Joshua Tallent of eBook Architects (who do gorgeous work) points out that people are getting beyond just being about to see text on a screen as the definition of an ebook:
“To me, the big deal is that the conversion process is going to morph from conversion to design. We’ve been stuck on this idea that we have to get books developed and out in the market right now. We’re trying to get thousands of backlist titles produced, and the quality has suffered.”
Heck yeah!
“When it comes to independent authors, many think they can take a Word document and turn it into an e-book. That’s fine if you want a very basic book, and you can probably do it yourself. But things are getting more intense, and we have more functionality. If you want to include audio and video, you have to get into the code and know what you’re doing. That creates a higher barrier to entry. As that barrier goes up, self-published authors will have a harder time competing with the big publishers.”
Agreed, but I hope it’s more like the Web than that; lots of people produce Web pages of varying quality, but the tools are available to everyone to do basic things like put a video on a page. Making a beautifully designed e-book page certainly takes some skill and talent, but I would hope big companies don’t have to be involved.
3 Comments
I’m a playwright and I was hoping to use Blurb as a way of printing a small run of new scripts for initial review and workshopping. Scripts have a particular format and unfortunately this format doesn’t transfer to the Blurb model. The only option is to edit the script, line-by-line once it has been transferred to Blurb. Definitely not worth the effort.
Whomever comes up with a program or conversion that can take InDesign, QuarkXpress or even BookSmart files and turn them into WYSIWYG small file size e-books will make a killing. Some entrepreneur out there must be on this. Hope it is sooner rather than later.
You are so awesome for helping me solve this mtyersy.