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In Focus... Kindle: any feedback about this mobile book reader from Amazon? Can foreign authors publish? Lonely Planet is here! I had discussed about restricting copy-paste in browsers last year in my blog- as content which does not belong to you must not be copy pasted- at least not easily. iPhone 3G can perhaps enforce that through a controlled distribution model and text/image- based eGuides and reference books can be avaialble for as low as a dollar... Electronic Ink newspapers in 2009? Feels and looks like paper... |
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saumilzx::Publishing
Print or Electronic? Publishing Books and reference material the conventional way, by printing at a press, binding it and assigning an ISBN is yet the most popular option for writers. The fact is that a book can be carried around, does not require a battery and will not require any software reader to 'open' it. The internet is not yet as ubiquitous as we would wish, so the good old printed book is the way to go. But are things changing? Will digital content finally get there, as the publisher's choice of a viable medium? CD-ROMS were promised to us as the replacement for print, but they could not. Broadly speaking, there are many competing technologies which can work- PDA style as in Kindle and iPhone 3G; Flexi-paper like Screens with electronic ink, and print on demand- to print books from PDF files... Who will win? Your guess is as good as mine... |
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Resources... ISBN Barcode generator for $10/barcode this is worth it. They do a great job generating an EPS from ISBN code. Since it is EPS, it prints sharp and can be resized as well. Be sure how the ISBN-13 and ISBN-10 digit codes work out for your book distribution. Booksurge is a print-on-demand service which will also sell your book on Amazon. From a PDF file submission for a $99/- one time fee. Books printed after the order is placed so no unsold stock to be maintained. Lightning Source is a UK based Print on Demand service with one file submission for various media- print, ebooks etc. |
Behind the scenes...
Most of the publishing projects I have been involved with is related to Travel Guides (Bangkok, Phuket) and other travel related content. However, with print on demand and other content channels opening up, I am going to push ideas in sports, photography, travel, and technology related issues.iPhone 3G sure looks tempting and we will get some of our mapping tools and travel content, hopefully soon. I also hope to use Applescript to get my Mac, iWorks and Keynote to deliver content and design in a scalable way. Apple's Pages is smooth as silk in generating PDFs. I used it for Dot Chess! The only thing that remains is imposition software along with a Mac. |