Amazon sells eBooks in KF8 format. That is an ePub with some proprietary extras. ePub is a standard based off HTML5. You can read the ePub 3 specification but, basically, it is a .zip of HTML files. If you unzip an eBook, you can read the source code behind it.

When trying to read a Kindle book on a non-Kindle device, I noticed a bug. Some words were not displaying. I took a look at the underlying source code, and found this:

Sometimes words and letters were wrapped with a pagebreak span like this:

<span id="pg5" epub:type="pagebreak">‘But</span> of course!’

When I tried to read the book using KOReader the word "‘But" didn't appear. Why? Let's take a look at the ePub3 specification concerning page breaks:

pagebreak

• A separator denoting the position before which a break occurs between two contiguous pages in a statically paginated version of the content.
• HTML usage context: phrasing and flow content, where the value of the carrying elements title attribute takes precedence over element content for the purposes of representing the pagebreak value

Here's the problem - eBooks can have page numbers. Despite "Page Numbers in eBooks Considered Harmful" lots of publishers still use them. I guess it is kind of useful if you want to refer to something on a printed page - but eReaders allow you to change font size and line spacing, so the concept of a page is somewhat nebulous.

The way the spec is written, means that you can write something like:

<span epub:type="pagebreak" id="page_123_a" title="123">123</span>

You use the id for internal linking and the title attribute for the value.

Because of this, most eReaders do not display the physical page number inside the span. It has no semantic content for the reader, and breaks flow. If they did display it, you might end up reading text like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean vel

9

risus at metus molestie tincidunt. Donec aliquet aliquam lorem, ...

So KOReader deliberately ignores any text which is wrapped with epub:type="pagebreak".

If you look at the example ePubs provided by the International Digital Publishing Forum, you'll see that the majority of their spans are self-closing.

<span epub:type="pagebreak" id="p123-a" title="123"/>

Very occasionally, you see something which has just a page number in it:

<span epub:type="pagebreak" title="169" id="Page_169">169</span>

I checked with KOReader and they confirmed that they were following the spec. I agree with them. There's no reason to wrap readable content in a metadata span like that.

I've checked several other books from different publishers. None of them abuse pagebreaks this way. I think Penguin Random House are doing it wrong and I would like to correct them.

Reporting it

I've previously reported buggy ebooks to vendors. But because the Kindle app doesn't exhibit this problem, I thought it was futile going via Amazon. So I thought I'd try going directly to the publisher.

Sadly, Penguin UK's GitHub repo is dead. Their dedicated digital publishing team haven't tweeted in 2 years.

Their contact page has a suggestion for what to do if there is an error in an eBook:

It is best if you return the book to the original bookshop from which it was purchased; they should be happy to exchange it for a perfect copy. If you have any difficulty with this then please return the cover and title page of the book to us.

Hmmm....

I dropped them an email, and got back this very reasonable reply:

Thank you for reaching out and bringing this to our attention. The distinction you’ve made is already a part of our specification; this was an oversight which we’re looking into as a result of your input—it bypassed checks both because it validates and also passes visual checks on all the major platforms we screen for. This isn’t reflective of our entire library and should be limited to specific titles which we’re currently investigating.

That's fair enough. The rendering quirk is specification compliant - but hard to spot because of the Kindle monoculture.

Change the spec, change the world

I've made a suggestion on GitHub that the spec should be clarified. I don't think it's particularly obvious that content in a pagebreak may not be displayed.

Most resources agree that the content of a pagebreak should either be blank, or be the page number.

If you include the page numbers as text content within a span or div, the pages will be more easily accessible to both sighted users and users using assistive technologies. This method has been employed in previous DAISY standards. The potential downside, however, is that mainstream user agents will not provide equivalent functionality to turn off unwanted content, forcing users to hear and view the page numbers.

Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY)

Whose fault is it anyway?

This is a tricky one. I think Penguin have undoubtedly made a mistake with the way they publish ePubs. But, so far, KOReader is the only rendering engine I've found which suppresses the content of pagebreaks by default.

Generally speaking, a user wouldn't want to display page numbers on an eBook. Software could have a user defined toggle to switch them on or off. Luckily, KOReader has a variety of style-sheets for rendering eBooks - so I picked one which displayed pagebreak content.

Software is hard.

A friend of mine recommended an obscure book, published a couple of years ago. The blurb made it look right up my alley, so I tried to buy it. I only read eBooks, but I couldn't find it anywhere for sale in the UK. Amazon had a listing for a paper copy, but it was permanently out of stock.

In desperation, I went straight to the publisher. They would ship a dead-tree book across the Atlantic to me. With shipping costing even more than the book.

I found someone on Twitter who was posting highlighted screenshots of the book, so I Tweeted him and the publisher to find out where to get a copy. He graciously offered to send me a PDF.

At which point, the publisher waded in - furious at the situation.

How dare you give this away for free? We're a small publisher and we have to sell books to stay in business!

Fair enough. So I asked them where I could buy an eBook version. Their response was disappointing.

It's only available on Proquest and Ebsco. Sorry!

Both of those are academic databases, available on subscription only, with no public pricing available.

So, let's be clear. You don't want people giving it away, but you won't actually sell me a copy?

What do you want me to do? Not read your book?

I took the emailed PDF. I'm not particularly proud of that. The book is good, and I'm enjoying learning from it. I just wish I could have paid for it.

Yesterday, I received this delightful email from the publishers Simon and Schuster.

NEW book by the "Prophet of Silicon Valley", Jaron Lanier, available for your review!

Dear Mr. Vogels,

I'm writing today to let you know of a new book from Simon & Schuster that I think your readers will be interested in — WHO OWNS THE FUTURE? By Jaron Lanier (available 5/7/13).

Jaron Lanier is the bestselling author of You Are Not a Gadget, the father of virtual reality, and one of the most influential thinkers of our time.

[Snip a load of marketing fluff]

I'd like to send you a copy of the book to review.

Well, let's ignore the fact that I am not "Mr Vogels". PR is a hard job and getting people's names right isn't a fundamental part of relationship building.

So, as the book sounded interesting, I asked to be emailed a copy.

I'm happy to send you a hardcover copy. If you might provide a mailing address, I'll put one in the mail today.

As regular readers know, last year I burned all my paper books and switched exclusively to ebooks. I related that fact, and mentioned that it would be much quicker than international shipping - surely a priority if you want advanced reviews.

Unfortunately, I'm not able to send ebooks as review copies at this time. Many thanks for your interest.

So, the "Prophet of Silicon Valley" wants his words stamped on to bits of dead tree, then air shipped at great expense across the Atlantic - as opposed to emailing me a few MB?

How very futuristic.

Don't Copy That Floppy!

I don't know if this is Simon and Schuster police on ebooks - or Jaron Lanier's. Given Jaron's stance on DRM and his publisher's ongoing DRM law-suit it could be either.

What I do know is this:

• Regional release dates are antithetical to the Internet. The UK edition of "Who Owns The Future" went on sale in the UK on 7th March - it goes on sale on May 7 in the US/Canada and May 22 in Australia/NZ
• 1 minute of Googling found an eBook copy, without DRM, nestling on a Russian server. Along with the usual polarity of Magnet links.

It just goes to show, even the most influential futurist, and his publishers, are still struggling with the reality of the Internet and the ongoing eBook revolution.

The book certainly sound very interesting. To quote from the preface:

The very action of reading makes you the hero of the story I am telling. Maybe you bought, or stole, a physical copy, paid to read this on your tablet, or pirated a digital copy off a share site. Whatever the prequel, here you are, living precisely the circumstances described in this book.

If you paid to read this, thank you! This book is a result of living my life as I do, which I hope provides value to you. The hope of this book is that someday we’ll all have more ways to grow wealth as a side effect of living our lives creatively and intelligently, with an eye to doing things of use to others.

If you paid to read, then there has been a one-way transaction, in which you transferred money to someone else.

If you got it for free, there has been a no-way transaction, and any value traded will be off the books, recorded not in any ledger but rather in the informal value systems of reputation, karma, or other wispy forms of barter. That doesn’t mean nothing has happened. Maybe you’ll get some positive strokes over a social network because of what you say about the book. That sort of activity might benefit us both. But it’s a kind of benefit that is unreliable and perishable.

"Who Owns The Future?" is available from all good book stores, as both a hardback or eBook. Jaron Lanier would probably prefer you buy it, but is probably equally wary of your personal details ending up in a mega data warehouse.