local device memory, it is ready for use. The reader boasts of a “Cloud Sync” option with a local bookshelf which will be made available offline as well. Once the purchase is completed on the web, there is an option to sync the web account with the reader and Voila! the ePubs are now made available on the reader. On the iPad, or the iPhone.

Presently, the reader offered by AEL is called the “Lektz” reader and is available for free on the Apple App store as well as Google Play store. Lektz is being used to make AEL’s process more consistent along the way, but Sadiq confirms that the SaaS model will be available to clients. 

Visit us next week for an in-depth analysis of the Lektz reader. 

To know more about the solution visit www.aeldata.com or contact us at info@aeldata.com.

64TH Frankfurt Book Fair - AEL Data

The Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF) is the most largest, significant and innovative event for book publishing industry across the world. Through its world-wide reputation it draws attention of large publishing giants to small and medium scale publishers.  With over 7,000 exhibitors and nearly 300,000 visitors every year FBF has its own flair in the literary world.  We can find over 400,000 titles being promoted and sold in FBF and technical service providers launching and promoting new digital products to address the digital publishing needs in the industry. Book publishers and creative service partners related to book publishing industry will be present in FBF on October 10th to 14th.


AEL Data is happy to be a part of FBF 2012 and hope to receive a good quality response for its digital line of services and solutions this year similar to years before. AEL Data provides end to end epublishing solutions and services to publishing industry and this year we are launching our XML first workflow and complete technological eBusiness solutions for publishers at the fair.

Our Sr. Vice President Dr. M.S.Mohammed Sadiq says “For AEL Data, FBF has always been one of the successful events every yea, we expect the same success and response for our digital services and solutions this year too! To fix an appointment or to meet us in person, drop a visit to our stall at Hall 4.0, B1327”

About AEL Data:
 AEL Data specializes in digitization, ePublishing and the design and development of software solutions for web and mobile platforms. We leverage our deep understanding of publishing and education industries – their needs, trends, competitive environments, customers and stakeholders – to offer customized solutions and services. Through the years of working with various clients across the globe our R&D team has come up with business critical products for publishing and education such as Lektz – DRM with eBook reader and LearningClix – SaaS bases LMS respectively. To learn more visit: www.aeldata.com

Fixed Layout eBook Format

What is a fixed layout?

Fixed layout means that the content is fixed in the “page” of the reading application (e reader or a reading app). Fixed can mean specific to an area on a single page, either side of the layout (left or right), or even fixed in terms of screen resolution.

Fixed layouts work best for books in which the layout adds value to the content that would otherwise be lost in a dynamic/ reflowable format.

Well suited examples for fixed layouts are -

• Children’s books
• Graphic novels 
• Manga
• Coffee table books
• Scientific, technical, and medical textbooks
• Complex table-based math content

Fixed layouts are not suited for all reading devices. Smaller screens are too small for readers to comprehend the full context and value of fixed layout. In other words, you will not be able to tell a fixed layout from a reflowable epub if you are looking at it on a phone or on screen sizes smaller than the original document itself.

There are four major fixed layouts in the market currently – Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo, although these major vendors do not all follow the same format. In response to this device and format wars, the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) released the EPUB 3 Fixed layout specification on March 13, 2012.

Every other vendor save for Amazon, based their fixed layouts on XHTML. There are similarities between all the fixed layouts although the standardization process is still not clear because EPUB 3 specs contain HTML 5 and CSS 3. This mark-up language will not be stable till 2014, so you get the idea.
Visit us next week for an inside take on Apple’s Fixed layout format and its supported features.