Zak Mensah: Self-publishing in Education

Self-publishing in Education

A fine mess hosted by Zak Mensah@zakmensah

Arlis | UK & Ireland Art Libraries SocietyConference 2013

...living in a world where libraries were already stuffed with hundreds of thousands of decaying novels that would never again be read

Reamde (Stephenson, Neal) Location 4183-4184 | Sunday 20 January 13 09:48:59

Self-publishing in education

The digital book can be created by anybody in your institution. We must learn about self-publishing and the 'Post-Artifact' publishing ecosystem, in order to provide the support that students and staff need.

We'll explore what is involved in self-publishing and what the library can do to help the future book within an institution evolve.

2007

2010

The past

• Ancient past

• 2007 Kindle

• 2010 iPad and ibooks store

• Apps for reading

There are prerequisites for us to reach what we desire as we pursue better circumstances and new inventions.

For instance, in order to invent something like the printing press, we must first invent language and an alphabet, produce paper and ink, master metallurgy to cast letters, and construct a winemaking press.

There had to be many contributions and breakthroughs before I could sit down and write this book.

The Shape of Design (Frank Chimero) - Location 392-393 added on Thursday, 27 December 12 09:17:17

ereaders won't catch on'

ereaders won't catch on'

Engineers brought Bill Gates an ereader prototype in 1998 – but he dismissed it because it didn’t look like Windows.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/9374751/Bill-Gates-ereaders-wont-catch-on.html

Classic publishing

http://craigmod.com/journal/post_artifact/

The advantages of printed books have been underrated, while the advantages of e-books have been overrated.

Nicholas Carr

http://www.roughtype.com/?p=2296

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/book%20sniffing

Preservation

Many libraries exist not only to provide access to content, but also to look after that content for the future;

Current status

• Poor user experiences

• Low adoption

• Copying and pasting

• Availability (#copies in use)

• Range of books on offer

10 Reasons Why Students Aren’t Using eTextbooks

The books they need aren’t available in digital format

They are not as affordable as you might think

You can’t lend or resell most e-textbooks

It feels strange to mark up an e-book

e-Textbooks are heavy, too

10 Reasons Why Students Aren’t Using eTextbooks

There are better digital options available

Today’s students grew up with books

E-books offer a different experience

Finding e-textbooks is a scavenger hunt

Students expect more from digital editions

http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2012/06/10-reasons-why-students-arent-using-etextbooks/

It is easy to foresee a future in which books have ceased to be the primary medium for transmitting ideas and information; in some areas, that time is already here.

p.175: Pearson, D Books as history. The British Library, 2008.

Education uses

Text books (ebooks textbooks)

Course supplement

Promotional books e.g. prospectus

Course handbooks

Workbooks

Reading lists

Reference book

Monograph

Research e.g. journals

Collecting themed work e.g. blog posts

Investigating epub files

As part on my work on the PublishOER project I have spent some time investigating ePub files, looking at how they are put together etc. and whether there is anything we can do with existing files.

http://www.medev.ac.uk/blog/oer-phase-3-blog/2012/jun/29/investigating-epub-files/

In Post-Artifact Books and Publishing Craig Mod writes:

The way books are written has changed.

The canvas for books has changed.

The post-published life of a book has changed.

Book discovery

Doug told me on the train about the $100 start-up.

I ordered a print copy(misplaced my kindle...

Read it, tweeted ithttps://twitter.com/jukesie/statuses/341802615664963584

https://twitter.com/chrisguillebeau/statuses/340974857560944641

Kate asked to borrow it

so did Mikehttps://twitter.com/MrJ1971/statuses/340810347390857216

https://twitter.com/dajbelshaw/statuses/340758701478658048

Self-publishing

• Kickstarter

• Crowd-funding

• Print on Demand

JISC Monograph

1. Rich full-text semantic search tools for scholarly ebook collections.

2. Tools for generating or traversing highly-specific stable citations.

3. Development of a pilot to produce student theses with high-engagement linked-data content.

4. Plugins or add-ons to provide simple, ebook output for popular word processing tools.

5. Improved workflows for authoring attractive, accessible, standards-based mathematical notation in ebooks.

1. Development of an ereading system with an emphasis on scholarly annotation and research-gathering.

2. Provisions to train and share scholars interested in digital publishing

3. Aggregate ebook services for authors and university presses.

4. Maximize use of orphan works5. Community resources for institutions with

digital collections

The Digital Monograph Technical Landscape study

digital publishing technology is trivial. Ebooks are tiny digital files, mostly composed in HTML. People buy them from websites that accept credit cards. This is some of the most ubiquitously understood tech today

Liz Daly

David Hopkins stats

Title: QR Codes in Education

http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/books/qr-codes-in-education/

Available from: Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, Smashwords (incl. Nook & Sony platforms)

David Hopkins stats

Launched on

Amazon & Kobo: June 1

Smashwords, Nook,

Sony: June 4

iTunes: June 19

David Hopkins stats

Sales figures to date (July 10):

Amazon - 43

iTunes - 7

Smashwords - 3

Kobo - 0

Nook (via Smashwords) - 1

Sony (via Smashwords) - 0

To use a pyromaniac analogy, publishers are accelerants, not sparks

APE: Author, Publisher, entrepreneur - How to publish a Book (Kawasaki, Guy, Welsh, Shawn) Location 425 - 426 added sunday 10 march 13 20:34:38

epub workflowPre checks

See what styles the book uses and note them

Use a PDF or Indesign to begin with to produce native epub and kindle files.

Upzip epub

Open Terminal

cd Documents/ePub/name-of-folder-containing-epub ENTER then upzip name of .epub

reverse to zip

cd Documents/ePub/name-of-folder-containing-epub ENTER then zip name of .epub

Typical epub contents

META-INF (folder)

container.xml

mimetype (simple text file that is used in all epubs so can be reused for all books)

OEBPS (folder - Open eBook Publication Structure)

content.opf (Holds meta infomration about the book and list of the individual files that make up its contents)

fonts (folder)

images(folder)

template.css

toc.ncx (used by ereaders to generate the navigational table of contents)

chapter01.html

chapter02.html

etc

Cover

560x865

To force Adobe Digital Editions to use the whole image for its icon, add style="max-width: 100%" to img tag in cover.html - from Liz p114

Test

As many devices as possible

epub check http://code.google.com/p/epubcheck/

epub preflight

* QED standard http://qed.digitalbookworld.com/ (13 point test on all major devices)

Styles

Chapter headings

Section headings

Emphasis and strong text- em, strong

Numbered and unnumbered lists

Hyperlinks both internal to the document and external to the web

Inline images (by dragging and dropping)

A cover page with an image

All available metadata

Tables

Multimedia

Validation

Open Terminal

CD Documents/ePub

Then

sh epubcheck.sh which runs the below. Change the sh for each book.

java -jar epubcheck (tab) name of epub

java -jar epubcheck-3.0b5/epubcheck-3.0b5.jar designisajob/designisajob.epub

https://leanpub.com/authors

www.apple.com/ibooks-author

Our responses

Technical

EPUB 2/3http://github.readium.org

EPUB Samples

code.google.com/p/epub-samples/

Kindle previewer

Readers will support some aspects of a file format but not all

100 Things

http://www.zakmensah.co.uk/2012/06/26/directory-of-ebook-resources-in-education/

OU Innovating Pedagogy 2012

“ the real benefits will come from new forms of teaching and learning through dynamic and shared books ”

Potential impact: high

Dynamic books

Sharing

Interpretations

Assessemnt

Possible

• Abridged versions

• Highlights

• Social features

• Search

• Multimedia

• Pull live data into charts, graphs etc

• Co-creation

• Sharing

Crowd funding

Keep creative control

Only make a profit when you do (5% kickstarter)

Example of students self-publishing

Hayley Atkinson, Uni of Leeds, former librarian

Students making their own books with her help... library staff MUST learn to make ebooks to assist students

Defacing...annotating

Issue

How can students annotate an ebook on their kindle, institution tool, computer.....

I may recall laughing at that passage when John McPhee, say, writes of Florida orange groves planted on a ridge of “soaring” elevation, but I may not recall how high exactly that elevation soared. Which diminishes the joke (right?), and hence the remembered pleasure. But by gods, I know exactly how to find out. I don’t have to find the carton or bookshelf containing that one damned (but damned fine) book, which I shall then have to obsessively re-read (highlighting or not) on a Saturday afternoon when I should be reading at least fifteen other things. And no, I don’t have to run to the computer and connect to the damned Web, either. I just open the e-book and search my notes to find out (again laughing to myself): the ridge soars “two hundred and forty feet into the sub-tropical sky.”

Momentum is the most important aspect of starting

The Shape of Design (Frank Chimero)

Location 325-326 | added on Wednesday, 26 December 12 09:47:02