Let’s define “enhanced” ebooks.
I saw a tweet earlier today that I wanted to respond to, but I was in a doctor’s office attempting to ignore the flashing red light on my BlackBerry:
I like the way @MatthewDiener put “enhancements” in quotes, because this is one of my pet peeves: Dynamic tables of contents, linked notes and bibliographies, linked indices are not enhancements. They should be standard operating procedure. (They are in my workflow process, at any rate.) Remember: the end user is the reader, not the distributor. (I’ll talk about chapter-and-versing in a later post.)
But of course, he’s right because apparently, we can’t even get ebooks without huge gaps between the paragraphs, indented paragraphs, curly quotes, and error-free text. So let’s work on that first, shall we?
Metadata in a Word DOC uploaded to Amazon DTP
But if you must…
Go into the Document Properties of Word and fill out all the little blanks in the SUMMARY tab. The Kindle will use whatever’s there to file your book on its shelf. Do you REALLY want to be filed as tmp_cfcaad[...]?
I didn’t think so.
*The best way to get sweet Kindle formatting is to format it (or have it formatted) in MOBI format and upload that to Amazon’s DTP.
Why print will never die
People have called me a print hater because of my Perfect Bookstore/Bookstore of the Future posts.
I don’t hate print.
Print will change. It will evolve. It will not (nor should it) die. Wanna know why print will not die?
That’s the inside. All of it’s done that way, as in, the entire series. What’s better is that book 5 is a workbook-type of thing that encourages the reader to write in it, draw his or her own comics, and generally interact with the characters of Wimpy Kid in a way most children’s/middle-grade books don’t.
There is no way I would have bought this series in digital format.
See, I like paper. I like pretty paper. I like deckle edges and the feel and *gasp* the smell of paper. I like it when a publisher has gone to a lot of trouble to make the book itself an object of art. I want to pet those books and put them on display. I like to buy my favorite authors in hardback (heavily discounted). I like to collect pretty books and display my favorites.
Print will not die.
But brick-and-mortar bookstores in their current incarnation will. There will spring up a new sort of brick-and-mortar bookstore (maybe not even close to the one I think about constantly) that will deal in niche print books, the stuff that can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t be digitized.
Print will not die.
It will become the good china you use for Thanksgiving and the gorgeous cocktail dress you wear to those really important mixers.
As it should.
Our vendor list
As B10 Mediaworx grows and we take on new projects, we require the services of others. Thus, we are now keeping a vendor list of freelancers who have worked with/for us and hope to bring them to the attention of others who need such services.
Thus, I’d like to introduce our vendor list.
Manual metadata insertion
There is a lot of talk about metadata in digital formatting, but occasionally, when creating various formats, the tools one uses has no way to insert the metadata. (Aside: In my experience with various ebook creation tools, Sigil, thus far, has the most complete, complex, and wonderful feature for inserting metadata.)
However, there is a way to do it manually in the XHTML file used to plug into the creation tools. Quite frankly, I’m not sure it translates to any particular e-reading software or devices, but it does leave a record, and recordkeeping is the whole point of metadata.
This is my header:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/ xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
<html xmlns=“http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml”>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=“Content-Type” content=“application/xhtml+xml; charset=utf-8” />
<meta name=“author” content=“AUTHOR NAME” />
<meta name=“title” content=“TITLE” />
<meta name=“copyright” content=“YEAR, AUTHOR” />
<meta name=“description” content=“CATEGORY” “BISAC CODE” />
<meta name=“ISBN” content=“ISBN-13: 978-XXX” “ISBN-13: 0-XXX” />
<meta name=“formatter” content=“B10 Mediaworx” “http://b10mediaworx.com” />
<title>TITLE by Author</title>
[insert other normal header stuff]
</head>
You can add categories at will, and you should.
Going forth into the digital frontier, such information will be crucial, even if any given software or device can’t read it.
And now we’re blogging!
B10 Mediaworx is the scattered brainchild of Elizabeth Beeton. Where it will take her is anybody’s guess, as within its first year, it picked up an imprint, Peculiar Pages, headed up by Eric W Jepson.
No, I (Elizabeth) didn’t have any specific goal in mind when I started out on this project except to publish myself. Yes, yes. It’s true. I am Moriah Jovan. JOvin. Not joVAHN. I hate the name, by the way, but I’ve been going by Mojo/Mojeaux online since 1998, people call me that in real life, and I’m used to it. So I chose a name that would give me the Mo and the jo.
(I wish I’d remembered Jovan Musk cologne before I committed to it, though. I really hate musk. Plus, the packaging is just way too 1970s orange shag rug. Makes me think of swinging. Don’t ask me why. It’s a long story.)
What you need to know now is that Peculiar Pages has always had a vision, while B10 had a vague ambition beyond publishing Moriah Jovan that is now forming into something solid.
Gradually, though, with my continuing involvement in the genre romance community, early encouragement from Eva Gale (romance author), my friendships with Sabrina Darby (romance author) and RJ Keller (women’s fiction author), increasing participation in the Mormon writer scene, with Eric’s friendship and encouragement, along with Tyler Chadwick (poet) and William Morris (brand dude), I am forming up some sort of direction.
I’ll let you know what that is when I figure out how to say it.