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. ;-)

OUA Free Online Courses Look Good

So far, the Open2 Study Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) system from Open Universities Australia (OUA) looks good and much better than any of the US MOOCs I have tried. I enrolled in "Writing for the Web". OUA seem to have anticipated the sort of worries students have and are starting to introduce us to each other on-line, even before the course formally starts. I will discuss some of this in my "MOOCs with Books" series of talks:  Singapore 24 April, Colombo 28 April, CSIRO 8 July, and Canberra 12 November 2013.

MOOCs with Books in Canberra, Colombo and Singapore

I will be speaking on "ICT trends in Education" at the Australian Computer Society meeting in Canberra, 12 November 2013. Also at the CSIRO in Canberra on 8 July, ICCSE 2013 Colombo 28 April and in Singapore 24 April.

MOOCs with Books: Syncronisation of Large Scale Asynchronous e-Learning

This is to invite corrections and suggestions for my presentation "MOOCs with Books: Syncronisation of Large Scale Asynchronous e-Learning" for the 8th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE 2013) in Colombo in late April (web slides also available). The basic idea is that use of "real time" delivery of e-learning places an unnecessary burden on the Learning Management System (LMS) and networks used and is also not good for the students. Most supposedly "synchronous" education, on-line and in the classroom, is not really "real time". Relaxing the restrictions this imposes on the system will allow millions of students to be accommodated and also provide better learning. An easy way to explain this is with the example of an eBook, which the student can download and read when they want, attempt the exercises in the book and check their answers. It is only after doing their "homework" that the student needs to interact with the LMS, their fellow students and perhaps a teacher. Rather than build complete new Learning Management Systems for MOOCs, packages such as Moodle, can be upgraded to handle the load, using existing technology, such as SCORM and HTML5.

 This started as a scholarly paper on "Synchronizing Asynchronous Learning". But since submitting the paper last year, I have given a few presentations on how to have large on-line courses scale (both in terms of software and pedagogy), under the title "MOOCs with Books", so I added this to the conference presentation as a postscript. If anyone is interested I can give a practice run of the talk in Canberra, Sydney or Singapore.

Description: On-line learning uses the terms synchronous and asynchronous to describe tools and learning activities. This research looks into the origins of these terms, their use today and asks if these are the correct terms to use and if the use of these terms has held up the development of better tools and techniques. It is proposed that the use of syncronisation of asynchronous learning is particularly applicable to address issues with large scale e-learning, such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
Keywords: Asynchronous Learning; Synchronous Learning; Electronic Learning; Web Conference; Videoconferencing; Pedagogy; Massive Open Online Courses, MOOC.
Please cite as:

Worthington, T. (2013). Synchronizing Asynchronous Learning: Combining Synchronous and Asynchronous Techniques. In Proceedings of 2013 8th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), 26 Apr - 28 Apr 2013 , Sri Lanka.
Preprint available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/9556

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).

Using iPads and eBooks For Training

The Canberra Institute of Technology will host a forum on Using iPads and eBooks For Training, 4:30 pm 24 October 2012.

ACT - e-Rated Networking Forum (face-to-face) 

When: Wednesday, October 24, 2012, 4:30 – 6:30pm 

Where: Canberra Institute of Technology, Reid Campus. Further details will be emailed to registrants closer to date.

Note: Interested in using iPads and eBooks in your training delivery?\ 

Join us at this ACT's e-Rated Networking Forum to hear how Box Hill Institute is using iPads with their apprentices! 

Guest Speakers: 

• Pauline Farrell, Executive Manager - Blended E-learning Solutions, Box Hill Institute
• Steven McMahon, Teacher - Metal Fabrication Trades, Canberra Institute of Technology

You must register (sign up) to attend this FREE face-to-face event.

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

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.

US Government Report on Accessible eBooks for University Students

The US Education Department has issued the "Report of the Advisory Commission on Accessible Instructional Materials in Postsecondary Education for Students with Disabilities". The report is in the form of a 981 Kbyte Microsoft Word document. Given that the commission is advising on access to documents for people with disabilities, it is unfortunate (and ironic) the commission did not release the report in the form of accessible web pages, nor as an eBook, so that it would be easier to access, particularly for those with a disability.

Executive Summary

The Advisory Commission on Accessible Instructional Materials in Postsecondary Education for Students with Disabilities (the Commission) was authorized under the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA) to address and seek remedies for the challenges encountered by students with print disabilities enrolled in postsecondary institutions (see Appendix C).

This report is based on the shared experiences and perspectives of the 19 stakeholder representatives who make up the Commission. These Commissioners speak with one voice in stating that barriers that would deny students with disabilities their rights to full and complete access to their educational experience are unacceptable in a society that values achievement through education.

After much research, testimony, and intense discussion, the Commission has prepared this report to provide insights into the array of barriers that often confront postsecondary students with disabilities. Among these barriers are instructional materials, technologies and operating systems which, in some circumstances, are transitory and, with effort, correctable. In other situations, however, challenges presented to making these necessary items accessible are more significant due to the limited resources of campus disability resource/service (DR/S) offices, the increasing complexity and modalities of emerging instructional materials and the delivery systems employed to utilize these materials. It is critical that these and other obstacles be removed.

The Commission understands that the collaborative efforts of the companies and individuals involved in the production of instructional materials and their delivery systems, disability advocates, institutions of higher education and students with disabilities themselves can—together—be powerful enough to overcome barriers to educational opportunity.

Further, the Commission believes that the solution to current and future challenges lies in the establishment of a vibrant market of thoughtfully developed instructional tools that are designed from the outset to meet the needs of the broadest possible range of students, including those with disabilities.

Congress charged the Commission with several important functions, including making recommendations to Congress and to the Secretary of Education. The Commission acknowledges that the current accessible instructional materials (AIM) landscape involves a variety of competing forces, many of which are in motion and some of which are in conflict. It can be seen

as an intersection of converging perspectives and practices. This intersection could incite a meaningful paradigm shift regarding the way accessibility in the postsecondary environment is embraced and implemented. Indeed, change could be profound over the next few years as the world of print—with its long-standing practices, policies and market dynamics—increasingly gives way to digital communication. With respect to AIM, the Commission believes that the impact of these innovations ultimately will be dramatic. We also acknowledge that change takes time, and that in the context of higher education in particular, the evolution of perspectives and organizational practices will not be immediate.

The complex infrastructure of creating, locating and acquiring AIM has changed since HEOA legislation was written and enacted in 2008. At the time of HEOA legislation, the AIM arena was focused almost entirely on creating alternate formats. Today, it is shifting towards a more market-based, digital response that, in some cases, obviates the need for alternate formats. Currently, market-based and licensed alternate format distribution models such as CourseSmart and the AccessText Network exist that were only envisioned when the HEOA was drafted. For the most commonly used postsecondary textbooks, DR/S offices can now rapidly acquire publisher files or permission to scan books, determine whether another school has already created an alternate format that is available for licensing, and determine whether they or individual students can acquire digital versions from digital retailers. Throughout its study, the Commission viewed media-rich products from a number of digital materials and software vendors that evinced a strong commitment to accessibility. The Commission’s challenge has been to describe how leveraging these new possibilities can dramatically improve the delivery of AIM, immediately and over time.

The Commission heard testimony from more than 50 witnesses about the persisting needs of individuals with disabilities (both students and faculty) and those who provide support to these individuals at the postsecondary level. The Commission heard testimony from many stakeholder groups, including textbook publishers, software developers, faculty, advocacy groups, technology experts, government agencies and others. Most of these groups are working to develop more effective, balanced solutions to address the intricate challenge of ensuring that students with disabilities receive accessible instructional materials in a timely, cost effective manner.

The Commission also heard testimony from students with disabilities, D/RS providers and faculty that conveyed a variety of concerns pertaining to AIM in the postsecondary environment that still exist. This testimony revealed that some students with

disabilities have experienced a variety of challenges, including blocked access to educational opportunities and matriculation failure resulting from inaccessible learning materials and/or their delivery systems. Testimony also indicated that DR/S and other university personnel often must engage in labor-intensive practices to provide AIM for students with disabilities. Each of the Commission’s five in-person meetings thus reflected that while there are a variety of emerging improved practices in the area of AIM, there is still persistent unmet need.

Despite profound differences in opinion on how change should occur, Commission members have achieved consensus on a number of fundamental issues. Commission members agree that a potentially viable accessible digital marketplace is emerging in some areas, but there is not agreement that this progress is occurring within all components of the instructional materials enterprise. While textbook publishers and a number of e-text vendors are moving to incorporate accessibility into their products, some developers of web applications, social media and productivity software used to support postsecondary instructional practice are less pro-active.

To facilitate the incorporation of accessibility features in technologies used in postsecondary settings, the Commission’s recommendations urge Congress to take action on a number of key issues. Such issues include, but are not limited to, a) establishing a process for creating uniform accessibility guidelines for industry and consumers, b) revisiting the components of existing copyright exception, c) assessing AIM’s relationship to current research and instructional materials access taking into account the rights of content owners and d) re-emphasizing the importance of compliance with civil rights laws for institutions of higher education so that the needs of students with disabilities are more adequately addressed by postsecondary educational institutions.

Further, the Commission urges Congress to establish mechanisms for assessing the market progress that all Commission members hope will occur to support additional means of incentivizing content developers to incorporate accessibility during product design and to reinforce the necessity for open source instructional materials to be held to the same standards for access as other materials. The Commission has provided a series of specific recommendations for promoting these outcomes.

The Commission believes that the identification of need for, acquisition of, and use of accessible instructional materials are the administrative responsibility of every higher education institution, not simply the task of DR/S offices. To expand this understanding and to facilitate procurement processes and to support personnel in becoming
far more sensitive to and knowledgeable about accessible instructional materials, the Commission has crafted a set of capacity-building recommendations for postsecondary personnel and students.

Finally, the Commission believes strongly in the capabilities of well-designed and innovative models as a mechanism for promoting effective change. Therefore it has developed recommendations for model demonstration projects that promote the effective use of AIM in the postsecondary environment through training and innovation. The Commission posits that solutions developed for students with disabilities have the potential to incite innovative practices that will improve postsecondary education for all postsecondary students. ...

From: Report of the Advisory Commission on Accessible Instructional Materials in Postsecondary Education for Students with Disabilities", US Education Department, 6 December 2011

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.

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.

Word Processing an eBook

Previously I tried creating an ePub eBook from a word Processing document using LuLu's new conversion utility. There were a few problems with this as I had used exactly the same word processing file I had used to create the paperback book. So I took a copy of the paper-book and started editing it to make the eBook version.

The image I had on the title page did not show up on the eBook. I had an image in the background on the page, but you can only have simple in-line images in ePub. So I changed the image to in-line. At the same time I sued a lower resolution version fot he image, as the eBook readers have much lower resolution than a printed page. Using the high resoolution imaqge just wasted space (this one image took as much file space as all the text of the book).

The Lulu software generates a table of contents for the book, so the one I ha for the printed version was redundant (and refereed to no-existent page numbers as eBooks don't have pages. So I dented the table of contents.

I found if I set the WP document to B6 size (4.92 x 6.93 inches), with margins of 0.43 inches and text at 12 point, the WP document looked about the same as the resulting eBook. The page sizes in the word processing document are ignored by the conversion process, as eBooks do not have fixed size pages, but it helps to have the document you are working on look roughly like the final result will be.

Ebook readers do not do a good job of fully justified text, so I changed the format to left justified and the Lulu converter does not support hyphenation, so I made the text left justified.

The converter turns each level 2 heading into a new chapter, whereas my book had heading 1 for chapters. I thought this was a side effect of conversion of the content from the Moodle Learning Management System. But I found I had incorrectly entered the headings in Moodle. So I went back and manually changed all the level 1 headings to level 2, level 2 to level 3 and so on.

The copyright page of the book had run on under the title page, as the copyright page has no heading (and the conversion process ignores page breaks, eBooks having no fixed pages). It was not clear what to do with the copyright page. In theory this information is contained in a separate file in the eBook, but the reader may never think to look there. So I created what is in effect the first chapter of the book called "About the Book" and put the copyright information there.

With all that done the eBook looks reasonable. But eBooks using the current ePub standard (and the Kindle format using by Amazon), look like very dull web pages, without advanced formatting. In that way they mimic black and white paperback books, but it would be difficult to produce something like a children's story book this way. The new version of ePub based on HTML 5 may fix this, but backward compatibility with low cost eBook readers will be a problem.

Creating an ePub eBook from a Word Processing Document

Print on demand service Lulu announced a new eBook EPUB Converter and eBook Publishing Tools, I thought I would try it out. Previously I have used LuLu to distribute an ePub version of a book on the Apple iTunes store, but the process of converting my content to the ePub format was not easy.

Lulu also offer a EPUB Creator Guide which is full of tips which would be of use to those producing a paper book, as well as eBooks. I skimmed through the guide and Launce into a new book project. The first few steps are the same as for a paperback, you enter the title and author for the book and Lulu issues you an ISBN (or you supply your own). You then upload the word processing file with the book content in it.

At this point you have the choice of supplying PDF, in which case your eBook is only distributed by Lulu, or a file which can be converted to ePub (so it can be distributed by iBooks and others). I had the book both in the form of a set of one web page per chapter (for use in a Learning Management System) and as one word processing master document (used to create the PDF for the printed book). Conventional wisdom would say the web original would be better for ePub as that is a web based format. But I wanted to try Lulu's converter which works with word processing files.

One problem is that Lulu does not accept master documents (with separate files for chapters). So I have to save the book as one file. At this point I assumed I would have to use a Microsoft Word DOC file, but later discovered I could use the LibreOffice ODT format. So I tried both formats.

After uploading the file Lulu took less than a minute to convert to ePub. It reported some changes it made:

In order to create your EPUB, we had to make a few changes to your document:

• Your file "ict_sustainability.doc" uses optional hyphens, which is currently not supported. We have converted the file anyway, but it may contain formatting errors, Please review the result.
• We removed multiple blank lines found in succession to prevent unwanted page breaks.
• We adjusted all image formatting to be set inline. To create an EPUB, images must be centered inline in the document.
• We have stripped all headers and/or footers in your document. Headers and footers are not supported in the EPUB format.

The book has only one image and the DOC file is only 642 kbytes (for 132 pages). After conversion it was 251 kbytes of EPUB, which was worrying as I thought something must have been lost in the conversion.

On opening the ebook with Calibre, I found all my chapters there in the table of contents. The title page was not correctly formatted, my image missing and the table of contents generated by the word processor was present but is superfluous for an eBook.

The metadata for the book (title, auditor, publisher, description, ISBN and the lie) was correctly formatted in the epub document. This is an impressive feature, in that the Author does not need to do any work to have this information inserted in the ebook. They author simply enters the information where promoted by Lulu's forms and this is inserted.

One surprise was that the Sigil e-book editor reported dozens of errors in the epub code generated by Lulu. One errors was that the Language element is missing (Lulu is only supporting books in English at present, but even so the books should indicate they are in English). All the other errors are "attribute 'target" is not declared for element 'a'". While these do not seem serious errors, it is worrying that Lulu generates them as ebook distributors and ebook readers are much less tolerant of errors than web servers and browsers.

While the layout of the print book was reproduced, the word and line spacing was not correct. Some paragraphs had lines of text touching, others had too much white space. Also the text is displayed fully justified, which does not work well with the poor layout algorithms of the ebook readers.

However, given the minimal effort required, this was a reasonable first attempt. I then realized I could use the native ODT file format of LibreOffice (and Open Office). That produced a ODT file of only 92 kbytes and eboup of 202 kbytes. At that point I assumed there must be a mistake, but the content appeared to be all there (apart from the image).

The formatting of the eBook from ODT looked much better than from DOC (not surprisingly as ODT is a native format for the word processor I am using). The title page, chapter and section headings where in the correct font and color. The paragraph text was not overlapping. The fully justified text still did not look quite right as the Lulu conversion process (as it warned) had removed the hyphenated text.

Obviously reading the tips in the Lulu guide would help remove the extraneous print book formatting to get the eBook to look right. One issue is that as the book had started out as a set of web pages, with one chapter per page, the major headings were marked as "level 2:" (H2 in HTML). The ebook treats each of these as a new book chapter, resulting in the book being overly fragmented. It appears I will need to reformat the book with the H2 replaced with H3 (H3 with H4 and so on).

It would be useful if Lulu added some more features to the converter and the guide, so that the author could create one source document for the print and eBook editions. This is just about possible with the print and PDF versions.

Obviously it is possible to use the same book chapter content and use them in two differently formatted master documents. But I did this previously for the book "Green Technology Strategies" and the process gets very complicated very quickly. It would be good to have an option where it was possible, for example, to include the table of contents for the printed edition, but have the epub conversion process omit it. The conversion process could also ignore requests for fully justified text.

While I will need to fix up my book contents for the ebook, I thought I might was well step through the rest of the Lulu punishing process to see if there are any changes from the print version. The next step was to create a "marketing image". This is much the same as the front cover for a paperback book (an ebook has no equivalent to a back cover). One difference is the aspect ratio, with the ebook image being much squarer than a typical paperback (apparently it is for a 3x4 computer screen). The description enterer for the book (keywords and the like) are the same as for a paperback. There is an extra step for Digital Rights Management (DRM) where for 25 cents a copy

Adobe Digital Editions stops the book being copied (I don't use this).

Lulu suggested a price of $8.99 (most ebooks are less than $10), with my revenue being $7.20 for sales on Lulu and $5.66 elsewhere. One surprise is with the book price was the that discount option has been removed. With a paperback book it is common to have a retail price and a discount, but Lulu argue that people buying ebooks see the discount as an indication the book is overpriced. It occurs to me that this might be because people realize ebooks cost little to manufacture and distribute. In any case Lulu point out that a low price of $.99 to $2.99 is likely to attract more sales.

There appears to be a curious anomaly in the Lulu pricing model. At prices above $3.31, my share of revenue on a book sale via Lulu is higher than when the book sold elsewhere. This makes sense as both Lulu and the book retailer have to receive a share of the revenue. But at $3.31, the revenue is the same from both and at prices below $3.31, the retinue via Lulu is lower than for elsewhere sales.

My inclination is to accept Lulu's suggestion and set the price at $2.99

eBook Publishing Tools from LuLu

Print on demand service Lulu have announced a new eBook EPUB Converter and eBook Publishing Tools. Previously I have used LuLu to distribute an ePub version of a book on the Apple iTunes store. Lulu took care of the distribution and sales, but the process of converting my content to the ePub format was not easy. Also it was confusing that the Lulu system treated the ePub version as a separate work, whereas the PDF ebook is managed alongside the print edition.

Lulu claim their new "Lulu EPUB Converter" will automatically fix minor errors, such as fonts and spacing.

Lulu also offer a EPUB Creator Guide. Curiously they do not offer this on the web, just downloaded in EPUB, PDF, and Ms Word format. It covers topics such as:

1. Settting up your document's EPUB Table of Contents
2. Prepare Word to create your document
3. Prepare your document for Lulu's EPUB Converter
4. Title, Copyright, and ToC in your document
5. Styling your document's paragraphs
6. Fonts/Text in your document
7. Images in your document
8. Hyperlinks in your document
9. Using Styles in your document
10. Using Indexes, Endnotes, and Footnotes in your document
11. Troubleshooting Your EPUB Conversion

Aldi Low Cost Colour eBook Reader

Aldi is advertising that a 7" Colour eBook Reader will be on sale in their stores for $79 from 11 August 2011.This has a LCD screen (not e-ink like some readers) so will be less readable outdoors. 800 x 480 pixel screen, 2GB memory and an Micro SD card slot. It can read PDF, TXT, EPUB, CHM, RTF and HTMLfil;es (what versions of HTML is not stated) and MP3, WMA music files. The unit has a small keyboard and set of navigation keys, rather than a touch screen. This appears similar to the SKYTEX Primer 7" Color E-reader.

Guardian Shorts eBook Series

The UK's Guardian Newspaper is conducting an interesting experiment in on-line publishing with its Guardian Shorts. These are a series of eBooks, sold via the Amazon Kindle and Apple iTunes stores. These have commentary on current events, and are up to 30,000 words each, costing less than £4. The first is "Phone Hacking: How the Guardian broke the story", 5 August 2011.

Newspapers repackaging material for educational purposes is not new, but doing this as an eBook may provide a whole new market. However, it remains to be seen if the content is any better than that free on-line. As an example the Wikipedia's "News International phone hacking scandal", is 14,000 carefully written, researched, referenced and most likely less biased, words, for free.

Firedocs eLML Editor for Ebooks and e-Learning Packages

It is the start of second semester at ANU and my colleagues are putting the finishing touches to their course materials (I am revising my green ICT course for next semester). This has prompted much discussion of suitable tools and formats for e-documents for learning. LaTex is a popular typesetting package with computer scientists (having been written by one). This can produce not only documents for printing, but also well formatted web pages and slides. It occurred to me that there may be some Latex to ePub or IMS Content Package tools. I did not find any of those but did find the Firedocs eLML Editor.

The eLesson Markup Language (eLML) is an XML based format originally developed for a Geographic Information Systems learning project. What got my attention was that the editor for eLML was integrated with the Firefox web browser and the output could be converted ePub eBook format and the IMS Content Package format used by Learning Management Systems, such as Moodle.

Installing the Firedocs editor was simple, but I found I could not actually edit anything. What was not clear was if I also needed to install eLML and/or Eclipse (for version control and file management).

Authors digitally autographing e-books

According to the NY Times there is an App called "Autography" proposed for the iPad where a digital photo of the author with a fan is sent to an iPad, complete with message from the author written with an electronic stylus, ("Would You Sign My Kindle?" By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM, April 13, 2011).

That all sounds a bit complicated. I suspect that a busy author will
instead have an assistant type a message to the reader. That can be overlaid on a stock photo with autograph and sent to the reader's
device. One simple would be by generating a QR code on a screen, or
printed out. The fan would photograph that with their iPad, iPhone,
Android or other device. This would have the advantage that no complex electronic connection would be required.

I used a QR code on a conference poster last week and it worked well. People came up and photographed it for mode details. But no one asked for my autograph. ;-)