Self-publishing in
Education
A fine mess hosted by Zak Mensah
@zakmensah
Arlis | UK & Ireland Art Libraries Society
Conference 2013

...living in a world where libraries were already
stuffed with hundreds of thousands of
decaying novels that would never again be
read

Self-publishing in education
The digital book can be created by anybody in
your institution. We must learn about self-
publishing and the 'Post-Artifact' publishing
ecosystem, in order to provide the support
that students and staff need.
We'll explore what is involved in self-publishing
and what the library can do to help the future
book within an institution evolve.

2007
2010

The past
• Ancient past
• 2007 Kindle
• 2010 iPad and ibooks store
• Apps for reading

There are prerequisites for us to reach what we
desire as we pursue better circumstances
and new inventions.

For instance, in order to invent something like
the printing press, we must first invent
language and an alphabet, produce paper
and ink, master metallurgy to cast letters, and
construct a winemaking press.

There had to be many contributions and
breakthroughs before I could sit down and
write this book.

ereaders won't catch on'

ereaders won't catch on'
Engineers brought Bill Gates an ereader
prototype in 1998 – but he dismissed it
because it didn’t look like Windows.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/9374751/Bill-Gates-ereaders-
wont-catch-on.html

Classic publishing
http://craigmod.com/journal/post_artifact/

The advantages of printed books have been
underrated, while the advantages of e-books
have been overrated.
Nicholas Carr

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/book%20sniffing

Preservation
Many libraries exist not only to provide access
to content, but also to look after that content
for the future;

Current status
• Poor user experiences
• Low adoption
• Copying and pasting
• Availability (#copies in use)
• Range of books on offer

10 Reasons Why Students Aren’t Using
eTextbooks
The books they need aren’t available in digital format
They are not as affordable as you might think
You can’t lend or resell most e-textbooks
It feels strange to mark up an e-book
e-Textbooks are heavy, too

10 Reasons Why Students Aren’t Using
eTextbooks
There are better digital options available
Today’s students grew up with books
E-books offer a different experience
Finding e-textbooks is a scavenger hunt
Students expect more from digital editions
http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2012/06/10-reasons-why-students-

It is easy to foresee a future in which books
have ceased to be the primary medium for
transmitting ideas and information; in some
areas, that time is already here.
p.175: Pearson, D Books as history. The British Library, 2008.

Education uses
Text books (ebooks textbooks)
Course supplement
Promotional books e.g. prospectus
Course handbooks
Workbooks
Reading lists
Reference book
Monograph
Research e.g. journals
Collecting themed work e.g. blog posts

Investigating epub files
As part on my work on the PublishOER project
I have spent some time investigating ePub
files, looking at how they are put together etc.
and whether there is anything we can do with
existing files.
http://www.medev.ac.uk/blog/oer-phase-3-blog/2012/jun/29/investigating-epub-
files/

In Post-Artifact Books and Publishing Craig
Mod writes:
The way books are written has changed.
The canvas for books has changed.
The post-published life of a book has changed.

Book discovery
Doug told me on the train about the $100
start-up.
I ordered a print copy(misplaced my
kindle...
Read it, tweeted it
https://twitter.com/jukesie/statuses/3418026
15664963584
https://twitter.com/chrisguillebeau/statuses/
340974857560944641
Kate asked to borrow it
so did Mike
https://twitter.com/MrJ1971/statuses/34081
0347390857216
https://twitter.com/dajbelshaw/statuses/340
758701478658048

Self-publishing
• Kickstarter
• Crowd-funding
• Print on Demand

JISC Monograph
1. Rich full-text semantic search tools for
scholarly ebook collections.
2. Tools for generating or traversing highly-
specific stable citations.
3. Development of a pilot to produce student
theses with high-engagement linked-data
content.
4. Plugins or add-ons to provide simple,
ebook output for popular word processing
tools.
5. Improved workflows for authoring
attractive, accessible, standards-based
mathematical notation in ebooks.
1.
1. Development of an ereading system with
an emphasis on scholarly annotation and
research-gathering.
2. Provisions to train and share scholars
interested in digital publishing
3. Aggregate ebook services for authors and
university presses.
4. Maximize use of orphan works
5. Community resources for institutions with
digital collections
The Digital Monograph Technical Landscape study

digital publishing technology is trivial. Ebooks
are tiny digital files, mostly composed in
HTML. People buy them from websites that
accept credit cards. This is some of the most
ubiquitously understood tech today
Liz Daly

David Hopkins stats
Title: QR Codes in Education
http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/books/qr-
codes-in-education/
Available from:
Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, Smashwords (incl.
Nook & Sony platforms)

David Hopkins stats
Launched on
Amazon & Kobo: June 1
Smashwords, Nook,
Sony: June 4
iTunes: June 19

David Hopkins stats
Sales figures to date (July 10):
Amazon - 43
iTunes - 7
Smashwords - 3
Kobo - 0
Nook (via Smashwords) - 1
Sony (via Smashwords) - 0

To use a pyromaniac analogy, publishers are
accelerants, not sparks
APE: Author, Publisher, entrepreneur - How to publish a Book (Kawasaki, Guy,
Welsh, Shawn) Location 425 - 426 added sunday 10 march 13 20:34:38

epub workflow
Pre checks
See what styles the book uses and note them
Use a PDF or Indesign to begin with to produce
native epub and kindle files.
Upzip epub
Open Terminal
cd Documents/ePub/name-of-folder-containing-
epub ENTER then upzip name of .epub
reverse to zip
cd Documents/ePub/name-of-folder-containing-
epub ENTER then zip name of .epub
Typical epub contents
META-INF (folder)
container.xml
mimetype (simple text file that is used in all epubs so can be
reused for all books)
OEBPS (folder - Open eBook Publication Structure)
content.opf (Holds meta infomration about the book and
list of the individual files that make up its contents)
fonts (folder)
images(folder)
template.css
toc.ncx (used by ereaders to generate the navigational
table of contents)
chapter01.html
chapter02.html
etc

Cover
560x865
To force Adobe Digital Editions to use the whole
image for its icon, add style="max-width:
100%" to img tag in cover.html - from Liz
p114
Test
As many devices as possible
epub check
http://code.google.com/p/epubcheck/
epub preflight
* QED standard http://qed.digitalbookworld.com/
(13 point test on all major devices)
Styles
Chapter headings
Section headings
Emphasis and strong text- em, strong
Numbered and unnumbered lists
Hyperlinks both internal to the document and
external to the web
Inline images (by dragging and dropping)
A cover page with an image
All available metadata
Tables
Multimedia

Validation
Open Terminal
CD Documents/ePub
Then
sh epubcheck.sh which runs the below.
Change the sh for each book.
java -jar epubcheck (tab) name of epub
java -jar epubcheck-3.0b5/epubcheck-3.0b5.jar
designisajob/designisajob.epub

https://leanpub.com/authors

www.apple.com/ibooks-author

Our responses

Technical
EPUB 2/3
http://github.readium.org
EPUB Samples
code.google.com/p/epub-
samples/
Kindle previewer
Readers will support
some aspects of a
file format but not
all

100 Things
http://www.zakmensah.co.uk/2012/06/26/direct
ory-of-ebook-resources-in-education/

OU Innovating Pedagogy 2012
“ the real benefits will come from new forms of
teaching and learning through dynamic and
shared books ”
Potential impact: high
Dynamic books
Sharing
Interpretations
Assessemnt

Possible
• Abridged versions
• Highlights
• Social features
• Search
• Multimedia
• Pull live data into charts, graphs etc
• Co-creation
• Sharing

Crowd funding
Keep creative control
Only make a profit when you do (5%
kickstarter)

Example of students self-
publishing
Hayley Atkinson, Uni of Leeds, former librarian
Students making their own books with her
help... library staff MUST learn to make
ebooks to assist students

Defacing...annotating
Issue
How can students annotate an ebook on their
kindle, institution tool, computer.....

I may recall laughing at that passage when John McPhee,
say, writes of Florida orange groves planted on a ridge of
“soaring” elevation, but I may not recall how high exactly
that elevation soared. Which diminishes the joke (right?),
and hence the remembered pleasure. But by gods, I
know exactly how to find out. I don’t have to find the
carton or bookshelf containing that one damned (but
damned fine) book, which I shall then have to
obsessively re-read (highlighting or not) on a Saturday
afternoon when I should be reading at least fifteen other
things. And no, I don’t have to run to the computer and
connect to the damned Web, either. I just open the e-
book and search my notes to find out (again laughing to
myself): the ridge soars “two hundred and forty feet into

Momentum is the most important aspect of
starting
The Shape of Design (Frank Chimero)