The Art of Electronic Publishing

This book is a complete birdseye view of the World Wide Web, Internet, and the technologies involved in creating electronic publications from them. This book provides you with background information and practical guidance on how to surf, view, and publish material for the Web, as well as on paper. The explosion of activity surrounding the Internet and the World Wide Web requires a sane, non-hyped guide to help you navigate the sometimes treacherous waters.

Ressler, Sandy. Prentice-Hall (2000). Books>Web Design>Publishing>Online

Databases and Textboks (Whether 'Natural Enemies' or Not) Can Become Allies

Textbooks have been a hybrid genre, neither quite narratives or databases, and the longer (700-800 page) textbooks popular in the field of technical communication have therefore faced difficulties integrating online resources to assist students and instructors in tech comm courses. This paper, presented at the 2011 Annual CCCCs, describes one method to use web-based resources to supplement the survey intro to technical communication course.

Sauer, Geoffrey. EServer (2011). Presentations>Publishing>Textbooks>Online

Digital Publishing F5 | Refreshed  

Digital Publishing F5 | Refreshed was produced, designed, and published at an academic conference workshop, Computers and Writing 2003 in West Lafayette, Indiana, by a team of (at least) 30 people. Our goal was to show that scholars and teachers--when they work collaboratively, have the right technology, and diverse experience with digital publishing technologies—can move to the forefront in publishing, not just as writers, but as publishers, production designers, editors, and (even) distributors

Agena, Kate, Karl Stolley and David Blakesley. Parlor Press (2003). Books>Publishing>Online>eBooks

Digitising History: A Guide to Creating Digital Resources from Historical Documents

This guide is intended as a reference work for individuals and organisations involved with, or planning, the computerisation of historical source documents. It aims to recommend good practice and standards that are generic and relevant to a range of data creation situations, from student projects through to large-scale research projects.

Townsend, Sean, Cressida Chappell and Oscar Struijvé. AHDS (1999). Books>Publishing>Online>History

E-Books

E-books are a cost-saving technology for students. Imagine while reading your expensive paper textbook that it suddenly displayed a video that taught you the technique you just read about. Imagine searching through your textbook with the click of a button. Imagine your textbook costing about half of what you used to pay. That’s right—you didn’t read the last line wrong. It was half the amount you used to pay. Imagine all this and more, with e-books. E-books have many advantages over paper textbooks. The best advantage for students would have to be the cost. E-books are sold at very low prices because the whole printing process is out of the picture. This saves money for the publishers and in turn saves money for students.

Nelson, Daniel. Techniques (2003). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

E-Books: Are We Going Paperless?

Will electronic books (e-books) change the experience of reading? Will students soon carry a mobile device in their backpacks instead of a ton of textbooks? Some major university projects at the University of Michigan and at Columbia have already created and distributed electronic versions of textbooks (Epstein, 1999). In addition, Microsoft joined publishing firms and electronic manufacturers to set open technical standards for the electronic book format (Wired News, 1999). So what advantages do e-books offer? Some advantages include convenience and reduced storage space. Anywhere from 10 to 250 textbooks or novels can be held on the device, depending on the e-book model, so you can have a portion of your library with you. In addition, users can annotate, highlight, bookmark, and publish their own content on the e-book. By removing the need for paper, the cost of books should decrease and also decrease environmental damage. Another advantage of the e-book is accessibility. Those with visual impairments can increase the font size to improve readability.

Selvidge, Paula and C. Phillips. Usability News (2000). Articles>Usability>Publishing>eBooks

E-Books: It's About Evolution, Not Revolution

This article is a general update about the state of the art and business of e-books. With the dampening of some of the dot.com hype the e-book picture is actually becoming more sensible. There is still a lot of change happening and no one knows where we might end up, but some solid work is being done both on the technology and on the business side. What isn't quite happening yet, and what I look forward to, is a re-definition of "book" to include things that didn't really fit into the hard copy world, such as the publication of individual essays (of any length), stories, poems, novellas, etc., and even possibly a return to serialized works. Put your thinking caps on, folks, there are great possibilities!

Coyle, Karen. Library Journal (2003). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

The eBook Advantage: Writing and Publishing Electronic Books  

Hall, the author of three eBooks, explains how technical writers can earn extra income by writing and publishing their own electronic books.

Hall, Ceil W. Intercom (2002). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

eBook Italia Dossier: Il Libro Elettronico e L'editoria Digitale Umanistica in Italia

Il primo dossier italiano sul libro elettronico, annualmente aggiornato (versione 3, 1 settembre 2003). In parallelo, eBook Italia Forum, convegno virtuale sull'editoria elettronica, in collaborazione con 365 Giorni in Fiera (Fiera Internazionale del Libro di Torino).

Reale, Luigi M. Italianistica Online (2001). (Italian) Articles>Publishing>eBooks>Italy

eBooks: A Battle for Standards

After a decade, however, my initial enthusiasm over eBooks has waned considerably. Rather than looking forward to a new title as it becomes available, I immediately ask which format the title is available in, question how I can best access the title (which operating system, using which eBook reading application), scheme about how best to convert it to a more convenient format, and then eventually give up caring. Certainly, eBooks still hold a great deal of unrealized promise.

Cesarini, Paul. TWI (2003). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

Electronic Scientific, Technical, and Medical Journal Publishing and Its Implications: Report of a Symposium

A report on the STC (Scientific, Technical and Medical) publishing enterprise as it exists today.

National Academies Press (2004). Books>Publishing>Scientific Communication>Technical Writing

ePub: Nouveau Format Pour de la Documentation Technique  

Le nouveau format ePub destiné à l’origine pour les ebooks est-il adaptable à de la documentation technique ? Nous allons essayer de répondre mais avant cela, voyons à quoi ressemble ce nouveau format!

Docster.info (2010). (French) Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

Formats for Electronic Books

In the publishing sector, e-books have been the hottest topic at least since 2009, even if multimedia has now come to be included under the keyword "enhanced e-books". In the USA, sales figures show that electronic books are picking up steadily. Technical documentation, too, is a field that is exploring the possibilities offered by e-books. "Technical" e-books are not sold, to be sure, as they are in the case of the conventional publishing industry, but the "tradition" of online help has been around for quite some time in this domain. E-books and their file formats thus extend the spectrum of the already existing formats.

Welsch, Ursula and Uwe Matrisch. TC World (2011). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

Is B2B the Real Market for E-Books?

You might not realize it yet, but there’s an unexpected change occurring in the digital publishing space. We can’t help but notice it ourselves—many of our new clients aren’t who you’d suspect. In fact, they aren’t even publishers, in the traditional sense. They are business-to-business (B2B) corporations of all sorts, and they’re asking us to help them make their content available via e-books.

Ganesan, Dev. Publishing Perspectives (2009). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

Online Flipping: Examination of the Digital FlipViewer

This article examines the usability of FlipViewer software for digital FlipBooks. The FlipViewer software allows users to read online documents in a three-dimensional e-book format simulates a paper document. Participants performed 11 tasks with a FlipBook and their performance was evaluated. Some tasks were difficult for participants to complete, however, participants were satisfied overall with their experience using FlipViewer® and 100% indicated that they would recommend the product to others.

Hull, Spring S. Usability News (2005). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

Open eBook Forum

The Open eBook Forum (OeBF) is the leading international trade and standards organization for the electronic publishing industry. Our members consist of hardware and software companies publishers, accessibility advocates, authors, users of electronic books, and related organizations whose common goals are to establish specifications and standards and to advance the competitiveness of the electronic publishing industry. The Forum's work will foster the development of applications and products that will benefit creators of content, makers of reading systems and consumers.

OeB (2003). Organizations>Information Design>Publishing>eBooks

Seven Things You Should Know About E-Readers

E-readers are portable, low-power, high-resolution devices that display digital versions of written material from books, magazines, newspapers, and other printed sources. They typically use e-ink, a display technology designed to simulate printed paper that offers similar resolution as newsprint and, relative to an LCD screen, eliminates glare and reduces eyestrain. Digital texts can be updated easily and often include advanced features such as annotation, hyperlinking, cross-linking, saved views, interactive quizzes for individual study, analyses, and shared commentary. E-readers are changing the economics of text-based intellectual property, including educational materials, and a move to digital texts would have broad implications both for the traditional campus bookstore and for an institution’s library.

Educause (2010). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

The Soundproof Book: Exploration of Rights Conflict and Access to Commercial EBooks for People with Disabilities

This document will lay out the heated rights controversy concerning the use of synthetic speech -- Text-To-Speech (TTS) as it relates to the use of eBook publications by persons with disabilities.

Kerscher, George and Jim Fruchterman. OeB (2002). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

The Struggle for Book Access: Amazon

The Kindle2 is a hot topic in the disability field right now. Many print-disabled people (people who are blind, severely dyslexic or a have a physical disability that keeps them from reading regular print books) see electronic books as a dream come true. But, it's a dream that the commercial ebook vendors keep dashing.

Fruchterman, Jim. Benetech (2009). Articles>Publishing>Accessibility>eBooks

Survey on Electronic Book Features  

While people may not want a radical departure from the paper book, they want to do things with electronic books that are not possible with paper books. For example, they want to 'personalize' their electronic book reading experience by changing the fonts, typefaces, and margins, moving illustrations and tables around the page, sizing images differently than text, and so on. In effect, people want to manage the presentation of information within the electronic book. This raises an issue because not only do people want to manage presentation, they want to add content to electronic books they purchased. For example, they may read a related article and want to add that content to the book. Adding content should not be viewed as simply creating an annotation or note but adding content that becomes part of the book and incorporated into the table of contents and index.

Henke, Harold. OeB (2002). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks