Publishing a Kindle eBook with Amazon.com

My book Digital Teaching In Higher Education, is now available as a Kindle eBook from Amazon. But setting this up was not easy.
Having successfully published paperback, hardback, PDF and ePub eBook versions of my ICT Sustainability and Digital Teaching books, with Lulu.com I thought I was all done. Then I discovered a note from Lulu to say that Australian based books are not published for the Amazon Kindle. So went into Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and started the process.

Content Creation

The KDP process is similar to Lulu. You enter the details of the book (title, author ...). Then upload the content, design a cover, select a price and how you would like the book distributed.

One feature KDP has, which Lulu does not, is spell checking. I was surprised to find 28 spelling errors reported in my manuscript for one book. Some of these were not errors, but were proper names and acronyms, but seven were errors. It is a little embarrassing to misspell "unviersities" (universities) in a book about higher education. ;-) 

Creating the eBook with KDP required some changes to the word-processing document I had used for Lulu. I have the content of each section of the book stored in a separate file as HTML code (the same files are used, unchanged for the web site). These HTML code files are imported into a LibreOffice master document (.ODM). There is one master document with a table of contents which is exported as a PDF file for the hardback, paperback and PDF eBook editions. There is a second master document with the same chapters, but without  a table of contents, for the ePub edition (as ePub has a separate contents file). Lulu does not accept .ODM master documents, so I export it to a normal word-processing document (.ODT) and Lulu converts this to ePub, adding the table of contents.

Table of Contents

KDP does not accept LibreOffice files and when I tried one exported to .DOC, it did not generate a table of contents,page breaks for chapters, or insert images. Exporting to the newer .DOC format produced a better result with the page breaks included, and images, but still no table of contents. The ePub file generated by Lulu also formatted well using KDP, with page breaks and images, but also had no table of contents.

So I modified the .ODM master document to add a table of contents (ToC) and then saved as .DOCX). This ToC less detailed than the table of contents for the printed book. The printed ToC is nine pages long, which would be tedious to scroll through on screen. So the eBook version omits sub-chapters, reducing the ToC to one page. Also I omitted page numbers from the ToC, as Kindle eBooks don't have page numbers.

Next time I revise the ePub ebook, I will have to decide if I include this abbreviated ToC. The ePub ebooks do not normally have the ToC within the text of the document, it is supplied via a separate XML file (in this case that file is generated by Lulu). But I would prefer to have just one master document to generate both the ePub and Kindle eBooks. Also it might be worth using a similar abbreviated table of contents in the print edition (with page numbers) before the full ToC (it can be daunting for the casual reader to see nine pages of contents).

One quirk of the table of contents function in LibreOffice is that I found I had to "update" it each time I opened the ODM document. If I did not do this the links did not work.

Pricing and Distribution Options

KDP Select is an option where your book is made available for rent to subscribers, however this only available if you do not publish the ebook elsewhere. As my ebook is already available trough Lulu, I did not select this option.

KDP Pricing Support offers to help suggest pricing by analyzing the manuscript and comparing it to sales of similar books. However, I could not get this to respond (it is still in Beta.Kindle books are proved with either s 30% or 70% royalty. The details of are complex, but the 70% royalty seems to be for lower priced books (up to US$9.99), mine is US$6.90, so I chose that option.

Print Book Option

After I published my Kindle edition, KDP offered the option of a print edition. As I already have this through Lulu, I did not try the option. 

Author Page

Like Lulu, Amazon.com offer an author page, where I uploaded a photo and bio. Lulu automatically links the books you published, whereas Amazon alsos you to search for others, where you are the author, but not the publisher. Amazon will also display recent posts from your blogs on the page. One troubling aspect is that some third parties are selling some of my books on Amazon for many times the retail price. These are books I have not yet listed on Amazon directly. Hopefully when I have them up myself, this will stop.

Publishing is Slow and Complex

Both Lulu and KDP offer good on-line services for publishing a book. However, with either (or both), this is still a complex, time-consuming and error prone process. Both offer to have some of this work done for you (at a fee). By doing the process myself I appreciate that publishers do earn then fees. ;-)

Print and eBook Compatable PDF Creation using LibreOffice

After discovering that PDF eBooks are popular, I set about creating PDF version of my two currently published books, with minimum of effort. The book chapters are HTML files which are imported into a LibreOffice master document. There are actually two master documents: one for the print edition with a table of contents and one for the ePub edition without. The master document for the print edition is exported as PDF and uploaded to LuLu for printing. The master document for the ePub edition is exported as an ODF Text document (ODT) and uploaded to Lulu for conversion to ePub.

The obvious thing to do was to export the Master document used for ePub as PDF. The conversion worked and there was an index included in the PDF file. However, the reader of a PDF file normally expects there to be a table of contents in the document, emulating a printed work. So I then tried exporting the master document used for the print PDF.

The print PDF document looked fine on screen, but the table of contents was not hypertext linked (unnecessary for the printed edition). The reader may have not realized PDF provides a separate table of contents. So I created a third master document with hypertext linked table of contents. But this would add an addition step and I realized I could simply include hypertext links in the table of contents of the master document intended for printed books. The hypertext links appear dark blue for on screen, so they can be seen. I decided not to include the usual underlining of hypertext links, so when rendered for the printed book, the reader can't see what was a link.
I have now implemented this for:

ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future, and

 

Digital Teaching In Higher Education: Designing E-learning for International Students of Technology.

 

 

There is still a problem with some pages being blank to allow correct pagination for print, which looks odd in an eBook. There are ways to have a PDF reader ignore blank pages, but I have yet to work out how.

 

 

 

Most Successful Self-publishing Sales Channels

After self-publishing my new book "Digital Teaching In Higher Education" I decided to put out a second edition my my preview work "ICT Sustainability". I used Lulu.com for both books. With Lulu it is possible to produce electronic and paper editions of the one work. However, keeping track of changes between multiple formats is error prone and time consuming. Which editions are worthwhile in terms of sales? The answer is: paperback, hardback and PDF eBook. It is not clear if ePub is worth the effort.

For Digital Teaching I have paperback, hardback and Epub (electronic) editions. These all contain the same text. The hardback and paperback editions use the same PDF file for the interior, but have different cover files (as a hardback cover is larger than a paperback). The Epub uses a different interior file which does not have the table of contents (that is generated by the Epub system). I maintain one set of common files with the chapter contents in it, common to all versions, but then have to manually update each version on Lulu with the files. What I would like to do is upload the interior content and then have Lulu generate the paper and electronic editions, but it does not do that.

Previous I produced two electronic editions: Epub and PDF. The PDF edition is only sold by Lulu directly, not through electronic bookseller, who prefer the Epub. I can't just use the paper edition's PDF file for the eBook PDF, so this would require an additional manual step. But is it worth it in terms of sales? I had thought PDF was redundant: who would want PDF when Epub is so much better. But many people think of PDF and are not familiar with Epub.

LuLu provides some summary reports of sales, and also the ability to download details as a spreadsheet for analysis. For one edition, the analysis showed twice as many sales of PDF as Epub ebooks:

Format		Percent
Paperback		51%
Hardcover		25%
PDF		17%
ePub		8%

What was also surprising was that hardcover sales were half that of paperbacks. I was expecting hardcovers to sell one tenth the number of paperbacks, given the different in price. Paperbacks sold one at a time, hardcovers were multiple sales, which makes me suspect these were going to library suppliers.

So having PDF and Hardback editions is worthwhile. What is less worthwhile is the Epub edition. The print and PDF editions require similar skills to produce. The Epub requires a different set of skills and more than doubles the effort required for relatively little extra return. It is only because I have already invested the effort of understanding Epub I am continuing with it.

Also I looked at where sales come from:

Region		Percent
AU		33%
Other		19%
US		16%
UK		11%
NL		8%
CH		5%
FR		4%
EU		1%
IE		1%

Unfortunately Lulu has no record of where19% of the sales were. But for the remainder, Australia is not a surprise, nor is the US, UK, or China. What is surprising are the sales in the Netherlands and France.

One thing to keep in mind that each step in the distribution chain takes a cut of the revenue. Sales directly via Lulu earn much more than those which are then through another distributor. So while almost as many sales were through Ingram as Lulu, the revenue through Lulu was twice as much:

Channel		Sales		Earnings
Lulu		44%		54%
Ingram (Print)		42%		25%
Amazon (Print)		3%		12%
iBookstore		11%		8%
Nook		1%		1%

Only some formats are accepted for third party distribution. I have found the "US Trade"  size (6 by 9 inches) a good option for textbooks. Selling outside Lulu also requires another step in the process: you have to purchase a proof copy and check it. If there are corrections to be made another proof is needed, delaying distribution by another week. What I do is delay that distribution step for a few weeks, only selling the book through Lulu, to make sure I have the book right.

The Lonely Planet Story

There are many business books which describe company founders who had a clear vision and went on to achieve it. Much more refreshing and grounded in realty is "Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story" by Tony Wheeler and Maureen Wheeler. This describes how they collected the notes from one trip and turned that into a travel guide,  eventually building a travel publishing empire. What is refreshing is the descriptions of how much of this happened by accident and the mistakes made along the way. Lonely Planet had several attempts at on-line and mobile publishing which did not work. Rather than rewrite history to say how everything worked, this book details the projects which seemed like a good idea at the time, but which were not.

Online Publisher Removing Copy Protection From e-Books

Online ebook publisher Lulu has announced it will cease using Digital Rights Management (DRM) for ebooks from 15 January 2013. Readers will be able to make copies of e-books, although copyright will still limit when this is legally permitted. I decided not to use DRM on the books I provide through Lulu, because of the problems the anti-copying technology causes for readers and the fee charged for use of the technology makes up a significant part of the price of a low cost ebook.

ORCID Researcher ID

ORCID is a free open access system to provide  persistent digital identifiers for researchers, so that they can easily identify what they published. I signed up for and Orcid: ORCID Entry fro Tom Worthington 0000-0003-4799-8464

The system is still under development but looks promising. Along the way I found a letter to New Scientist I wrote. But I could not find an easy way to upload my other publications, which ORCID did not know about

Promoting research through open access

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where Dr Danny Kingsley, Manager Scholarly Communication & ePublishing, is talking on "Promoting research through open access" as part of Open Access Week. She is pointing out how Australia is a leader is a leader in open access and that Australian academics are benefiting from this.

In my view university libraries need to be more had headed on this and have a fund of money to help promote open access. Otherwise this will cost the universality money, as academic authors will sign away their rights before they know what has happened and the university library will then have to pay to access the material. It would be better in the log term if the libraries invested funds up front to educate their authors about this.

Open Access Week

It is Open Access Week from 22 to 28 October 2012. During the week, university libraries will be hosting talks on making scholarly research more widely available. Some in Australia are:

22 October, Australian National University Promoting research through open access – everything you ever wanted to know

Monday 22nd October – 2.30pm
McDonald Room, Menzies Library

Speaker: Dr Danny Kingsley, Manager Scholarly Communication & ePublishing, with ANU researchers

Summary: This talk aims to provide the background for anyone who wanted to know more about open access but were afraid to ask. The general philosophy of open access is that publicly funded research should be publicly available. The talk will describe the mechanisms for achieving open access, the benefits afforded those who make their work available and the concerns people have about open access. ANU researchers who actively make their work available will discuss their experiences.

23 October Australian National University Copyright and open access in a fast changing landscape

Tuesday 23rd October - 12.30pm
Law Sparke Helmore T2

Speaker: Ellen Broad, Executive Officer, Australian Digital Alliance

Summary: This talk will look at recent issues relating to copyright both overseas and in Australia. Copyright determines what we can and cannot share and recent attempts in the US to enforce copyright online saw an online protest by Wikipedia turning 'off' for 24 hours. In January a proposal for the US Research Works Act - which would make it illegal to have open access a condition of federal research funding - was met with a storm of online protest. Not only was the bill retracted but it spawned an academic boycott of Elsevier in protest of their financial support of the bill. The Australian Law Reform Commission is currently conducting an inquiry into Copyright and the Digital Economy. This is an area to watch. 

24 October

Setting the Default to Open Access: Three Points of ViewBaillieu Library, University of Melbourne This year VALA is celebrating Open Access Week with a panel of three fabulous guest speakers. Each has their own unique perspective on Open Access: the research librarian, the academic and a provider… Organized by VALA - Libraries, Technology and the Future Inc

25 October Australian National University 

 The NHMRC mandate and you – a guide

Thursday 25th October – 2.30pm
Manning Clarke Lecture Theatre 4

Speaker: Dr Danny Kingsley, Manager Scholarly Communication & ePublishing, ANU

Summary: The National Health & Medical Research Council has recently commenced its open access policy, and things appear to be moving in this direction at the Australian Research Council. But what is a mandate? And how does it affect researchers? This talk will explore the NHMRC mandate, and look at how mandates are managed by publishers, institutions and funders around the world. 

25 October 
Open Scholarship: Research and Publication
from 10am to 12:30pm – Richard Searby Room - hd2.006.1 Melbourne Burwood Campus Deakin University At Deakin University Australia we are celebrating Open Access Week with a symposium on open scholarship, focusing on open access research and publication. Join with other members of the education com

My Most Popular Web Pages

Since I started blogging in May 2008, there have been 423,112 page views of my 4407 posts. Some of the most popular are:

• Shipping Container Apartment Building in Canberra, Oct 15, 2009
• The Science of Diagramming for ICT, Aug 29, 2012
• Maritime Operations Defence Research Summer Vacation Scholarships,  Jul 5, 2009
• Walter Burley Griffin Memorial Lecture2012, 2012 Sep 24, 2012
• E-learning to Reduce the Education Divide, Sep 21, 2012
• Birth of the National Broadband Network, Oct 14, 2009
• How the Google Online Courses Are Built, Sep 26, 2012
• Huawei Deuce U8520 Dual SIM Android Smart Phone, Sep 18, 2011
• NBN Symposium in Canberra, 9 October 2012 Sep 3, 2012
• On-line Professional Education for ANU, Sep 28, 2012

I am not sure if I can detect any pattern in these.

Most of the page views for my blog come from links withing the blog. The second most popular way to get to a posting is from a Google search. Most surprising is the third way: from the Whirlpool forum.

ps: While many people have read my posting about problems with my Huawei Android Smart Phone, Huawei do not appear to have. It is now eleven months since I returned the faulty Huawei phone and it has not been repaired, replaced or refunded. While the Australian Government may not want Huawei products used in the NBN for reasons of national security, I can see a more immediate reason to be cautious over the use of Huawei products: poor after sales service.

Electronic Submission of Doctoral Thesis

Many universities have sophisticated on-line systems for submitting coursework in electronic format and electronic repositories for research documents. Current research students will likely never submit a paper, book, or any other work on paper in their future career. However, many universities still require a doctoral thesis on paper. It is time the anachronism of the paper thesis was done away with. If universities need a paper copy of each thesis, they could contract with a company such as Lulu to print all documents.

2012 Australian Paralympic Team Book

John Vandenberg, President of Wikimedia Australia, has created a book collecting up all the materials on the "2012 Australian Paralympic Team". This is available free online as a PDF Download, or an ODT Word-processor File (a Printed Book can also be purchased). Wikimedia Australia's volunteers took on the task of documenting the 2012 Australian Paralympic Team and this book is one of the results of the effort of many people (who are listed in the book).

This Wikipedia book (or Wikibook) is created from a collection of Wikipedia articles and each time someone requests a book it is generated afresh from the latest version of the Wikipedia.

One problem is that Wikibooks can be large. The Paralympic book is about 90 Mb. The HTML format used for the web is usually very efficient in the use of file space and so I examined the book file to see what the problem was.

I downloaded the ODT version of the book and unzipped it to examine the source files. The images take up about 90% of the space. There are then hundreds of small images, which are flags of countries and clip art of medals. There are a few milt-megabyte images, which are photographs of the athletes.

There appears to be a problem with the book generating tool, resulting in duplicated images. As an example, each time the image of a medal is in a Wikipedia entry, a new copy of the same medal image is included in the book. But only one copy of each image should be needed.

Also the photographs of athletes are included in the book at high resolution. This is useful for high quality printing, but wastes space for on screen viewing. An option for using smaller versions of the images would be useful.

Perhaps Wiki-HQ could make some changes to the book generating software. Removing the duplicated images would seed up the book creation process on the server and download time, as well as reduce the file size for the user. As an example, image optimization should reduce the Paralympic book from 90 Mbytes to less than 15 Mbytes.

Cost of Scholarly Publishing

Mr Peter Booth Wiley, Chairman of the Board, John Wiley & Sons, talked on "Open-access and scholarly publishing in the 21st century" in Canberra recently. This sparked some discussion amongst academics as to the cost of publishing papers and how "open access" (where readers are not charged) could be funded.

CSIRO Publishing charge authors $3,000 per paper, to cover the cost of open access. Alternatively CSIRO charge individual Australian subscribers AU$195.00 per year to access non-open articles.

The Conference in Research and Practice in Information Technology (CRPIT) series charges conference organizers about $50 per paper for electronic publishing (printing on paper is an optional extra). All the papers are available open access and also are included in the ACM Digital Library.

I notice that IEEE are charging readers US$31.00 for a paper I wrote for a conference earlier in the year (a preprint is available free). IEEE is not generally open access, but even so I had to pay the conference organizer a $150 fee to have my paper published.

IEEE also have Google Ads on the public version of the page. I tried Google and Amazon.com ads on the ACS Digital Library some years ago. However the ads tended to detract from the dignity of the papers and so I had to take them off. But the ads on my recent IEEE paper look reasonable:

Going Back To Uni?
Enquire Online Or Speak To Our Student Advisors On 1300 240 976!
www.open.edu.au

Honda Australia
Browse the full Honda car range. Find a dealer close to you.
www.honda.com.au/cars

Keep Your Brain Young
Sharpen Your Memory With Brain Games Made By Neuroscientists
www.lumosity.com

Australia's Coral Sea
Vital areas still to be protected. Find out more!
www.ProtectOurCoralSea.org.au

Buy Ink & Toner Australia
Special Fast Overnight Delivery Save Up to 76%, Fully Guaranteed
www.InkStation.com.au/Ink-Toner

I can understand the relevance of the ads for university, cars, memory games and ink to IEEE publications. But "Protect Our Coral Sea" seems less relevant. The last time I was involved in protecting the Coral Sea, it was in the Joint Operations Center aboard the flagship of the US 7th Fleet. ;-)

The iPad is Revitalizing Academic Publishing

Greetings from the Australian National University where

the new ANU Librarian, Roxanne Missingham, is speaking on "Is the iPad Killing Academic Publishing?". Clearly the answer is no, mobile devices are not having an adverse effect on scholarly publishing. Roxanne argues that like previous information technology which did not kill its predecessor (radio, TV, Movies). Old technologies adapt to work alongside the new. Printed books will adapt to complement digital publishing. From Socrates with writing onwards, educators have worried that students will substitute information technology for thinking. Tablet computers can be used for quickly looking up a source or making a quick note, but Roxanne argues the tablets are not up to the job of intense detailed scholarly research, where many large documents have to be accessed and annotated. She asked how to integrate discussion of scholarly issues before the final journal article is produced (which would seem to be a good use for mobile devices).

Roxanne asserted that e-publishing need not be a race to the bottom and that there is a role for well written, well edited quality publications. There are also small but significant differences shown by research on print and digital texts. Tests of college students showed that using eBooks produced sligtly less comprehension. But I suspect this may be just a problem with the quality of current screens, as they have higher resolutions, indistinguishable from print.

Roxanne pointed out that digital systems can be used to create data representations not possible on paper, such as 3D animations. This creates a challenge for librarians as to how they preserve this content for long term access.

Roxanne asked what interface will suit academic publishing, which may need to be richer than that designed for the casual user. Where will collaboration take place online: in closed private forums, or in the public domain?

Is the iPad Killing Academic Publishing?

The new ANU Librarian, Roxanne Missingham, will speak on "Is the iPad Killing Academic Publishing?", at the Australian National University in Canberra, 11am 4 April 2012.

Is the iPad Killing Academic Publishing?

Roxanne Missingham (Scholarly Information Services, ANU)

COMPUTER SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM SERIES

DATE: 2012-04-04
TIME: 11:00:00 - 12:30:00
LOCATION: Seminar Room (N101), CSIT Building (Building 108, North Road)
CONTACT: Malcolm.Newey@anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT:
In the twenty first century we are using i-pads, online data and digital resources for so much of our study and research that some postulate the end of the book. I will argue that new forms of knowledge creation and sharing can only be successful because of our book culture. Reading is the most vital skill for all of us in the twenty first century and criticisms of books have been part of our culture for decades. Print is vital for access to knowledge, and the new digital environment sees a shading or greying of published knowledge and data. This means we need to look at knowledge and scholarly information in a completely new way. I hope to be quite provocative.

BIO:
Roxanne Missingham is the new University Librarian (Chief Scholarly Information Officer). Until February, she was the Parliamentary Librarian for the Parliament of Australia, and prior to that was an Assistant Director-General (Resource Sharing Division) at the National Library of Australia for five years. She has over twenty years of senior management experience in Australian public sector libraries, and brings with her a wealth of knowledge of enabling technology to provide scholarly information. Roxanne has also written extensively on the role of contemporary libraries.

ANU E Press Information Sessions for Authors

ANU E Press is holding Information Sessions on online book
publishing. Researchers, students, academics and readers are invited to learn about digital publishing and ebooks at the Australian National University in Canberra:

• 1-2pm, Monday 26 March 2012, or
• 2-3pm, Wednesday 23 May 2012

RSVP: anuepress@anu.edu.au

Trove Digital Culture Search Service at National Library of Australia

Greetings from Australian Computer Society, Canberra Branch Forum where Kent Fitch talking about Scaling up: the technology behind the NLA's newspaper digitisation and the Trove search service.. He started by showing a newspaper article by Caroline Chisholm "An Australian Bush Scene". As well as searching the NLA's catalog and digitized newspapers and other on-line sources. Kent pointed out that any member of the public can correct the OCR text from the newspaper, add tags and comments. This has proved popular with tens of thousands of Australians. Here is a search of Trove for "Tom Worthington". I notcied NLA have issued a Persistent Identifier for me: http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-1017487

Kent mentioned that the NLA has archived copies of important Australian web sites, including that for the Sydney 2000 Olympics. This has proved useful to me as I can use it to teach my students about web accessibility.

NLA are using the open source Lucene search engine and Solr service wrapper for Trove. NLA uses commodity servers, with Internal Solid State Drives, which are essential to the operation of the system, due to the many searches each query generates.

One flaw in the NLA's setup may be that it only has offices in Canberra. Loss of access to Canberra will therefore cut off access to Trove and perhaps result in the loss of all data contained in it permanently. This is not ideal for national cultural heritage and at least one live hot site and one remote backup, at least 300 km from the NLA building, should be used.

National Library of Australia Newspaper Digitalization Project

Kent Fitch will talk about Scaling up: the technology behind the NLA's newspaper digitisation and the Trove search service, at the Australian Computer Society, Canberra Branch Forum, 6 December 2011.

Australian Computer Society, Canberra Branch Forum

Scaling up: the technology behind the NLA's newspaper digitisation and the Trove search service

Each week, the NLA's Trove search service, receives around 200K "real" unique visitors and delivers almost 3M page views. Although Trove describes a diverse set of 250M items, its most popular content are digitised Australian newspaper articles.

This talk will describe the technology behind Trove in general then focus on the technical aspects of digitising and full-text-indexing over 60M newspaper articles, discussing aspects of image formats and processing, OCR correction, the scalability of the Lucene text indexing library, search result ranking, and how commodity SSD has made the unthinkable both easy and cheap.

The presentation will encourage audience interaction and questions.

Biography:

Kent Fitch has worked as a programmer for over 30 years. Since 1982 he has been a principal of the Canberra software development company, Project Computing Pty Ltd. He has developed many commercial systems and communications packages and custom software for many clients. In the past ten years, his work has focused on library-related systems including AustLit, NLA Newspapers Digitisation, and Trove.


About this Event

Date: Tuesday 6th December 2011
Time: 4:45pm registration for 5:15pm start

CPD Hours offered: 02 hours

Registration: http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=load&temID=eventdetails&eveID=30215850566954



Who should attend:
All ACS members and non-members.
A light meal of quality hot and cold finger food and refreshments are also provided at the event.
Workshop Registration:

To ENSURE you gain your Professional development (PD) hours, please register online AND attend the events.

Online registration is required.

Event Prices (Inc GST)
Regular Fee:
Members: $0.00
Non Members: $40.00
Regular Fee - Guest:
Guest: $20.00
Onsite Fee:
Members: $10.00
Non Members: $60.00

Cancellation Clause
A cancellation refund will only be given to paying guests provided that notice is sent to Jenalle Wei no later than 2 working days prior to the event.

Contact Details

Jenalle Wei
Branch Events & Office Administrator
Australian Computer Society - Canberra
Tel: (02) 6230 1588 Fax: (02) 6230 0290
Email: jenalle.wei@acs.org.au

Tipping Point Reached with e-Books

Some years ago I published a book with Lulu.com's print on demand system. They had an option to also offer a PDF versions of the book. Later the option of ePub format eBooks (as used by Apple iPads) was added. Today I got a message from Lulu.com to say they had converted my books to eBooks for Barnes and Nobel's on-line store for the Nook eBook reader. This was curious as I don't recall asking them to do this. Also they went to the trouble to list my old books, not the new ICT Sustainability, which I went to the trouble of carefully formating for eBook readers. The last and most interesting aspect of all this is that Lulu.com used to list paper books and then have an eBook as an optional extra. They have now reversed the emphasis, listing eBooks and then noting if there is a paper version available.

Formatting Mobile Compatible eBooks on the Web

With the Kindle version of my eBook published alongside the iPad and PDF versions, I thought I should go back and tidy up the web version of ICT Sustainability. As this is a "book" I decided to emulate the look of an eBook reader with the web version of the content. The Caliber e-reader displays two windows: a table of contents on the left (with the current chapter highlighted) and the book pages on the right. This was simple to reproduce using CSS.

As the web page has more room I have the book title and author's name on the top of the page. Unlike an e-reader, where the book will always be opened at the title page, a search engine may take the reader directly to a chapter of the book, so it is useful to have the title and author displayed. Also I included a description that this is an eBook, so that the reader will forgive the very simple formatting of the page.

One surprise was that when I checked the HTML validation of the page I found numerous errors (and some CSS errors). These errors don't stop the pages displaying on the average web browser, but may cause problems with mobile devices (and search engines). The pages scored only about 56 out of 100 on the W3C mobileOK Checker. Fixing the syntax errors, removing all the "critical" and "severe" failures, increased the mobile score to more than 80 out of 100.

e-Learning Course on Green ICT Strategies: Part 19 - New Version on web, iPad, Kindle and print

My book "ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future" was  in limited release (see Part 18), but is is now available a paperback and PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook formats, as well as free on the web.

ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future

Contents

• Introduction
• Sustainability Assessment
  1. The Politics, Science and Business of Sustainability
  2. The Global ICT Footprint
  3. Energy Saving - Data Centres and Client Equipment
  4. Materials Use
  5. Compliance Audit
  6. Methods and Tools
• Sustainability Strategy
  7. Enabling ICT
  8. Business Process Improvement
  9. Improving Data Centre Energy Efficiency
  10. Enterprise Architecture
  11. Procurement
  12. Energy Star Program and Quality Management
• Appendixes
  1. SMART 2020: Enabling the Low Carbon Economy
  2. EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres
  3. National Carbon Offset Standard
  4. Assessment
  5. Glossary
  6. Bibliography
• Editions Available
  1. Paperback
  2. PDF eBook
  3. Web

About the Book

ICT Sustainability is about how to assess, and reduce, the carbon footprint and materials used with computers and telecommunications. These are the notes for an award winning course on strategies for reducing the environmental impact of computers and how to use the Internet to make business more energy efficient.
Title: ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future
Copyright © Tom Worthington, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4478-1454-2. (Paperback and PDF published by Lulu)
ISBN: 978-1-4478-6164-5. (ePub eBook published by LuLu and available via Apple iTunes)
ISBN: 978-0-9806201-9-1. (Kindle eBook published by Tomw Communications Pty, Limited)
These notes are used for the courses:

1. Green Technology Strategies: offered in the Computer Professional Education Program, Australian Computer Society (first run as "Green ICT Strategies" in February 2009),
   
2. Green Information Technology Strategies (COMP7310), in the Graduate Studies Select program, Australian National University (first run July 2009), and
   
3. Green ICT Strategies (ACS25): offered in the Postgraduate Program of Open Universities Australia from 2010,

A North American version of the course by Brian Stewart, Athabasca University (Canada) is also available: Green ICT Strategies (COMP 635).
The notes were first published in 2009 ("Green ICT") and updated 2010 ("Green Technology Strategies"). Students can download or print their own copy of the e-book from the course learning management system, which is likely to be more up to date.