HTML5 key for publishers in the digital era

I'm working for a couple of years in the media & publishing world already. One thing that I noticed is the vast amount of effort publisher have to do to get their content into a digital format. Typically authoring tools like Microsoft Word and other desktop publishing suites are being used to create the content. This content is then transformed into formats like DocBook or proprietary formats to drive the print process.

Publishers are in the midst of creating e-book variants of these to provide a digital copy and some even repurpose their content into online databases and dropping the book concept as a container of content.

Safari Books is getting it right

Every now and then you see steps in the right direction in the media and publishing industry. Safari Books Online (O'Reilly and Pearson Education) created a new innovative online product called Safari Flow. The product is simple, smart and personalized with a capital P.

Lower eBook tax rates in 2015?

I'm working for a while now on eBook projects and recently I visited another customer who wanted to start to sell eBooks as well via his online shop.

When I mentioned eBooks have a VAT rate of 21% rather than 6% here in Belgium he was baffled and was wondering how his pricing should look like. Will that make the eBook more expensive than the print book or do reduced production - i.e. printing - cost fill this gap?