Comments on: Introduction http://book.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction Essays from the bleeding edge of publishing. Mon, 08 Apr 2013 21:06:03 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Hervé http://book.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction#comment-6592 Hervé Tue, 02 Oct 2012 05:29:56 +0000 http://book.pressbooks.com/?p=1#comment-6592 I just finished reading the first two chapters and think I will keep this book close at hand for a long time : not only it does resonate with my current work for a French publisher aspiring going digital, but I do believe this brilliant thinking applies to other “industries”. Great work.

]]> By: Baron Schwartz http://book.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction#comment-3657 Baron Schwartz Tue, 17 Jul 2012 16:52:45 +0000 http://book.pressbooks.com/?p=1#comment-3657 “Digital—which had wrought havoc on the music and newspaper industries”

Just a nitpick: the past tense of wreak is wreaked. Maybe you meant it this way — it isn’t quite wrong, after all. See http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20000404

I usually try to avoid “wreak havoc” in any tense for exactly this pedantic reason :)

]]> By: thomasr http://book.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction#comment-233 thomasr Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:48:58 +0000 http://book.pressbooks.com/?p=1#comment-233 This book is a document in progress, with feedback before, during and after publication. When is the best time to apply an ISBN? It seems to me that an ISBN sets something in stone, to put it on record. Or to mark an edition format type. But how do you see it applying to a fluid digital book(s) project like this one?
Great book and PressBooks website, by the way!
Thomas

]]> By: Hugh McGuire http://book.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction#comment-146 Hugh McGuire Sun, 27 Nov 2011 02:44:00 +0000 http://book.pressbooks.com/?p=1#comment-146 thanks for the formatting comments… we’ve got some new CSS’s for ebooks …

]]> By: R. Scot Johns (@RScotJohns) http://book.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction#comment-140 R. Scot Johns (@RScotJohns) Sat, 26 Nov 2011 00:36:14 +0000 http://book.pressbooks.com/?p=1#comment-140 I see you mentioned to ptr that presentation is a “next step,” but I thought I’d offer just a few quick notes on the downloaded e-reader files as I progress, since the notes here so far seem to be about the online version.

Both ePub and mobi formats condense the “About the Book” section into one solid block of text on the Kindle 3, Kindle Fire, iPad 2 and ADE for PC. Bullet points are lost amid the wall of text without being indented or separated out.

Internal links function correctly on all platforms, but external links are non-functional on the Kindle Fire. Elsewhere external links work fine.

On the Kindle Fire, the Title Page has an ugly hyphen break in the work “Manifesto” which renders it somewhat less than pleasant. The text here would also look better centered.

The remainder of the Intro “proper” is well formatted in mobi with indents, sections, and headers, but the ePub edition converts everything to web-style block paragraphs with no indents and spaces between.

I’m sure you’re aware of all this, but I thought I’d mention it just in case, and let you know that someone out here is paying attention.

Exciting read so far. Looking forward to the rest.

]]> By: Hugh McGuire http://book.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction#comment-45 Hugh McGuire Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:00:03 +0000 http://book.pressbooks.com/?p=1#comment-45 hi ptr, thanks for the comment. we’ve focused mainly on clarity in pressbooks backend, good structure for the “book”, and well-structured export formats (epub, typeset pdf, and web). what the books look like — that is the presentation layer on the various structured outputs — are “next steps.”

]]> By: ptr http://book.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction#comment-44 ptr Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:49:56 +0000 http://book.pressbooks.com/?p=1#comment-44 Screen after screen after screen of grey type is really unpleasant to read. Contrast increases clarity – this would be less dull, visually, set in pure black type.

]]> By: Hugh McGuire http://book.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction#comment-42 Hugh McGuire Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:58:03 +0000 http://book.pressbooks.com/?p=1#comment-42 @bob a fair point. the shift was certainly later in the consumer market compared with others — and not just fiction, but much of trade, academic etc. o’reilly’s experience, for instance, is a huge surge of digital sales in the last three years, so that now digital outstrips print. that is new for them, and the 20% sales etc that we are seeing elsewhere is new as well. … so yes, reading has been digital (predominantly probably) for many many years, but publishers of long-form texts (aka books) are entering a digital world that substantially shifts, for many of the ones I talk to, how they expect to be doing business in the next 5 years and beyond.

]]> By: Hugh McGuire http://book.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction#comment-41 Hugh McGuire Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:52:09 +0000 http://book.pressbooks.com/?p=1#comment-41 @bob a fair point. the shift was certainly later in the consumer market compared with others — and not just fiction, but much of trade, academic etc. o’reilly’s experience, for instance, is a huge surge of digital sales in the last three years, so that now digital outstrips print. that is new for them, and the 20% sales etc that we are seeing elsewhere is new as well. … so yes, reading has been digital (predominantly probably) for many many years, but publishers of long-form texts (aka books) are entering a digital world that substantially shifts, for many of the ones I talk to, how they expect to be doing business in the next 5 years and beyond.

]]> By: Hugh McGuire http://book.pressbooks.com/front-matter/introduction#comment-40 Hugh McGuire Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:42:33 +0000 http://book.pressbooks.com/?p=1#comment-40 @dominic: the authors all own the copyrights on their chapters.

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