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.

Australian Universities and the Global Gymnasium

Donald Meyers' book "Australian Universities: A Portrait of Decline" makes an interesting counterpoint to "Raising the Stakes: Gambling with the future of universities" (2013) by Peter Coaldrake and Lawrence Stedman. Both books criticize government interference in the running of universities, but Coaldrake and Stedman have a much more positive outlook on the future. Another difference is that Meyers' book is available free on-line, whereas the reader has to pay for access to Coaldrake and Stedman's words.

For a short summary of Meyers' book, see "The Academy in Decay" (Ruth F. G. Williams in Agenda, 19(2), ANU ePress 2012). This is available free online as a web pages, as well as free eBook and conventional paperback.

For those wondering about the title of the first section of Williams' article "The academy and the agora", "The academy" was the site of a sacred grove of olive trees near Athens and Plato's school of philosophy (thus the prototype university) whereas the agora was the ancient town square, used for both political meetings and commerce (depicted in the 2009 film Agora). But another ancient site of learning and physical activity may also be relevant: Gymnasium (more on this later).

Publications detailing past experiments in Australian tertiary education are timely, as Australia embarks on another grand experiment, with federal funds being redirected from universities to schools. Already this has lead to some rationalizations, with the University of Canberra cutting some language courses and sending student to ANU language classes instead.

A different perspective of higher education is provided by "The Idea of the Digital University: Ancient Traditions, Disruptive Technologies and the Battle for the Soul of Higher Education" by Frank Bryce McCluskey and Melanie Lynn Winter (2012). This book is about what lessons the "American Public University System" (a for-profit company), can teach the public system.

ANU Budget Consultation Process

The ANU has embarked on an exercise to save about $50M a year, asking staff and students for suggestions. I had an entertaining few weeks submitting eight suggestions for improving administrative, research and educational practices at ANU. Part of the fun is in seeing how the suggestions were edited by the ANU secretariat for publication. ANU has done a reasonable job consulting staff and made the brave decision to make the suggestions public. The summarization of the suggestions is reasonable and it will be interesting to see what decisions the ANU Council makes.

The ANU suggestions were grouped into four clusters and here are some I found most interesting:

1. Revenue
   • Grow student numbers (14 suggestions): The commentary suggests that domestic undergraduate students are the largest potential growth area, with the current deregulated environment, but ANU aims to remain a research-intensive university. Another reason not to pursue more domestic students is that the federal government, will likely introduce measures to curb government subsidies for these students in the next year. In Suggestion 101 "Professional development single courses" I proposed 'Rename the “Fee paying non-award” course option to “Professional development single courses”, as at USQ: This would encourage more full fee paying students.'
   • Pursue on-line courses (13 suggestions): Surprisingly, the commentary indicates that ANU has no strategy towards on-line courses. This is curious, as the university has invested in the technical infrastructure to support  on-line courses and use it to run the on-line ANU course COMP7310. The ANU  did not embark on a growth path with multiple Australian and international campuses, which has caused other universities financial problems. I suggest a relatively modest investment in training staff in on-line learning techniques and additional educational support staff could produce a growth in international student numbers (and revenue). Using new educational techniques this could also improve student outcomes. In  Suggestion 201 I proposed to "Convert the ... University Teaching and Learning modules to e-learning format. Make these a formal postgraduate course. Offer the course to ANU students. Encourage staff to use the course as a template for their own courses."
2. Non-staff expenses
   • Improve energy efficiency and actively reduce usage of energy (27 suggestions): The commentary envisages a saving of 10% on energy use (about $2M per year). This seems easily achievable from the work my ICT Sustainability masters students have done, assessing energy use of campus buildings
   • Examine ANU procurement and enable areas to seek best value for money – examples include office supplies, IT, refurbishment and cleaning (41 suggestions): The commentary discusses consolidation of purchasing to save costs. However, it would be worthwhile first looking for over-provisioning. As an example, as part of energy reduction measures, I have students categorize staff in an organization and then allocate the appropriate IT equipment. As well as save energy, this can save costs.
3. Staffing
   • Tighter and more transparent performance management, enforcement of performance expectations (28 suggestions): Measuring performance in a university can be difficult, with research delivering returns over a very long period and education subject to many external pressures. One measure not discussed by the commentary are performance measures on university departments (called "colleges" in ANU).
   • In Suggestion 178 I proposed 'Merge all the staff at ANU who support learning and course development at ANU into one organization along the lines of UniSA’s “Learning and Teaching Unit” (LTU)'.
4. Administration and systems
   • Consolidation/removal of duplication – general (46 suggestions): The commentary notes that ANU professional (non-academic) staff numbers are higher than any other GO8 university. However, ANU's emphasis on research requires more support staff. As an example, the ANU can't just use off the shelf computer hardware and software to support research into new IT systems and these bespoke systems (which will become the products of tomorrow) require more support. One example is the development of new e-learning software. But streamlining can be a false economy, in Suggestion 258 I proposed "Move ANU email to servers in Australia, using commercial contractors and/or a consortium of Australian universities.".
   • Streamline business and student processes into single processes for the entire University – general (31 suggestions): The commentary notes ANU's paper-based approach to administrative processes, but questions how quickly this could be changed. One way I suggest the change could be accelerated is through training of staff in on-line working. In many cases paper based forms with signatures (or their PDF equivalent) are devised where there is no need. I discussed this in
     Suggestion 234 "Remove most paper and PDF forms from ANU administration. Make use of the ANU’s on-line systems to record information.". To improve the quality of coruses,as well as streamline processes, in
     Suggestion 190 I suggested 'Add a field to Study-at for each course, to indicate if the Student Experience of Learning and Teaching (SELT) survey is conducted and make “yes” the default. Course conveners would have the option of changing the setting to “no”. The ANU’s IT system would read the setting in Study-at and issue the survey if the setting is “yes”. Also include a one to five star rating for each course in StudyAt, with a link to the detailed SELT results.' In Suggestion 98
     I proposed to 'Flip the Graduation Process
     Make awards to students within one week of their completing their program. Send an email with a link to the electronic copy of their certificate and details of how to receive an optional paper copy and attend an award ceremony. Issue electronic tickets for guests to attend the ceremony.' In Suggestion 200
     I proposed to "Flip ANU’s governance, by using on-line tools for consultation and decision making, in the same way the “flipped classroom” improves education. Rather than communicating detailed information verbally face to face at meetings, it can be placed on-line and then the valuable meeting time used for discussion and feedback"

Open Access e-Publishing Part of the Academy

Getting back to the commentary by Williams, they note that Meyers' book is only available as a free PDF document with commercial and university presses declining to publish it. However, this may be due more to commercial decisions as to what would sell, rather than a form of censorship. The PDF version of the book is very well formatted and at less than 1 Mbte is easy to download so is not limited in its distribution by not being released by a commercial publisher of a quasi-commercial publisher (ie: a loss making university press). The book is cataloged by the national Library of Australia, with a link to the PDF.

Meyers might consider making a print edition available through a Print on Demand service, such as Lulu. As it is, the typesetting of the book is much better done than many commercial and university presses.

Back to the Gymnasium

Williams' article used the academy and agora in discussing the academic and financial pressures facing universities. I suggest another inspiration from ancient Greece is the Gymnasium. This word is now used in English to refer exclusively to a place for physical exercise. However, in ancient Greece there were also for scholarship (the word gymnasium refers to an advanced secondary school in much of Europe).

In the original Gymnasium of ancient Greece,  scholarship existed alongside physical exercise and academia was not isolated from the everyday world of politics and commerce. More integration with the world would help Australian universities.

In 2008 I visited Delphi in Greece. Walking the sacred way I received no advice from the oracle, just a phone call. On returning to the Australian National University a few weeks later I had the curious feeling of being back at Delphi. As I walked from my office to the cafe opposite, I noticed covered walkway outside the sports centre with adjacent trees resembled the stoa the Gymnasium of Delphi. At the cafe, as athletes go past, staff students, public servants and business people discuss matters large and small, much as they would have done at Delphi thousands of years ago. For me the task of universities is how to retain this dialogue in an on-line world.

ps: I will be speaking on "MOOCs with Books" in the CSIRO Seminar Room at ANU, 4pm, 8 July 2013.

Who is buying my Green Technology Strategies book?

The notes for my course "ICT Sustainability" are available as a paperback book from Lulu, a print on demand service: "ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future". This has not exactly been a best seller, with a sale every day or two. What is curious is that the previous edition "Green Technology Strategies", is selling much better. In February, 46 copies were sold. Most of this was one bulk sale to Ingram and most of the other recent sales have been through Ingram. Who are buy the book? Why don't they buy the new edition? Should I withdraw the old edition?

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.

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.

Universities Australia e-Press

For the Digital Culture Public Sphere in Sydney, 6 October 2011I have suggested support to reinvogorate the Australian book publishing industry. Australian government measures in this area have been ineffective so far as they have equated "publishing" with "printing". The e-book is making printing printing increasingly irrelevant to publishing. So in the Digital Culture Wiki being created as part of a submission to the National Cultural Policy, I have proposed:

• Support for Book Publishing: In the rush to video and digital on-line work the role of the humble book in Australian culture has been forgotten. However, the book is being re-borne as the e-book and Australia can have a viable e-publishing industry. This industry can be supported by Australia's libraries and universities. This will enhance the traditional role of the library as a resource for authors, for allowing them not only to research their work but prepare it for publication, submit it and also offer a not-for-profit service for free open access publishing. This will provide savings, for libraries which currently are required to purchase access to the works written by their clients.
• Reform of university presses: Currently the Australian government subsidizes non-profitable university publishers. These publishers produce works on paper which are not available to most of the Australian population. Under a revised system, universities would merge their presses into "Universities Australia e-Press" with the mission to produce cultural works on-line for free, for community benefit. ANU ePress would be used as the model for the new organization.

ICT Sustainability eBook Published

An ePub edition of "ICT Sustainability" is now available from LuLu.com. The text of the book remains available free on the web, as well as a print on demand paperback and a PDF eBook. This is a new edition of the notes for the postgraduate courses: COMP7310 (Australian National University), Green Technology Strategies (Australian Computer Society) and ACS25 (Open Universities Australia).

ICT Sustainability Book Published

"ICT Sustainability" is now available free on the web, as well as a print on demand paperback and a PDF eBook. This is a new edition of the notes for the postgraduate courses: COMP7310 (Australian National University), Green Technology Strategies (Australian Computer Society) and ACS25 (Open Universities Australia).

Changes from Previous Version

1. Skills descriptions: Two SFIA sustainability skills have (SUST: Sustainability strategy and SUAS: Sustainability assessment) replaced the six ICT skills specified previously.

2. Structure: The course has been divided into two sections, each covering one of the two skills.

3. Assignment Titles: The descriptions of the two assignments have been changed to match the two skills.

4. Reference Changes: The number of links to external sources and also internal links (particularly to the Glossary) has been reduced, to avoid confusing the reader. The list of sources cited has been consolidated into one section at the back and Harvard style references used.

5. Title: ICT Sustainability has replaced Green ICT in the title, to match the skills descriptions used.

ICT Sustainability: Assessment and Strategies for a Low Carbon Future

By Tom Worthington

Paperback, 137 pages

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. This book is designed to be used with an award winning on-line course for professionals, using mentored and collaborative learning techniques.

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.

Postgraduate Professional Education with eBooks and Smartphones

I will be speaking on "Using Moodle for Postgraduate Professional Education with eBooks and Smartphones" at Moodlemoot AU 2010, in Melbourne, 11:30am, 12 July 2010 in the Mobile Learning stream.

The first globally accredited Green Information Technology course for computer professionals commenced in January 2009. The course uses Moodle to teach how to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Sponsored by the Australian Computer Society as part of an international program for professional education, the course now run at the masters level by the Australian National University. Course designer Tom Worthington discusses how the course uses e-learning with mentored and collaborative techniques and how it has worked with three cohorts of students from around the world. He also discusses the process of having a course approved by Australia's leading university, with no prerequisites, no lectures, no examinations, all open source Creative Commons content and able to be conducted via a smart phone. Some changes to the course in the light of experience with Moodle will also be discussed. The use of the Moodle Book Module to bring together material is a more coherent way will be shown. Tom will also show how it is possible to convert material from a Moodle course to publish an e-book for the Amazon Kindle, a printed paperback and hardback book: http://www.tomw.net.au/green/

From: Using Moodle for Postgraduate Professional Education with eBooks and Smartphones, Tom Worthington, The Australian National University,

Advertising in ebooks for the iPad

With the Apple iPad now released I thought I should finish the Epub version of my Green Technology Strategies book. One insight is that the Epub format used for iPad ebooks is just a type of canned web site. So it may be feasible to have advertisements, such as those for Google AdWords and Amazon.com embedded in an ebook.

When their ebook reader was connected to the Internet, the reader could click on an advertisement to connect to the advertiser's web site. This revenue might be enough to make many ebooks, magazines and newspapers available at no charge to the reader.

For those who do not like the idea of advertising being introduced into books, it has been there fore at least 100 years, as some Victorian era paperback books included advertising at the front and back.

Obviously there would be the issue of what to do when the reader is offline and where to put the ads on the small screen.

Another insight this brought was that e-books don't have back covers. I was designing the cover using Lulu.com's online tool and wondered why the button for creating the back cover was missing from the tool. It took me some time to realise that ebooks don't have back covers, in effect there is just the title page combined with the cover of the book. The promotional material which is usually on the back cover of a paperback, or the dust jacket of a hardback book is provided external to the book in the publisher's system.

Apple iPad online ebook tool

Print on demand service Lulu.com, are encouraging self publishing authors to produce their books in the Epub format used by the Apple iPad. My Green Technology Strategies book is avialable though LuLu.com and I was already considering a Epub version. So it was timely that LuLu sent me an offer, where if I created an ePub version of my book by 3/22/10 they would offer 50% off their usual fee. There is also a competition to win an Apple Ipad, but this is only for US residents.

Unfortunately what LuLu.com did not explain was what their new Epub service was, what it cost, or how to obtain more details. I assumed that if I entered the LuLu.com website with my user-id there will be details of the Epub option added next to the existing PDF ebook option. But I had to look in the help files for any mention of Epub. There I found Epub, but discussed as a variant of DRM. , which I assume stands for "Digital Rights Management". That is the topic of how to create a digital book seems to be treated as an exercise in electroncially tagging the file to protect the interlectual proproty rights to the content. So I am still none the wasiser as how to create a Epub ebook with LuLu.

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.

Google advertising campaign to sell green ebook

Prompted by a free voucher from Google, I started an AdWords web based advertising campaign for my "Green Technology Strategies" book. I set the campaign for $7.50 a day for a week and left it to Google's system to work out how many ads to put where (except none on my own web site). The result was 1,119 ads placed on average position of 4.1 (that is forth down in a list of ads), with Google's system automatically bidding US$1.39 per ad.

The result was only one "click" on the ad, at a cost of 50 US cents. There were no sales of the product advertised.

Admittedly, I set AdWords a tough challenge by trying to sell the most expensive, slowest to deliver hardback edition of the book (cheap instant ebooks sell best).

While this was a failure for book sales, I seemed to get more direct leads about my consulting business. It would appear that companies read the ad, did not buy the book, but thought "he wrote a book and so must be an expert on the topic, lets contact him".

Starting by running an advertising campaign which lasts a week is a good idea, as this will coincide with the tips Google sends you. Each week they send new advertuisers a mail message about one page long with some suggestions. The one tis week for me was on "Top tips for great keywords:

A great keyword is:

• Ideally, 2-3 words long
• Specific (keywords that are too broad or general will not reach users as effectively as keywords that are highly targeted)
• Directly related to the text in your ad
• Directly related to the page your ad links to (specified by the destination URL) ...

Apart from being a useful technique which educators could emulate, these email messages are very useful marketing. Promoted by this I started a new campaign, linking to the eBook, rather than the print edition:

Green Technology eBook
Computers can reduce energy use.
As used by leading universities.
www.lulu.com

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.

Producing a large print book

With the e-book, paperback and hardcover editions of my book "Green Technology Strategies" available, I thought I might try a Large Print edition. These books use fonts of 16 to 20 points to make them easier to read for those with limited vision.

Guidelines usually suggest a sans serif font and wider spacing for large print books. For a novel, the larger font is usually accommodated by using smaller margins, a slightly larger page and increasing the number of pages in the book. But for a textbook, the page numbering can be significant.

The largest paper size offered by LuLu's print on demand service is A4 (8.26 x 11.69 inches). My PDF typeset original is designed for U.S. Trade (6 x 9 inch) with a 11 point Times Roman font. Simply by printing on larger A4 paper will enlarge the pages 130%, increasing the font to 14 points. This is a bit small for a for a large print book. I could reduce the margins to .5 inches (the minimum for LuLu), which would allow the text to be enlarged to about 138%, or about 15 points .

Other changes would require redoing the typesetting of the book. Currently I have just one typeset version for hardback, paperback and the e-book. Some of changes could be made to this with a large print version in mind, so the one original would work for all. As an example, a slightly larger font could be used for the standard editions, such as 11.5 point (up from 11 point) and slightly larger margins (1 inch up from .79). This would allow a larger large print version wile maintaining compatibility. Others require a different typesetting for the large print edition.

Times Roman is a serif font, which is not recommended for readability for those with limited vision. LuLu provide a limited range of fonts, which those in supplied PDF documents are converted to before printing (so it is best to start with one of these). Of the LuLu supported fonts, these are sans: Arial, Tahoma and Verdana. Of these Verdana looks the most suitable as it designed for readability at small sizes. Changing the font to Ariel adds about 10 pages to the book. Verdana is more generously spaced and ads about 20 pages. Increasing the font to 16 point would increase the book to 156 pages.

It might be worth changing the font for the e-book version as well as the large print edition. In fact it might be worth reversing the usual priority, where the print edition is seen as normal, and large print and e-book versions are derived from these. A standard size print edition with 11.5 point Verdana would look a little unusual, but be very readable.

Also adding 20 pages to the book might make it more marketable, with the customer feeling they are getting more (even if what they are getting is more white space). Originally I laid the book out to minimise white space, ignoring some printing conventions (such as starting a new chapter on an odd numbered page), so it looks a little crowded. Adding more white space, a larger font and larger margins would increase the book from 114 to 172 pages (a 50% increase).

Green Technology Strategies Hardback Book in Print

After some problems with the LuLu publishing system, the hardback edition of my book "Green Technology Strategies" is avialable (ISBN: 978-0-9806201-4-6) This took two hours to create, starting from the paperback edition.

The process of producing a hardback edition of an existing paperback book was something I thought would take a couple of minutes. LuLu.com have a button to push to create a hardback if you have already set up the files for a paperback. This seemed to work, copying all the book details to the hardback. I just had to specify if I wanted the book covered in cloth (with a dust jacket) or have a glossy printed paper cover (I went for the glossy paper).

The cover and book content were unchanged from the paperback. But then I noticed there was no where to enter the ISBN of the hardback (issued by Thorpe Bowker) which is different to the paperback. A check with the LuLu help files and some head scratching told me I had to go back a step before the one I started at. The problem was that LuLu assumed I would use an ISBN issued by them.

Then the subtitle on the cover did not quite line up the way it did on the paperback. This might be due to the slight difference in the size of the cover. A hardback cover extends a few mm beyond the pages of a book, whereas a paperback cover is the same size as the pages. I had to manually break the text in the subtitle so "carbon emissions" was on one line.

Then I found the LuLu price calculator kept rounding the price up one cent more than the amount I entered.

That all took about an hour to fix. Then I realised I had to modify the content of the book to include the new hardback ISBN in the front matter (LuLu automatically generates the ISBN and barcode for the book cover, but leaves the interior up to the book's creator). That required generating a new PDF file of the entire book and checking the pagination and paragraph numbering, then uploading it. Also I had to remember to upload the new front matter to the web version of the book and the e-learning version in the ANU Moodle content management system (which is the version my students actually read).

Last of all I found that the preview of the book (so people can browse before buying) was missing. The LuLu preview generator appeared to be producing a blank preview. After going through the process a few times I discovered the preview was being generated, just not displayed.

One thing which did work was that LuLU linked the downloadable e-book, paperback and hardcover editions of the book together, so that customers can see they have three versions to choose from.

All that took another hour. I guess that publishers earn their money after all. ;-)

Green ICT at the Library of Alexandria

Senator Lundy blogged about my book in "New E-book: how to be green in ICT" and mentioned how the PM referred to the greenhouse gas emissions savings which could be made with broadband. In checking where the book would be available "print on demand" in stores, I noticed that one is the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Library of Alexandria) in Egypt. It is somewhat of an honour to have a book available in the same place the ancients borrowed their books. For the readers at the library, the e-book is available translated into Arabic by Google.