E-Publishing Workshop

From XPUB & Lens-Based wiki

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Evening 1

Summary / outline of the three workshop evenings

  1. General introduction to the world of e-publishing
  2. My first Epub and distribution models
  3. Inside an Epub and roundup

Quick working definition of e-publishing

  • e-books, e-journals vs. web sites
  • blogs, social media
  • publishing/long-term access/stability vs. communication/short-term access/instability
  • self-contained files in stable formats vs. distributed content in unstable formats

Summary of e-publishing status quo 2012

World-wide sales figures of Amazon Kindle and other e-book platforms

Electronic magazines and newspapers, quick case study with Libération

  • the bundle:
    • as analogue newspaper: for your coffee table
    • as web site: http://liberation.fr for your computer and old Internet
    • as single file: PDF for your software readers and e-readers devices
    • as software: apps for your Android and iPhone/iPad phones and tablets (TV?)

Today's software industry answers to e-publishing infrastructure

The other side of e-publishing

academic and educational e-publishing

  • Emerald Insight
  • JSTOR
  • EBSCO
  • Proquest
  • Muse
  • Elsevier

Historical comparisons

  • e-publishing vs. DTP revolution in the 1980s,
  • e-publishing vs. mp3 revolution in the 1990s/2000s

Break :)

Electronic book utopias of the 20th century

  • El Lissitzky, 'electro library'
  • Vannevar Bush/Ted Nelson, hypertext (explain the difference to what the web is today)
  • troff & Unix manpages
  • BBS/hacker txt files 1970s-1990s (principia discordia, anarchist cookbook etc.)
  • pirate scene, nfos, display hacks, demos and manymany diskmags

1990s 'interactive multimedia' visions

2000s collaborative/cross-media authoring visions

  • legal: GNU Free Documentation license, Creative Commons, free culture.
  • Platforms and communities: Wiki based books (Wikimedia, FLOSS Manuals)
  • Cross-media technology: SGML/XML, Setext/markdown/pandoc/Asciidoc/Woodwing
  • Print distribution: Print-on-demand, Espresso book machine
  • What to publish: fluidity vs snapshot

2010s commercial breakthrough of e-books

  • Amazon Kindle - why did it work? What does it tell about successful e-publishing? (portability/simplicity vs. multimedia, platform strategy; compare to mp3 & iTunes business model)
  • E-publishing as indie publishing; break-up of traditional book formats

How do electronic documents work

  • executable vs. non-executable formats/apps vs. epub: advantages/disadvantages
  • paginated vs. reflowable content: advantages/disadvantages
  • problems: reader compatibility, business models, DRM, limitations of multimedia integration
  • Status quo of epub design: IT services vs. graphic design, how graphic designers need to rethink

Homework!

  • Download a number of e-pub readers, experiment with reading epubs
  • Download & install epub editors: Jutoh & eCub, try to design a simple e-book with Jutoh