Bill McCoy

Bookmark for your browser or ereader? | Anniversary Update

Books On BooksLeave a comment
Book with florentine paper bookmark.
Book with florentine paper bookmark. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Publishing and editorial folk who wish to educate themselves in the changing craft of the book should track this ongoing discussion on the merits of browsers versus apps/devices –even if at times it becomes finely technical.

Books On Books logged several articles on this last year when Jason Pontin declared MIT Technology Review’s colors (decidedly HTML5).  Here is another worth a quick read:   5 Myths About Mobile Web Performance | Blog | Sencha.  A quick read?  Yes, publishers and editors need not be HTML jockeys or Java connoisseurs, but they need to have a business-like grasp of what they are choosing to ride or drink.

Understanding why to publish an ebook through an app or in a browser-friendly format — or both — and what the implications are for crafting finds its rough print analogs in selecting the primary channel and form of  publication (trade or academic, hardback or paperback) as well as  the structure of the work (design, layout and organization) and working out the financial case for deciding whether to publish and how.

Bookmark or Webmark?

Books On BooksLeave a comment

Hugh McGuire’s article in Contents Magazine is a useful recapitulation of the argument for “Books in the Browser,” a concept that has its own conference.   McGuire appears in an outstanding list of speakers for the conference on 24-26 October 2012.  Take a look:

Kat Meyer (O’Reilly Media), Peter Brantley (Internet Archive). Introduction and Welcome.

Craig Mod – Why aren’t you publishing on Facebook?
Brian O’Leary (Magellan Media Partners) – The library within us.

Adam Witwer (O’Reilly Media) – We’ve got the tools. Let’s start using them.
John Maxwell (Simon Fraser Univ.) – The Webby Future of Structured Markup: Not Your Father’s XML.
Laura Dawson (Bowker) – When a book is not a book.

Ricky Wong, Feng Hu (MobNotate) – Enabling Discovery through linking
Hugh McGuire (Pressbooks) – Authoring for Discoverability.
Kassia Krozser (Booksquare) – What Do Readers Want? Books! How Do They Want Them? Every Way Possible!.

Michael Tamblyn (Kobo Books) – /data lessons/
Chris Conley (ACLU) – Digital Books and dotRights.

Anna Lewis (ValoBox) – Books in browsers … what next?
Henrik Berggren (Readmill) – Learnings from a year of building a service for readers.
Peter Collingridge (Enhanced Editions) – Failure is an option.

Stefanie Syman (The Atavist) – The Reader Experience.
Pablo Defendini (Safari Books Online) – Reading on the big screen.

Mary Lou Jepson (Pixel Qi). Overworked Eyes: How can screens be easier on the eyes?

Liza Daly and Keith Fahlgren (Safari Books Online) – The self-publishing book.
Maureen Evans and Blaine Cook (Poeti.ca) – Dear Editor: conversation in an electronic age.

Bill McCoy (IDPF) – Teaching the browser EPUB 3 (and learning on the way).
Havi Hoffman (Mozilla) – PDF in the browser.
Liz Castro (Pgs, Gourds, & Wikis) – Zen* and the art of the modular book.

Nancy Ruenzel (Peachpit Press) – Lessons from the ebook foundry.
Ron Hogan (Beatrice) – Beatrice: My foray into self-publishing.
Kate Pullinger (author) – Having My Cake.

Matt MacInnis (Inkling) – The Death of the Ten Dollar Text File
Masaaki Hagino (Voyager Japan) – Enhancement of the Book.
Ron Martinez (Aerbook) – Books in Clouds.

Adam Hyde (FLOSS Manuals) – Social Book Production.
Tobias Green (Playlab London) – The Written World.

Matthew Cavnar (Vook) – Across devices.
Miral Sattar (BiblioCrunch) – You’ve picked an authoring plaform. Now what?
Kevin Franco (Enthrill) – Endpaper Engine.