Go Books has been a solid success: 134 books by a dozen publishers and over 40 authors, containing over 70,000 diagrams and 8,000 problems, all about the game of Go. However, so far the books have been limited to the Apple ecosystem: iPad, iPhone, and Mac. I’ve gotten requests from many of you on Android and Windows, and I’m sorry I didn’t have a solution for you. For a while, I explored the possibility of creating separate apps for those platforms, but that turned out to be too hard and expensive to create and maintain.
I finally have some good news: I’ve been working on converting Go books to ePub, the standard for digital books, supported on all popular platforms. I’ve been able to bring the main dynamic elements from the Go Books app to ePub format: interactive replay of diagrams as well as interactive solving of problems. ePub reading apps differ in how well they support this; reading apps not supporting JavaScript will simply display diagrams as static images.
While ePub can’t offer all the features of the Go Books app, it has other advantages:
- Platform-agnostic: You can move to different platforms without losing your investment in books.
- Future-proof: ePubs will continue to work even if the Go Books app and gobooks.com were to wither away at some point. Future devices are very likely to support ePub.
- User-friendly: You can choose ePub readers that already support your favorite features, instead of begging me to add those to the app.
That said, to implement interactive books, I’m using parts of ePub that not all readers support, and even those that do support JavaScript and SVG are often buggy. Please let the authors of these ePub reading apps know about any issues you run into.
The following are the apps that have been working best for me; please let me know about other apps that can handle these ePubs.
Here are three Go book samples converted to ePub:
- The Games of Fujisawa Shuko by John Power
- 200 Endgame Problems by Shirae Haruhiko 7 dan
- The Monkey Jump by Richard Hunter
Questions? Some answers below; let me know what else you’re wondering about.
Will all books be available as ePub?
My goal is to get all the publishers onboard. Most books for sure; can’t promise every book at this point.
How will this work?
You’ll buy the book directly on the gobooks.com website (as you can already do now), and in addition to reading the book in the Go Books app, you’ll have the option of downloading an ePub file of the book. You can then read that in your ePub reader of choice.
Will the ePubs include DRM?
No, the ePubs won’t be encumbered by DRM (Digital Rights Management). DRM would reduce your choice of ePub reader and add unnecessary complications. We trust you to respect that the ePub file is for your personal use only.
What about books I’ve already bought?
You’ll be able to download ePub files for the books you’ve previously bought (assuming you’ve associated them with your email), so you can enjoy those books again on a different device.
Will the Go Books app go away?
No, the Go Books app will still be able to deliver better layout, better features, and better integration than an ePub. The Go Books app will still remain the best way to read about Go, and the iPad is still the device I’d recommend for anyone who wants to study Go — not just for Go Books, but also for SmartGo Kifu.
Will the ePubs be updated over time?
Yes, as I find ways to support new features or improve existing features, or simply fix typos, the ePub files will be updated. I plan to provide an email notification when your books get a significant update, so you can download the newest version. For example, inline diagrams won’t be supported in the initial version, but I hope to add that in the future.
What about multi-lingual books?
In the Go Books app, you can switch the language of a multi-lingual book on the fly. I have not found a good way to support that in ePub; instead, you’ll download a separate ePub for each language.
When will this be available?
It will be available when it’s ready. (Sorry, I’ve been burned too often by giving even vague dates.) There are still corner-cases to work out, server code to write, websites to update, and agreements to ink, so definitely not 2018.
Meanwhile, please try out the ePubs above with different reading apps on your devices, and provide feedback to me and to the app authors.
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