Creating (And Commissioning) Ebooks
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Creating (and Commissioning) Ebooks Alix Keener, Digital Production Assistant, MPublishing [email protected] Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 •Materials available at http://www.lib.umich.edu/digital- publishing-production/creating-and-commissioning-ebooks •You may log in if you wish to follow along, or sit back and relax! •We’ll be doing a simple conversion later on, using the material I’ve posted at that link Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Before we begin.. • Do those who are interested have…. • An EPUB reader? (try: http://ibisreader.com/. Making an account is fast and easy.) • A smartphone? Try downloading an ereader app such as Aldiko, or opening up Ibis Reader on your mobile browser • …or, look on with a neighbor Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Overview •Different ebook formats and standards •Free online ebook tools •Online conversion tools: for smaller scale projects and personal use •EPUB conversion guidelines: for larger scale projects. How to send your material out for conversion by vendors. Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 What is an ebook? Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 The Growth of Ebooks •As of this year, ebook sales now outpace print book sales •There are literally millions of free ebooks available for download •A vast ebook collection can be carried in your pocket on an ereading device or tablet, or accessible from any of your devices via a cloud, e.g. Google Books or iBooks •Tablet use is beginning to outpace dedicated ereader use (such as the Kindle) Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 How do you make an ebook? Starting from a physical book Scanned page images PDF + OCR Starting from born-digital text (.doc, .indd, .html, Reflowable ebook format .xml, .txt, .pdf, etc.) (EPUB, Mobi, HTML, etc.) Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Ebook Formats There are more than 30 ebook formats described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats Big players include: • PDF (.pdf) • Developed by Adobe systems • Originally intended to reproduce the fixed appearance of a printed page; still typically used for this purpose • Readable on many devices and platforms • Good for texts that are too complex for EPUB—images, graphs, equations • Kindle (.azw, Mobi, .prc, K8) • .azw: Proprietary ebook format used by Amazon. • Based on the open Mobipocket format. • Reflowable text • EPUB • Reflowable text format • Open standard used by many devices. • Works by combining common formats like .html and .zip in specified ways Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 What is EPUB? •EPUB is a free, open ebook standard for digital publishing developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum (http://idpf.org) designed for reflowable content. •Many publishers and vendors offer EPUB for sale or free download (Google Books, Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, Barnes & Noble…) • Many devices and apps read it (Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, iBook, other mobile apps, web browsers with appropriate plug-ins….) •A package of resources that can be read by an EPUB reader in order to render its contents. Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 A Note About EPUB3 •The latest release •Released October, 2011 •Addresses several issues with previous releases: •Better at displaying texts with precise layouts and images, such as comic books •Now supports more technical publications, such as those with mathematical equations •Better navigation: linking within the publication Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 EPUB Overview • EPUB is a renamed .zip file containing XML and XHTML files (and some other files, like images), that point to one another in standard ways. • Anyone who understands the structure can create or edit EPUB—no proprietary tools or software are required. Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Free Ebooks Online http://www.gutenberg.org Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 EPUBReader plug-in for Firefox Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Inside the Zipped Folder Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Under the Hood of EPUB An typical EPUB file contains the following subdirectories and files: • mimetype - tells software that tries to open the file what it is • META-INF directory • contains the container.xml file, which tells the ereader software where to find the book content. • “1661” (Gutenberg’s identifier, in this case): location for the book’s content. It contains: •Content.opf - XML file that serves as a manifest, or list, of what’s here • toc.ncx –table of contents that allows navigation through the book •.html files – actual content of your book! •Cover.jpg—the cover image Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 META-INFContainer.xml Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 The Content! Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Content.opf Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 The Content! Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 The Anatomy of EPUB: Putting it All Together Mimetype hey, this is epub! META-INF/container.xml Aha! I need to go to OEBPS/content.opf OEBPS/content.opf Everything here? Good! Let’s read! Ereader software toc.ncx *.html images/*.jpg Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Online Conversion For small-scale projects, or for fun! Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Tools to convert Many free tools automatically create EPUB from other file formats OxGarage [http://www.tei-c.org/ege-webclient/] 2EPUB [http://www.2epub.com/] Calibre [http://calibre-ebook.com/] PDF2EPUB [http://www.pdf2epub.com/] …and many more! Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Try it out! •Go to http://www.lib.umich.edu/digital-publishing-production/creating-and- commissioning-ebooks and click “sample”, then save to your machine. •Unzip the folder to get at the sherlock.html file •Go to http://www.2epub.com or http://www.tei-c.org/ege-webclient •Upload one (or both) sample files and click “Convert Files to EPUB” •Save the EPUB to your machine. Download the .zip file to look at what’s inside •Compare the results between both conversion tools •Bonus: Try editing the Word document and then converting to EPUB. How does editing the Table of Contents change the structure of the EPUB? Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Results: from html Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Results: from .doc Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Plugging into an ereader •Go to http://ibisreader.com, or an ereader of your choosing •Make an account if necessary •Click “Add Book” then choose your new EPUBs •Open them up and take a look! •If you have a smartphone, go to the Ibis Reader site on your mobile browser and check the books out •Also try other mobile apps, such as Aldiko for Android Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Plugging into an ereader Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Plugging into an ereader Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 EPUB Conversion Guidelines Large-scale projects http://wiki.publishing.umich.edu/EPUB_Conversion_Guidelines Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Vendors •Check with Procurement Services (http://www.finance.umich.edu/procurement) to find out whether the university has any vendors capable of producing EPUBs in their list of approved vendors (for which competitive bidding is not required). •Among the many vendors who can create EPUBs are: •Bibliovault: a scholarly book repository launched by the University of Chicago Press; converts PDFs to reflowable formats, including EPUB •Ingram Digital/Core Source: digitization and conversion services, including EPUB •Digital Divide Data: converts from common digital publishing formats such as PDF, Quark, InDesign, into EPUB or Kindle formats; they also can scan paper to digital, including cradle-scanning of fragile or rare material Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 What vendors expect from you •Vendors will accept any number of source files (PDF, .doc, .html, etc.) •Determine the complexity of the text you wish to convert. •Text with images, tables, diagrams, and columns will be more costly and time-consuming to convert. •Prices will vary depending on the file format , number of images, number of pages, etc. Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Before you pay: quality check •About a four-week turnaround, depending on when it is needed, how much you are willing to pay, and contract negotiation. •Scanning from paper will take additional time, and you may want to proof/review the resulting tiffs or PDFs before they are, in turn, converted to EPUB. Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Quality Check (QC) •View them the way a user would: open them in ADE, page through to make sure there are no conversion errors, botched images, etc.; view them on an e-reader and/or Internet browser. Software for QC’ing EPUBs on a computer include: •Adobe Digital Editions (Windows, Mac OS X) •Aldiko (Android) •Calibre (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux) •EPUBReader (Mozilla Firefox add-on) •Google Books/Google Play (Web, Android) •iBook (iOS) Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Questions? Comments? Discussion? You will receive an email with a link to the evaluation. Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 Further questions? [email protected] Questions about copyright? [email protected] Enriching Scholarship | May 10, 2012 .