Come out of your cocoon, Digital Publishing Community: The people who are paying for digital formatting largely do not know that EPUB is a file format. To them, epub is a verb, as in, “to epub,” as in “to publish electronically.”
As far as I’m concerned, the people who are paying for the service can call it whatever they want, and usually I can tell from context what they mean. But when I can’t…that’s where things get tricky. The conversation goes like this:
“I’d like you to format an epub file for me.”
*Me trying to figure out if they already have publisher accounts set up with Apple and Kobo, etc.* Do you mean you want me to make an EPUB file for you?”
“Yes. That’s what I said.”
“All right. That’ll be $xxx due on mm/dd/yyyy.”
“Can I upload that to Smashwords?”
O_o “Erm, no. You’d need a Word document for that.”
“Can I upload it to Kindle?”
“No. You’d need a PRC file for that.”
“Okay, whatever. I just want to epub.”
To the large portion of writers, freelance book designers, and other print-oriented people, epub is a verb. TO EPUB. HAVE EPUBBED. WILL EPUB. Conjugate at will. They have no idea what an EPUB file is or what it’s used for.
And they don’t care.
@MoriahJovan @mikecane " how laypersons talk about digital publishing." <==Which is to say, not at all.
— Don Linn (@DonLinn) November 13, 2010
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