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?
Scott Roche
1 year ago
Indeed. As we’re new in the e-pub field we’re trying to figure out what should be/is “required” and what should be enhancements. I’d totally agree with you when it comes to error-free text, a dynamic table of contents and linked notes (where applicable). The rest (indented ‘graphs and curly quotes) seem more like layout decisions. By huge gaps I assume you mean more than just a couple of line breaks?
Elizabeth
1 year ago
Yes, exactly. Some more like 3-4 lines.
I think that an author includes bibliographies, footnotes, indices probably did it for a reason. To just ignore it because it’s in digital is cheating the reader, the author, and the text.
Tweets that mention Let’s define “enhanced” ebooks. | B10 Mediaworx -- Topsy.com
1 year ago
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Scott Roche, Moriah Jovan and Flying Island Press, Sebastian Posth. Sebastian Posth said: @MoriahJovan: Let's define "enhanced" ebooks. http://snurl.com/10khb2 <– Wrong. Just DO the Standard, concentrate on real Enhancement ASAP [...]
Flagship » Expectations
1 year ago
[...] by a post by Elizabeth at b10mediaworx.com on “Enhanced” e-books, I thought I’d ask you, our cherished readers, what you [...]
Philippe
1 year ago
And after the enhanced e-book becomes a truly enhanced experience there is the opportunity, or should I say challenge, of placing it in an enhanced context so it can really fly. I always find it such a missed opportunity to see a really good enhance book, I am specifically referring to books that have obvious IP exploitation opportunities, which simply stop at publishing that book. It might be worth reading this blog on the subject (http://www.grinlock.com/controllers/controller.page.php?action=page_redirect&pg_id=47)