International Digital Publishing Forum: The Trade and Standards Organization for the Digital Publishing Industry

IDPF Executive Director Bill McCoy has published an opinion piece on digitalbookworld.com, sharing his perspective about the significant benefits of the combination of IDPF with W3C for the future of EPUB and book publishing.

The Pantone Color of the Year for 2017 was announced last month as "Greenery, symbolic of new beginnings". This struck a chord with me as the coming year promises to be a new beginning for our community which came together in 1999 as the Open EBook Forum (OEBF) to develop open standards for digital books, reinvented itself in 2005 with a broader remit when it became the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), and then found mainstream success with the development of the key EPUB standard. While I know a number of IDPF members and others in the publishing community have expressed concern at the prospect of IDPF no longer being a standalone organization, I also know that many of you share my excitement and optimism. By joining forces with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), we will continue to expand and accelerate the convergence of EPUB and the Open Web Platform in service of our mission to foster the global adoption of an open, accessible, and interoperable digital publishing ecosystem that enables innovation.

As part of work towards implementing the plan to combine IDPF with W3C, proposed initial charters have been drafted for the anticipated new W3C Publishing Business Group and W3C EPUB 3 Community Group.

The member organizations of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) have overwhelmingly approved, by a margin of 71 (88%) in favor to 10 (12%) opposed, a plan proposed by the IDPF Board of Directors to combine IDPF with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The plan will now proceed, with anticipated completion of the combination by January, 2017 still subject to finalization of the necessary definitive agreements. 85 votes were cast (including 4 abstentions), equating to 65% of the 130 IDPF members in good standing. This represented the highest percentage of IDPF members participating in any vote or election in the last 8 years, significantly exceeding the 25% quorum requirement.

Web Inventor and W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee shares vision of Publishing on the Web in his keynote address at IDPF DigiCon at BEA 2016 

Now Available: A Library of Opportunity

Open eBooks is now available to millions of students offering unprecedented access to thousands of digital books.

What if we could ensure that every student, no matter where they live or the income of their parents, could get access to a great book?  What if they had access to not just one book, but a library of thousands of titles – and could read them from anywhere?