Wattpad to Support EPUB Standard

Wattpad, the ebook social network, has announced it will support EPUB, an XML based standard for e-books, controlled by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). Other platforms that support EPUB include the Apple iPhone, the IREX DR1000 eReader, the Sony Reader, Blackberry devices and various Android based smartphones.

We are excited about the support of EPUB, which is quickly becoming the de facto standard for ebooks, says Eva Lau of Wattpad. It opens the door to a whole host of content from writers and publishers. It also paves the way to seamlessly publish our 100,000+ user generated ebooks to third parties.

"It is essential for everyone in the ebook ecosystem to adopt the same standard", said Michael Smith of IDPF. "We welcome Wattpad to the growing list of key players who have embraced the EPUB standard."

EPUB is gaining acceptance among book publishers and writers. Many writers are committed to publishing forthcoming titles in this format, and Wattpad users will be more and more able to upload and read ebooks formatted to EPUB. Additionally, this will allow Wattpad to make available its huge library of ebooks to EPUB capable ebook services and ebook readers within the near future.

According to a recent report, the site has a library of over 100,000 ebooks and gets over 20 Million pages views a month. As of June 2009, there have been 3.1 million downloads from the site, while Amazon Kindle downloads come to 1.5 million. Judging from the data in the report, there are a lot of people reading ebooks on Saturday night; usage typically surges by 10% on weekends, with daily usage peak hours being at bedtime, around the world local time. (Over 50% of Wattpad user arein Asian countries, North American usage is 30%) Not bad for a company started in 2006.