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. ;-)

Accessible Ebooks for Education

At the web accessibility for education workshop at Canberra Institute of Technology yesterday, the topic of making ebooks accessible for those with a disability came up. As I briefly explained, many of the ebook and e-learning module formats used for education are based on the HTML format as used for web pages. Most of the ebook formats are essentially  of web pages zipped into a file for offline use (you can unzip many ebooks with a standard archive tool and examine their source code). As a result the same web accessibility techniques can be applied to ebooks as to web pages.

However, ebook readers have limited hardware (most kindles cannot display colour for example) and the versions of HTML used are limited compared to those on a desktop computer or even a tablet computer. This has its good points and bad points. On the one had some accessibility techniques cannot be used with ebooks and other hand some are not applicable and so need not be worried about.

The approach I suggest, if you are producing basic text based notes, perhaps with some illustrations, is to create  your content using the minimum of standard formatting. The document can be created in a word processor or a HTML editor. Use the standard headings, fonts, lists and the like. The content should then easily convert to most ebook formats. Depending on the ebook format used, you will be able to add colours and styles to make the content look prettier, but at least it will be readable on most devices. As an example see my "Demonstration of Using Moodle for Postgraduate Professional Education with eBooks and Smart phones".

If you have audio or video content I suggest not packaging it in the ebook, unless you are sure the student has broadband and a device which can view the video. Adding video can make the ebook file ten times larger (video can instead be supplied separately). As an example, Box Hill Institute of TAFE's excellent ebook for "Hand make timber joints" is 284 Mbytes. If the video is deleted from the ebook, the file reduces to 16 Mbytes, less than one tenth the size.

Ebook formats

1. Moodle Book Module: Moodle has its own simple ebook format called "Moodle Book Module". This uses the Moodle WYSIWYG HTML editor to create web p[ages which are book chapters. Moodle will convert the content to IMS Content Packages and also allow the student to export the content chaper or whole book as a web page. If you are creating content for Moodle this is a simple choice.
2. IMS Content Package and SCORM: The, IMS Content Packages and the closely related SCORM packages consist of a zipped file containing HTML, CSS and other web format documents. SCORM is popular for vocational education.
3. EPUB: Apple iPads have popularised the EPUB eBook format. If you are producing an ebook for a wide readership, this is the format you are likely to use.
4. Tagged PDF:  The version of  "Tagged PDF" provides some accessibility features, implemented using XML. It might be useful for those committed to PDF, but for others, one of the HTML based ebook formats would be better.
5. Kindle Format: Amazon Kindle ebooks use HTML  (newer files use HTML5). This is the format you would use for publishing via Amazon.com. But t\note that Kindle devices can read PDF files as well and ordinary web pages (but not EPUB).

Text-to-Speech Enabled Travel Guides

The Lonely Planet Travel Guides for the Amazon Kindle eBook Reader have Text-to-Speech enabled. Examples are Lonely Planet France (Country Guide) and Ireland. These might be of use for people with reading difficulties. However, I am not sure how well the text oriented interface of the older monochrome Kindles would be, or the dense text-oriented format of the Lonely Planet guides.

Lonely Planet experimented with Mobile XHTML to provide travel guides on phones, way back in 2005 (I was teaching mobile web design to university students). The results at that stage were disappointing and Lonely Planet discontinued that service. But they now have Lonely Planet Apps and eBooks.

Also there is the Apple Siri voice interface for Apple iPad/iPhone.

Creating an eBook for Amazon Kindle with Free Software

Having had some difficulty creating an eBook for the Amazon Kindle using Kindle Direct Publishing service, I tried the free Calibre software instead. This supports the conversion of OpenOffice/LibreOffice ODT files to Mobi format, which the Amazon system accepts. I have some time to fine tune the layout as I am waiting for Thorpe's ISBN Agency Australia to issue my ISBN.

Creating an eBook for Amazon Kindle

Amazon.com provide a useful Simplified Formatting Guide to create an eBook using a word processor. The instructions are intended for using Microsoft Word to create a Kindle eBook, but are much the same as those from Lulu for creating ePub ebooks. The instructions discuss using the MobiPocket Creator application, but Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing service supports converting a Microsoft Word document to Kindle format without use of any extra software.

Curiously the Kindle instructions say to use the older .DOC format, not not the newer DOCX (.docx). The latter is an XML based format, closer to the HTML which the Kindle uses. I found the Open Office ODT format (which is also XML based) worked better than .DOC for ePub eBook conversion with Lulu. So it is surprising DOCX does not work as well. I tried a DOCX file but found the conversion process failed with a spurious error message "Conversion timed out. Please make sure the uploaded file is less than 50 MB" (the file I was converting was only 88 kbytes).

One issue is that the Lulu tool I used created a table of contents, whereas it appears that Amazon's process requires the table of contents to be part of the book file. The Calibre eBook tool can create the table of contents for the eBook.

Australia's first enhanced eBook?

Greetings from the National Library of Australia in Canberra, where cultural historian and folklorist Warren Fahey is talking about his book "Australian Folk Songs and Bush Ballads". This is claimed to be Australia's first "enhanced" eBook.

A representative of the NLA did a gushing introduction about ebooks. Warren provided an entertaining history of his involvement with technology, starting with the crystal wireless and tin cans and string telephone. He then talked about his involvement with bush music and the ABC. But so far no explanation as to what an "enhanced eBook" is. I assumed it had digital audio files, along with images and text.

Warren went on to explain how he obtained a copy of his own field folk song recordings from the NLA and converted them to a suitable format for the eBook.

Warren used what appeared to be an Apple iPad for a demonstration of the eBook. He showed what looked like a traditional book format, with video displayed like a still image (click on the image to play the video) and audio controls (click the play button). The audio used seemed to be short excerpts, with links to on-line stores to purchase the full recording.

Warren said that volume was 600 Mbytes, due to the sound files. The publisher is splitting the book into volumes.

What was a little confusing was that I could only find an Amazon Kindle eBook edition of the book on-line. Warrne explained that Amazon refused to carry a Kindle eBook with links to Apple iTunes (for the audio). So a different edition had to be produced with different links in it.

This is a brave attempt at an "enhanced" eBook. But I am not sure that including the audio files in the eBook file is worth the effort. Instead the files could be downloaded from the web as required.

Warren ended by discussing what effect eBooks will have on book publishing and distribution. This provides a world market for the author, but cheaters challenges for the local bookstore and library.

At question time I asked what Warren's next ebook would be like. He said he wanted to do a book for children, being the 21st century of the Coles funny picture book for kids.

Someone asked how the cost of producing an enhanced ebook compared to a PDF ebook. Warren replied it was must more expensive by PDF ebooks were so static and dull.

This appears on topic for Senator Kate Lundy's Digital Culture Public Sphere on-line and in Sydney, 6 October 2011.

Dick Smith Advertisement for Fictional Color Kindle

Last night I watched an advertisement for the Amazon Kindle eBook reader on Australian free to air TV. This depicted the Kindle's screen highlighting some text in yellow. Dick Smith is selling two models of the Kindle: Kindle, Wi-Fi 6 Inch and Kindle 3G 6 Inch. However, both of these, like all current Kindle models, have monochrome screens, which cannot display yellow (or any other color). The Kindle does have some attractive features, such as a long battery life. The 3G model in particular has free 3G wireless access in Australia and many countries and a usable (if limited) web browser. But this advertisement should be changed to remove the color from the Kindle screen.

Green Technology Strategies on Apple iPad

Apple have my book "Green Technology Strategies" available in ePub format on their iTunes store. This came as quite a surprise. I recall requesting this of LuLu (who distribute the PDF, paperback and hardcover editions) some months ago. This contrasts with the Amazon.com Kindle Edition, which took less than 24 hours to publish.

The book has been available since 8 June 2011, but it has taken me a week to get around to reading the message I got from LuLu. This said my book was on the "iBookstore", but I had no idea what that was. Apparently this is what Apple called the book part of their on-line store. None of the links in the LuLu message were to LuLu's web site, so I assumed this was a hoax email.

I am not sure how many people will buy a book from Apple. One curious point is that Apple seem reluctant to say that you do not need an Apple device to read the book: just about any smart phone, tablet computer, laptop or desktop will do.

The book consists of a 297 kbytes file, which has been zip compressed. The file contains 516 Kbytes, mostly made up of the HTML text of the book, with one HTML file per chapter. The HTML of the ePub version is almost identical to that of the Kindle Edition, the free web version and the IMS Content Package , all of which are derived from the Moodle Learning Management System Course File.

Green Technology Strategies

by Tom Worthington

This book is available on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iBooks and on your computer with iTunes.

Description

Green Technology Strategies is about how to use computers and telecommunications in a way which maximises positive environmental benefit, with minimum energy and materials use. The book is designed to be used with an online course for professionals, using mentored and collaborative learning techniques. Learn how to: - Estimate the carbon footprint of the ICT operations of an organisation, - Assess ways to reduce the carbon footprint of an organisation, by changes to polices for procurement of ICT, changes to the ICT operations and revising business processes.

View In iTunes

• $3.99
• Available on iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
• Category: Computers
• Published: Jun 08, 2011
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Seller: Lulu Enterprises, Inc.
• Print Length: 127 Pages
• Language: English

Customer Ratings

We have not received enough ratings to display an average for this book.

Amazon.com Increases Royalties on e-Books

Amazon sent me a message to say that they have an option for increasing royalties from 35% to 70% on e-books sold for less than US$10, as of 30 June. The Kindle edition of my "Green Technology Strategies" book is US$9., so I have selected this option. I assume that Amazon have introduced this because they are under pressure from other e-book sellers.

Web Browsing on the Amazon Kindle DX In Australia

Just noticed that the Amazon Kindle DX e-Book reader now allows web browsing in Australia. My Green Technology Strategies book includes hypertext links to web resources. Previously, this was frustrating for the Kindle reader, as when they clicking on the links nothing happened. Now web pages are displayed.

The Kindle's web interface is limited. Web pages are slow to load, the display is monochrome and the support for web formatting limited. The display reminded me of the Mosaic web browser from fifteen years ago. However, the interface is usable and could suit corporate and educational environments, where the user should not be distracted by flashy web content and be looking for solid information.

The newer Kindle 3 is reported to have a web browser

based on WebKit, as used by Apple and Google, with much better page rendering. There is also an “Article Mode” intended for maximising the display of the text of a web page on the small screen.

Amazon Kindle 3G e-Book Reader

Amazon Kindle e-Book Readers are now offered with worldwide 3G wireless coverage in both size units (6 Inch and 9.7 inch screen models). The price of the smaller model has been reduced to US$189 (larger unit US$489).

The units have a HSDPA modem (3G) with a fallback to EDGE/GPRS (GPS). In the USA they use the AT&T network. Outside of the USA a range of providers are used.

With the previous International version of the Kindle, Australian users where charged $2 extra per book, to cover the wireless access cost. It is not clear if this is still the case.

Also Australian users were blocked from using the Kindle's limited web browser (available in the USA). It is not clear if this is still the case with the new model.

The lack of web access must have being driving readers of the Kindle version of my book "Green Technology Strategies" nuts. I peppered the text with hypertext links, on the assumption the average e-book reader would have Internet access.

In addition, the file size of an e-book is not that large, so having 3G access will not make a significant difference to the process of buying a book. The difficulty in getting content into the Kinde from anywhere else than from the Amazon store (compared to other e-book readers) seems a bigger issue. The limited support for multimedia, particularity video, makes 3G less of an issue (a problem common to most e-book readers).

Compared to a paper book, a Kindle is a magical device. But compared to the Apple iPad (or the average $400 netbook), the Kindle reader is a clunky information appliance, with a slow refreshing dull monochrome screen and tiny clicky keys.

BeBook e-Book Reader

The Co-Op Bookshop is now selling two models of the BeBook e-Book Reader:Bebook Mini (5 inch display), Bebook Neo (6 inch display). I tried the larger Mini model at the CoOp Bookstore at ADFA. The Mini looks an adequate device for reading for pleasure and a suitable rival to the Amazon Kindle for those who do not want to buy from Amazon. However, like the Kindle, the BeBook is not suitable for serious reading for work or study purposes.

The Mini looks something between an Amazon Kindle and a Apple iPad. There is no keyboard, with just a few navigation keys and a monochrome e-Ink screen operated with a stylus. The screen appears to be less reflective than that of the Kindle, but adequate. I noticed I could see a shadow of the previous page when a new one was displayed.

The Mini seems to be slower to refresh the screen than the Kindle, but was adequate. I was able to insert a SD flash card and display content from it. I was very impressed that the HTML browser inbuilt was able to display web based slide presentations I have created using HTML Slidy.

The Mini looked a better size for a handy book reader than the larger Kindle and I did not miss the keyboard. The biggest limitation I found with the Mini was the lack of any wireless access. Unlike the Apple iPad the Mini has no WiFi. The only way to get content into the device is with a USB cable or a flash memory device.

One advantage of the BeBook was that unlike the Kindle, it did not keep promoting me to go to the Amazon store to buy books.

Amazon Kindle DX First hand

Having borrowed an Amazon Kindle DX e-Book reader for a few days to try out, here are a few first impressions. The device looks like an Apple product, with its stark white case and sparse writing. The unit is very slim, abut as thick as a pencil and along with the slippery aluminium back, it is hard to hold. I would have preferred a unit about as thick as the average paperback (about 20 mm) with a non-slip rubber coating on the back and sides. The screen is very readable but slow to update and a very dull grey. The QWERTY keyboard on the front is annoyingly small and slow to use, even for the occasional search. The other navigation buttons are easy to use. It was surprising the unit did not come pre-installed with some free books. About all there is are some manuals and some PDF documents my colleagues downloaded.

Reading the Amazon format works very well, with the text able to be re-sized and an excellent text-to-speech facility (my Green Technology Strategies book sounds so much more impressive when read aloud by the kindle, than by me). However, the facilities for PDF documents are more limited, with the text not able to be enlarged nor read aloud (you can still make the text larger by rotating the display to landscape mode).

I was able to preview a book, after registering with my Amazon.com account. The preview of my Green Technology Strategies book gave the table of contents and outline, plus a little of the first chapter. This was enough to see that, much to my relief, the Amazon DTP system had done a good job converting the book from HTML to the Amazon format.

Disappointingly the web interface on the Kindle is not available in Australia, apparently due to networking costs. It is frustrating to see a network indicator on the Kindle screen showing it is connected to a 3G wireless network, but not being able to use it for much more than buy books from Amazon.

The Kindle works well for its intended purpose: to lock the consumer into buying materials from the Amazon bookstore. But as a wireless tablet computer it is very frustrating. The device would seem to have very little use outside the niche of being able to display reformatted books. It has little use in education, where the student will need wider access to online material and will need a way to compose text easily, not just read prepared material.

It will be interesting to see how well the Apple iPad answers these needs. The iPad might be a better e-book than the Kindle, but there is still the question as to who wants to buy an expensive netbook computer with no keyboard?

Green Technology Strategies from Amazon.com

Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble have my book Green Technology Strategies available in paperback (also on the Amazon Kindle electronic Book reader). Last December I pushed the button to have LuLu distribute the book. That was supposed to take six weeks, but has taken about ten weeks. I heard no more from LuLu about it and just happened to notice the book listed on Amazon today. I don't know if it is available via any of the other channels. It is supposed to also be available from Baker & Taylor, from NACSCORP and the Espresso Book Machine (but there appear to be no working book machines in Australia).

While LuLu's online process for publishing via their print on demand service works well, the distribution via other channels has been frustrating.

Princeton University e-reader pilot

An e-reader pilot at Princeton University, using Amazon Kindle DX ebook readers, found them as readable as printed material, but a major problem was the difficulty of annotating ebooks. There is a 7 page (127 Kbytes PDF) executive summary as well as a full report available. Ironically, these reports are provided in PDF, the format the report finds the students had most difficulty annotating.

In my view a low cost netbook computer would overcome most of the limitations reported with the Kindle for educational purposes at a lower overall cost. This would have a superior keyboard, allowing notes to be taken and add-on software could be used to add notes to PDF documents. Netbooks provide a colour screen, more useful for annotations. Most students could use the netbook as their primary computer, with a low cost external screen, keyboard and mouse at home. The ebook has advantages of light weight, long battery life and daylight readable screen, but require students to have a second computer for their studies, adding cost and complexity.

In the Fall of 2009, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) at Princeton conducted a pilot program using electronic readers (e-readers) in a classroom setting. The pilot was conducted with three broad goals. One was to reduce the amount of printing and photocopying done in the three pilot courses. The second was to determine if using this technology in the classroom could equal (or better) the typical classroom experience where more traditional readings were used. The third sought to explore the strengths and weaknesses of current e-reader technology to provide suggestions for future devices.
E-reader technology offered the promise of delivering a large number of digitized documents on a lightweight device with a long battery life, and a display that mimicked the reflective qualities of actual paper. The consumer market in e-readers had already proved it was possible to read on these devices; we sought to see if they could be useful in higher education by conducting a pilot using e-readers in several courses.

Three courses were selected for the pilot, involving 3 faculty members, and 51 students. The e-reader used in the pilot was the Amazon Kindle DX.

The goal of printing less in the pilot courses was achieved: pilot participants printed just over half the amount of sheets than control groups who did not use e-readers. The classroom experience was somewhat worsened by using e-readers, as study and reference habits of a lifetime were challenged by device limitations. This pilot suggests that future e-book manufacturers may wish to pay more attention to annotation tools, pagination, content organization, and in achieving a more natural “paper-like” user experience. In summary, although most users of the Kindle DX were very pleased with their “reading” experiences with the Kindle, they felt that the “writing” tools fell short of expectations, and prevented them from doing things easily accomplished with paper. ...


The areas in which they felt the Kindle could be best improved were:

• The ability to highlight and annotate PDF files
• Improving the annotation tools
• Providing a folder structure to keep similar readings together
• Improving the highlighting function
• Improving the navigation within and between Kindle documents

Because it was difficult to take notes on the Kindle, because PDF documents could not be annotated or highlighted at all, and because it was hard to look at more than one document at once, the Kindle was occasionally a tool that was counter-productive to scholarship. ...


What features do ereaders need to be effective tools for higher education?
... One thing that emerged clearly from the surveys was that superb annotation tools are critical for the success of an e-reader used in higher education. ... There were also functional concerns, such as the ability to compare documents, or have more than one reading open at a time, and some ability to “skim” or “flip” rapidly through a reading to see highlights and notes. ...

There was a strong positive attachment to some present feature of the Kindle DX, most particularly the reflective screen, which allowed for long periods of reading, the size, the form factor, and the battery life. When told that any additional features (such as a color or LCD screen) would impact battery life, most students said they preferred to stick with grayscale and e-paper technology – with one exception: highlighting, where more contrast to the page, and a variety of possible marking styles would help create the same effectiveness as color highlighters on a black and white paper page. ...

From: The E-reader pilot at Princeton, Fall semester, 2009, Final report, (executive summary), Janet Temos, Princeton University, February 2010

Microsoft Office 2010 support for OpenOffice

Microsoft Office 2010 is due for release in May. A Beta version with the new features of Word, Access, PowerPoint, Publisher, Outlook, InfoPath, Excel, SharePoint Workspace, OneNote and Communicator is still available. The new version will be able to create and read document in both the Microsoft sponsored OOXML format (Office Open XML, ISO/IEC 29500:2008) and Sun sponsored ODF (OpenDocument Format, ISO/IEC 26300:2006). This will better allow the interchange of documents with the open source OpenOffice.Org office suite.

OOXML was provided with Open Office 2007 and ODF in Service Pack 2. However, it seems likely that many documents will still be created in the older proprietary .DOC (Word 97-2003) format to maintain compatibility with older versions of Word and other pre XML formats.

Neither OOXML nor ODF can be read directly by a web browser. My preference would be for a HTML based format. Microsoft tried this with a previous version of Word, with a HTML based format which could be edited, however it did not become popular. However, newer versions of HTML and CSS provide more features and so fewer workarounds to implement word processor features. In addition both OOXML and ODF are conceptually similar to HTML based ebook formats, such as Epub and the Amazon Kindle format. These all consist of an XML formatted document, plus formatting and images, zipped into one file.

BarCamp Canberra 2010

Greetings from BarCamp Canberra 2010 at the famous Room N101 at ANU in Canberra. There are about sixty people here so far and the room is filling fast. About one third of the room seems to be from Sydney, boosting the Canberra economy. You can follow the event in Twitter: #bcc2010.

The infrastructure is well set up with video projectors, WiFi, power-boards and Senator Lundy just arrived with duct-tape to hold the cables down.

For this I have prepared "Making e-Books for e-Learning on i-Pads":

Simple web pages and free open source software
to create an accompanying e-book for a university level e-learning
course. Educational materials can be provided for Netbooks, Amazon
Kindle, Google Android, Apple iPhone. This technique should also work
for the recently announced Apple iPad.

Making e-Books for e-Learning on i-Pads

For the BarCamp Canberra 2010, tomorrow I have prepared "Making e-Books for e-Learning on i-Pads". This is about how I used simple web pages and free open source software to create a university level e-learning course and accompanying e-book. Educational materials can be provided for the Netbooks, Amazon Kindle, Google Android, Apple iPhone. This technique should also work for the recently announced Apple iPad for education.

Green Technology Strategies on Amazon Kindle

Amazon have my e-book "Green Technology Strategies" available on their Kindle electronic Book reader. The PDF, paperback and hardcover editions remain available from LuLu (and the free web version on my web site). Amazon said it would take 48 to 72 hours to approve the book for the Kindle, but took less than a 24.

I specified a list price for the book the same as the LuLu PDF version. Amazon requires that the publisher specify a price no higher than other version, but then they added $2 to the price for delivery to the international version of the Kindle, outside the USA.

One issue with the e-book is the ISBN. I used the same the ISBN I had issued for the LuLu PDF version fo the book for the Kindle e-book version. This was because I could not find any way to enter the different ISBN for the PDF version into the LuLu system: it seems to use the same ISBN as for the printed book. As the ISBN was not used by LuLu, I tought I may as well use it for the Kindle. In retrospect, this was a bad idea, as that ISBN is already registered in library and book cataloging systems around the world. So I have now requested a new ISBN for the Kindle version. That takes up to five days.

Amazon Kindle e-Book for Australian Publishers

Amazon now allows Australian publishers to publish e-Books on their Kindle electronic Book reader. I was able to register my Australian company address into Amazon's Digital Text Platform. One limitation is that only cheque payments are catered for to Australia, not electronic funds transfer. Due to the high cost of cheque processing, there would have to be significant book sales to make this worthwhile (Google now pay by EFT in Australian dollars, making the process a lot cheaper and easier).

A few weeks ago I attempted to publish an electronic edition of my "Green Technology Strategies" book for Amazon.com's Kindle e-Book device. Using Amazon's DTP web site, I was easily able to convert the book from the web format used by e-learning courses to Kindle's format. But I could not publish the e-book, as Amazon did not cater for Australian publishers with an Australian address and bank account.

Amazon some useful information on how to format your book. I have several version of the book to choose from. The PDF version did not convert well. I could have used the word processing version, but mine is a OpenOffice.org master document and I was not sure how well that would convert to Microsoft Word, as accepted by Amazon. I tried exporting the OOO version to HTML, but the results were not that good. OOO generated a table of contents with hypertext links, but the links are on the print page numbers, which do not make much sense for an e-Book (as the Kindle has smaller pages than a paper book). I could have used the web version of the book, but would have had to assemble all the chapters, which are separate web pages, into one document.

What worked best was the HTML generated by the Moodle Book module. This produces a good table of contents and creates reasonably clean HTML. I just had to remember to download the CSS file to go with it and zip them for uploading.

One change I made was to move the front matter of the book to after the table of contents. While with a paper book you can quickly flip over the boring stuff at the front, with a e-book this is tedious. It is better to put the table of contents first. Readers will see the front matter if the then scroll through the book, but will quickly learn the can skip this by clicking on the first chapter in the content.

One issue to be resolved are the external hypertext links in the book. In the USA, Amazon provide limited web browsing, but not internationally. The reader can't see the difference between local links in the book and external ones. The reader could get frustrated when the click on links which do not work. I might need to hide the external links for the Kindle version, or at least distinguish them. This is possible with some more CSS.

One catch with Kindle are the high charges by Amazon.com: I get only 35% of the recommended retail price of the book. This is more than LuLu charge. Amazon also require that I make the cover price no more than the book is available from other outlets, so I cannot set a higher price for the Kindle version of the book.

In any case I thought it was time to stop theorising and start trying it, so I pressed "publish" and got this message:

Green Technology Strategies Tom Worthington (Author) 01/22/2010 ...

Publishing Green Technology Strategies. Your book is currently under review by the Kindle Operations team as we are trying to improve the Kindle customer experience. Please check back in 48-72 hours to see if your book was published to the store. This will not affect any titles you are currently selling in the store, but uploading updates to existing titles will take longer to process...

It will be interesting to see how long this actually takes for the book to appear on the Kindle catalogue.