Notes from An Alien

~ Explorations In Reading, Writing, and Publishing ~

Caution: This Is for Geeky Authors . . .


How does a book get from a writer’s mind to a reader’s mind?

Simple answer >> through a publisher.

More realistic answer >> many methods, some controlled by traditional publishers, some controlled by the writer themselves.

Complex answer >> through a process that’s partly metaphysical; then, a process that includes various publishing professionals; or, in a rising percentage of cases, processes accomplished by an individual and intermediated by software and the Internet; and, finally, through the reverse flow of the initial metaphysical process

In my case, I use a trio of word processing tools then send the result to a publishing-aid company that converts my words to print and e-book editions which are purchased on the Internet (or, in different versions, obtained free) and consumed by readers.

Now to the really geeky stuff.

Sanders Kleinfeld published an article on O’Reilly Programming called HTML5 is the Future of Book Authorship.

It sat in my bookmark-bin for about eight months until I found a way to sneak it into this blog in a way that, hopefully, wouldn’t scare away my regular readers

A few excerpts from the article:

“In the past six years, the rise of the ebook has ushered in three successive revolutions that have roiled and reshaped the traditional publishing industry.

“Revolution #1 began in November in 2007, when Amazon released its first-generation eInk Kindle.

“Revolution #2 began in January of 2010, when Apple released its first-generation iPad.

“But I’m currently most excited about Revolution #3, which just started to take hold in early 2012, when folks deeply invested in the implications of Revolutions #1 and #2 started asking, ‘How do you create these postmodern books that contain more than just text and pictures, which people will read on eInk ereaders, tablets, and smartphones?’

“From this question sprang tools such as iBooks AuthorVookPressBooks, and Inkling, which all attempt to tackle one or more facets of this problem.

“Revolution #3 isn’t really defined by a new piece of hardware, software product, or platform. Instead, it’s really marked by a dramatic paradigm change among authors and publishers, who are shifting their toolsets away from legacy word processing and desktop publishing suites, and toward HTML5 and tools built on the Open Web Platform.”

O.K., I probably just lost about two-thirds of my regular readers

For the rest of you, there are these resources:

Digital Publishing Interest Group

Stuff on GitHub to have Geeky-fun with

Atlas

And, a Programming Newsletter

Plus, you can look at a few slideshows by Sanders.

Oh, also, for the two people still reading this post, grab a free copy of his e-book, HTML5 for Publishers—I just got one and may, or may not, talk about it in a future post

Anybody still here………?
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6 responses to “Caution: This Is for Geeky Authors . . .

  1. Silver Moon Unicorn May 15, 2014 at 3:58 pm

    HTML5? I use XHTML when I build ebooks…

    Liked by 1 person

    • Alexander M Zoltai May 15, 2014 at 4:04 pm

      Wow, Silver Moon, you’re one of the two people I predicted would read the whole post

      If you take any links, it would be nice if you came back and shared your opinion

      Like

  2. Martina Sevecke-Pohlen May 16, 2014 at 4:00 am

    30 months ago I was scared of HTML. Now I can use it. There certainly was a revolution for me. And I’m not the only one who likes to fiddle and tweak with words AND with code.

    Like

    • Alexander M Zoltai May 16, 2014 at 1:18 pm

      Words and code—sounds good—and, words Are code, too :-)

      Like

  3. Jane Watson May 16, 2014 at 10:19 am

    Well I downloaded the book to look at :-) I did learn HTML 3 a long time ago but other tools seemed to replace it after that. I will look again… :-)

    Like

    • Alexander M Zoltai May 16, 2014 at 1:22 pm

      I, too, downloaded the book—decided not to read it now—my goals are so closely focused—seems the book focuses on using html5 for books that go beyond the norm with video embeds, etc.—though, writing with code would speed turning a manuscript into an e-book—still, I’ll leave that to FastPencil for now :-)

      Like

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