Author Archives: India

@muttinmall holds forth: “eReaders are now crafted with greater quality and an eye toward the reader experience than ebooks themselves.”

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E-reading application showdown, part 2: Typography

Cross-posted at Digital Book World. Part 1 is also on both this site and DBW. When I first decided to try reading an e-book on my iPod Touch, I assumed—since I’ve been designing and typesetting book interiors for more than a decade and have strong opinions about what makes text readable and appealing—that poor typography [...]

Posted in e-books, Software, technology, typography | 3 Comments

1. Understand the Consumer’s experience. 2. Become at least as “tech savvy” as your readers. 3. Wherever your titles or discussions of your titles can be found, you should be there. 4. Ask lots of dumb questions internally. —Fran Toolan

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56 percent of tablet owners are male, while 55 percent of e-reader owners are female. Women also buy more books than men do—by a ratio of about 3 to 1,…—and are therefore more likely to buy devices that are made primarily for reading books.

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“Somebody has to proofread this stuff, you guys. I have tried in vain to find out just which job title at each of your illustrious firms is the responsible party. But I do know whose job it should NOT be, and that’s mine, after I have already shelled out money.”

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E-reading application showdown, part 1: Annotations

About two weeks ago, in a fit of pique, I posted some gripes about my current e-reading application of choice, which is Kobo for the iPhone/iPod Touch. I was pressed for time, so I didn’t provide any context, such as why Kobo’s is my favorite e-reading app, which apps I’ve chosen it over, and whether [...]

Posted in Accessibility, books, Design, e-books, Software, technology, Tools, typography | 2 Comments

Because I am mean and like to rain on parades…

All day I’ve been seeing tweets from @kobo and friends about their having the No. 1 e-reading app in the iTunes store—e.g., I’m so happy for them. No, really. For several months now, Kobo’s iOS app has been, mainly because of the stats and the activity tracker, my e-reading application of choice. That said, it’s [...]

Posted in advice, e-books, Rants, Software, technology, Tools | 1 Comment

Byrnes Woder explains how it uses Markdown and Smartypants to generate clean HTML, and thence ePubs, from plain text.

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What happens when an e-book gets corrected?

So, here’s the partial answer to a question I’ve been wondering about: Subject: Kindle Title [title] (ASIN:[ASIN]) has an available update Greetings from Amazon.com. We’re writing about your past Kindle purchase of [title] by [author]. The version you received contained some errors that have been corrected. An updated version of [title] (ASIN:[ASIN]) is now available. [...]

Posted in books, business, e-books, Editing, Software, technology, Tools | 7 Comments

Cracking the coding code

Got an e-mail from a fellow book designer this morning asking, “Do you have a blog post about marking up a MS for the designer/typesetter?” Um, I couldn’t remember; had to search my own blog to find out. I found I’d written two posts in which such issues come into play— May I take your [...]

Posted in advice, books, Design, Editing, production, Typesetting | 5 Comments