PE2 - eBooks

So, yesterday I spent a bit of time researching eBooks and I did find out that Apple Pages can export eBooks. The only bummer is that, my publisher uses InDesign and going from Pages to InDesign, apparently, is not easy and doesn't retain the formatting very well. So I plan on spending a bit of the day learning more about InDesign.I emailed the eBook guru, James Fritz and he very kindly emailed me back. I asked him this:

"I am converting a book I did for Peachpit teaching Pro Tools into an ePub for the iPad. I want to add video tutorials and i was looking at your Lynda content, but it was using SWF files - since the iPad doesn't support flash, is there any content you have teaching about putting video into an ePub for iPad?"and he wrote back this:

"First of all, you are correct that you can't use Flash video with any ePub or any iOS devices. Now, are you going to be converting your book to ePub to be sold only on the iBooks store, or are you also planning on selling it to the Kindle, Google Books, Barnes and Nobel and other too?

The reason that I ask is that creating an ePub document is like creating a website. Each device and/or store may render your book differently. Since ePub is very new, everything is currently changing very quickly. Video support can be quite sketchy at this time depending on the device. Currently, I think that the iOS devices (iPad, iTouch, iPhone) are the only readers that support video, but I could be wrong.

Here is a link to more information about using video with ePub. Liz Castro's website (the link below is from her site) is a great resource for ePub and the iPad.http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2010/05/html5-video-works-on-ibooks-on-ipad.htmlIf you need more help, people let me know.

"I wrote back this

:"I really appreciate you taking the time to answer. I'm thinking of doing this update specifically for the iPad/IBook. Do you know if the Samsung Galaxy or any other of the new tablets will have an iBooks app or something that will also read media-rich ePubs? Just curious... It's prob too soon to know.I wonder if the Kindle app will start supporting video since it's running on tablets and not just the Kindle anymore...."

and he said:

"I highly doubt that Apple will ever allow their iBook store to be on any 3rd party device. They may eventually release it for the mac desktop, but I would hot hold my breath on an android tablet.I think that because the barnes and noble nook and google reader (which uses a web browser) use ePub, they would be the next likely candidates to support video. The Galaxy and other tablets will have a bunch of ePub readers, so that shouldn't be an issue. What you need to pay careful attention to is DRM.

If you buy a book from the iBookstore. It will only work there. If you sell a book without DRM it can be read on any device that supports ePub.The kindle is another story. Because the Kindle uses their own proprietary .mobi format you are stuck with what they offer. There is a beta plug-in for InDesign that will let you export to .mobi directly. But at this time, there is not video support. I am sure in time, that will change, but it will probably take longer.

By the way, if you are not aware already I would recommend that you download and install Adobe Digital Editions (free) to preview and test ePubs exported form InDesign. Obviously, you will still want to test your documents by loading it onto the iPad, but it is still another way to test."

Then I went to the site he suggested and ran across the eBook guru he suggested, Liz Castro. She just published a book that is not available on Amazon for another few weeks, BUT, the ePub version was available at Kagi, so I just bought that.

Now, I am going to put that ePub book into iBooks on my iPad.I have never put a book file on my iPad before, but it's really darn easy and exactly the same as adding a song or video to iTunes. You just drag and ePub or PDF to your iTunes library and sync. So - that's what I'm doing now. Then I plan on watching a few InDesign movies, then I am going to try and put the introduction of my book into InDesign, export as an ePub, view it in Adobe Digital Editions, edit it with this small app called Springy, and then try and view it on my iPad.Combine that with my Web 2.0 video and my Research project, it's going to be a long weekend. Thank god it's raining and cold, otherwise, I might be complaining....