2011 ATE Conference Panel Session

Not Your Father's Textbook: Ebooks and Self-Publishing

Mike Qaissaunee &

Gordon F Snyder Jr

2011 ATE Conference

What does the future look like if we don’t move forward with

technology?

Some History - Kindle• Nov 19, 2007 - Amazon Releases Kindle for

$399

• Amazon Kindle, Year 1: 523,678 e-readers sold (probably)

• February 10, 2009, Amazon announced the Kindle 2

• Amazon announced the Kindle DX on May 6, 2009

• Fire - Android-based tablet with a color touch screen announced on September 28, 2011. It costs $199 and has a 7-inch IPS (in-plane switching) display

More History: Apple Launches iPhone

• January 2007 - Jobs Unveils at MacWorld

• July 2007 - Sales start in US

• November 2007 - 1M sold in US and sales start in France, Germany and UK

• Launches April 10, 2008

• Download programs (Apps) for iPhone and iPod Touch

• Almost 500,000 Apps are available today (~1/3 free)

New iPhone Versions and Devices

Where Are We Going?• The prices of various eReaders are on a downward curve,

ensuring that a significant number of consumers will be able to afford these devices in the near future.

• eReaders encourage paperless reading, thereby curbing the need to cut down trees for making paper. This way, it can be argued, the devices help in the preservation of forests and our environment through the non-use of ink etc. The eco-friendly nature of eReaders will be a key driver in their future growth.

• Government backing of eReaders, particularly in education, will add significant push to their popularity. Former Governor Schwarzenegger’s decision to put all Californian text books online was simply the first move of many in this sector.

[Source: YUDU Media]

File Formats

• Minimally, should support:–PDF–GIF–JPEG–PNG–BMP

– ePub–TXT

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Blurring Lines…..• What is a “book” anyways?• In February, Borders teamed up with a service called

Bookbrewer.– provide a simple service that allows bloggers or anyone else

with an idea to publish what is effectively an e-book and get it distributed through all the major e-book platforms.

– Service allows writers to upload their content — which can be any length — set their own suggested price (within the boundaries set by such e-book retailers as Amazon, Apple, and Borders itself), then publish an e-book in the open ePub format that can be downloaded for the iPad, the Kindle, the Kobo, or any other e-reader.

– Service has two tiers. One costs $89.99 and gives authors an ISBN, the universal book-tracking number used in the publishing industry. The advanced, $199.99 package also gives authors a master ePub file they can share or upload wherever they wish.

Blurring Lines….. continued

• In a similar move, Amazon last year launched its Kindle Singles program, which is also designed for publishing less-than-book-length writing online.– designed for pieces between 10,000 and 30,000 words—or

between 30 and 90 printed pages (about twice the length of an article in The New Yorker or several chapters of a book).

– The company Is looking for submissions from outside the traditional publishing industry, including from —serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians, and publishers."

– IIf you have an Amazon account, you can publish a book. See Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing page.

[Source: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2010/tc20101015_865569.htm]

Big Publishers Shifting (Cengage Learning)Worlds largest publisher/aggregator

-products: reference, e-books. databases, DVI (digital vault initiative), Portals (aggregation of content by topic area)

EvolutionPrint -> Digital Collections -> Online Databases -> Portal Products

Portal Products are curated/refereed articles (by Cengage staff)

Digital Curriculum-Custom curriculum solutions that support schools and districts as they transition to the delivery of more digital content in the classroom.

Most portal content now is text and audio - primarily reference material. Intent is to enhance this with additional multimedia content.

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Discover Education Digital Textbook (Sample Business & Implementation Tech Model)http://www.discoveryeducation.com/administrators/curricular-resources/science-techbook/

Features:•Teacher Resources •Printed Teacher’s Guide •Lesson Plans •5-Minute Preps •Hands-On Activities •Best Practices Videos •Assignment Builder •Assessment Manager •Virtual Lab Teacher’s Guide •Companion DVD •Trainer’s Toolkit •Professional Development

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Student Resources: •Leveled Reading Passages •eBooks with Audio Support •Spanish-Language Reading Passages •Interactive Science Simulations •Hands-On Labs and Activities •Video Library - Video Segments - Full-Length Videos •Interactive Glossary •Assessments - Unit Level - Concept Level - Brief Constructed Response •Take-Home Review •Assignments

Content includes a very wide variety of media types (including mobile)

Some Readers

Amazon Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0051QVESA/ref=sv_kinh_0

Barnes and Noble Nook

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/index.asp

Sony Reader - 3 editions

Cons– Limited collection of titles available

at the Sony bookstore.

Pocket Edition• 5" Full Touch Screen• 12 Dictionaries• Two Week Battery Life• Up to 1,200 Books

Touch Edition• 6" Full Touch Screen• 12 Dictionaries• Audio/MP3 Capability• Up to 50,000 Books

Daily Edition• 7" Full Touch Screen• Wi-Fi and Free 3G• 22 Days Battery Life• Up to 50,000 Books

Kobo eReader Touch Edition

• Kobo is Borders partner• Wi-Fi• $129.99, ships in July• 1000 books, expandable up to

10,000 with 32M SD Card• Books: EPUB and PDF• Documents: PDF• Images: JPEG, GIF, PNG, and

TIFF• Text: TXT, HTML and RTF• Comic Books: CBZ and CBR

iRiver Story HD• first e-reader integrated with the open

Google eBooks platform, through which you can buy and read Google eBooks over Wi-Fi.

• retails for $139.99, is slim and lightweight with a high-resolution E Ink screen and a QWERTY keyboard for easy searching. It includes over-the-air access to hundreds of thousands of Google eBooks for sale and more than 3 million for free.

Apple iPad• 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit

glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology

• 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi)

• Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating

• Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously

• Wi-Fi + Wi-Fi/3G models• 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive• Accelerometer• H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames

per second• Location based services

Apple iPad• Pros

– Portable - smaller than a laptop, with connectivity options that are similar.

– Can use any existing iPhone app. (although this is simply scaled up and can look odd)

– Uses a 1Ghz new Apple chip.– 10 hours of battery life. (very

good versus a laptop, very bad versus a Kindle) H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second

–Apps!!!!!!

• Cons– Cost and ongoing data

plans for ebook reading - up to $830 + monthly 3G.

– Usability (on screen keyboard versus real keyboard) - there’s a dock with a built in keyboard sold separately to negate this.

– Heavier than a Kindle.

The App Economy

Apples Are Not The Only Fruit

A Few Other App Stores

According to Gartner, about 90% of app downloads in 2010 came from Apple's App Store. App Store's main competitors are Android Market, Nokia's Ovi Store, Research in Motion's

App World, Microsoft Marketplace and Samsung Apps.

The “App” EconomyCan an app be a book or..... maybe part of a book..... or maybe

a book can be an app??

App StoresTotal Apple Apps Approved: 629,767Total Available iPhone Apps: 434,252Total Available iPad Apps: 147,758Total Available Mac Apps: 7,610

Source: http://148apps.biz (1/31/11)

Who Buys?• Median age is 33 for mobile media users

• 40% are female

• For mobile games the median age is 31

• 50:50 male:female split

• Average person downloads 21 apps over life of iPhone (free and paid)

• 11 are gamesSoure: Comscore

Most Important Category - Top 25

• Paid apps profit between $12K and $22K per day

• Top 25 free apps will average >20K downloads per day

• 54% of free apps have fewer than 1000 users so they cannot sell ads and don’t make money.

• The average app is used ~30 days

• Puzzle game launched in December 2009 by Rovio Mobile (Finland based)

• Over 12 million copies sold @ 99 cents

• (12 million)*(99 cents) = $11.8 million

• 70:30 split

• Developers: $8.316 million

• Apple: $4.776 million

• Developers have kept game “fresh” with free upgrades.

• Affordable

• Entertaining

• Easy To Use

Opportunities

XNA Development

iOS Development

Android Development

Back to “Books”..... Interactivity

Synch’ing

Why e-books?

EPub Files

• The ePub format is an open standard used in many different devices to display books, newspapers and magazines. This format, unlike PDFs, is designed to flow; that is, content is not laid out on set pages with a set layout. Instead, pages are created by the device dynamically. This is what allows e-readers to change things like font size on the go.

EPub Files

Devices that use ePub files include:

• The iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, via iBooks.• Android devices, via FBreader• The Nook• Sony Readers• The Kobo Reader• Any Windows, Mac or Linux machines, via a number of programs.

Creating EPub Files

Export from word processor:

• Pages• InDesign• OpenOffice (download ePub generator plugin)

Creating EPub FilesCreating from scratch:

• Sigil (can also repair existing ePub files)

• tutorial• eCub• more at http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/free-multiplatform-tools-create-ibooks/

• http://www.lexcycle.com/faq/how_to_create_epub

Creating EPub FilesConverting from another format:

• Calibre

• e.g. Word to ePub

• supports conversion to many formats

• more at http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/calibre-ebook-management-synchronization-software-multi-os/

Creating an iPad e-book

• the iBooks app supports electronic documents in the PDF and EPUB formats

• To get these documents on to your iPad, just drag them to your iTunes library and they’ll be filed under Books in iTunes’ Source list.

• Once they are you can select them for syncing in the Books tab that appears when you connect your iPad to your Mac.

Creating an iPad e-book• three hours to learn the basics of making an ePub

book and put together a basic mockup using features, essays, image galleries and fiction from the site, and then copy to my iPad to test

• Calibre can convert from ePub to the mobi format used on the Kindle

http://shareable.net/blog/i-made-an-ipad-ebook-in-one-weekend-and-you-can-too

How to Publish a Book on Kindle

1. Create an Amazon account. Go to the Amazon site Digital Text Platformhttps://dtp.amazon.com/mn/signin?ie=UTF8&ld=AZEbooksMakeM

2. If you have an Amazon account, you will already be eligible to publish through Amazon's Digital Text Platform.

Read more: How to Publish a Book on Kindle | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_4912995_publish-book-kindle.html#ixzz1ALo3OHer

How to Publish a Book on Kindle

Thoroughly edit the book you want to publish through Kindle.

4. Format your book. You can upload books as:

• Adobe PDF (avoid - formatting issues),

• Word file,

• plain text file or

• HTML document.

How to Publish a Book on Kindle

Upload your book to the Digital Text Platform. using the built-in dashboard (You don't have to publish right away. You can upload a book and it will remain on your bookshelf in draft form until you are ready to publish).

6. Use Amazon's template for writing a blurb for your book, entering author information and book pricing.

How to Publish a Book on Kindle

You can publish your book with the click of a button when you've uploaded your book and filled out all of the information pertaining to the publication. Your book will appear on Amazon within 72 hours.

8. Use the dashboard to keep track of sales and to add more books.

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin

More on Calibre

• free open-source utility

• can convert from a wide variety of formats (CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT) to a not-quite-as-wide variety of formats (EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, SNB, TCR, TXT)

More on Calibre

• can also

• rescale font sizes,

• detect and create chapters and tables of content, and

• grab metadata (title, author, description, and cover image) from the Web.

• Can also use Calibre to sync converted e-books to your connected iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.

Publishing on the iBooks store

https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/wa/apply

Application: select books from the dropdown list

Once you click continue, you'll see instructions/requirements and a link for a list of Apple-approved aggregators

Here's a support document - Best Practices:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4168

Publishing on the iBooks store

Technical Requirements:• An Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.5 or later• At least 1 GB RAM• QuickTime 7.0.3 or later. This is so you can encode

and deliver content using our dedicated software.• At least 10 GB of available hard drive space (more

for larger catalogs) is recommended.• A broadband internet connection with an upload

rate of 128 kbps or faster is recommended.

Publishing on the iBooks store

Content Requirements:• ISBNs for all titles you intend to distribute• Able to deliver book content in EPUB format, passing

EpubCheck 1.0.5.

Publishing on the iBooks store

Financial Requirements:• A U.S. Tax ID. Anyone (including non-U.S. residents) can

obtain a U.S. Tax ID by phone, fax, or mail. If you don't have one, request one from the IRS.

• A valid iTunes Store account, with a credit card on file• Apple does not pay partners until they meet payment

requirements and earning thresholds in each territory. You should consider this before applying to work directly with Apple as you may receive payments faster by working with an Apple-approved aggregator.

Publishing on the iBooks store

Alternatively, use an Apple-approved aggregator.

Loaning a Book

Self Publishing

http://issuu.com/mikedepalma/docs/instructionalmaterials/1

Self Publishing

http://www.blurb.com/

Self Publishing

http://www.lulu.com/index.php

Innovation

http://dotepub.com/

Instapaper Demo

http://www.instapaper.com/

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/05/24/would-you-like-a-49-electronic-college-textbook-with-lifetime-updates/

http://www.businessinsider.com/amanda-hocking-2011-2?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Business+Insider+Select&utm_campaign=BI_Select_022811

http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/03/09/0618234/Crime-Writer-Makes-a-Killing-With-99-Cent-E-Books?from=fb

Issues?

ContactsContacts: Michael T. Qaissaunee, Co-PI ICT Cdnter

Brookdale Community College Lincroft, NJBlog: q-ontech.blogspot.com/ Twitter: twitter.com/mqaissaunee

! Email: [email protected] (732) 224-2879

! Gordon F. Snyder, Jr. Executive Director / PI ! ICT Center@ Springfield Technical Community College

Springfield, MABlog: ictcenter.blogspot.com Twitter: twitter.com/gsnyder Email: [email protected] (413) 539-8900ex