Maria, Thanks for your kind review. One thing you suggested was comparing Google Docs and Booki as collaboration software. I think Google Docs is pretty good for collaboration, probably as good as Booki. Where Booki is better than Google Docs is when it comes to *publishing* the work. Booki has a tool called OBJAVI that produces output in a variety of pages sizes, including those used by Lulu.com for print on demand. This makes it easier to format a book for printing. It also produces Web Format PDF (with a table of contents pane) and EPUBs, and finally you can get a static website out of it. That's the real genius of it. So while Google Docs will help you collaborate on a manuscript, Booki goes that extra mile and helps you get it published at the push of a button. Think of all the work you'd go through in turning your Google Docs MS into a website, an EPUB, or a PDF ready for Lulu and imagine that your methodology required you to do that every week or so.
I wrote a book on my personal Booki and wanted to have some people review it. I distributed PDFs. One reviewer said she had trouble reading a book on the computer screen but she did have a Kindle. I emailed her a Kindle version a few minutes later. Booki is still rough around the edges, but I would not hesitate to recommend it. James Simmons On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 7:41 AM, Maria Droujkova <droujk...@gmail.com> wrote: > James, > > Thank you very much for your work. It is very useful for my current > projects. I put my notes on my blog: > http://www.naturalmath.com/blog/ebook_enlightenment/ > Here is what I wrote. > > Book review: “E-Book Enlightenment” by James Simmons > > http://en.flossmanuals.net/e-book-enlightenment/ > > James Simmons set out to write about One Laptop Per Child e-books, but > decided to go more general. I appreciate the clear and concise categories of > information by chapters and within the chapters – it’s a big service to the > reader, and it takes a lot of thought and work for the writer. Moreover, > each piece of data tells a story with a strong exegesis in the area of open > and free – meaning, it’s interesting to read, at least for someone who > cares. I thought I would skip the first chapters, on finding e-books, but I > learned much I did not know – for example, the story of this touching > projects: > > *The Rural Design Collective (@rdcHQ <http://twitter.com/rdcHQ>)* is a > not-for-profit professional mentoring organization which furthers the > education and experience of residents of rural Southern Coastal Oregon who > are interested in working with web and/or media technology by involving them > in real development projects. They devote a portion of their program to > continued exploration of technology surrounding digital books. In 2009, they > built an interface for approximately 2000 digital books using a subset from > the *Internet Archive Children’s Library*. > > It was easy for me to skim the chapter comparing different formats, because > of the clear structure, but the tone is human and personal (“Advantages: I > can’t think of any.” on RTF). > > > The Sugar activities and architecture for discovering and sharing books > looks like something all children’s environments should be adopting (I am > looking at you, Club Penguin). My daughter is probably older than the > intended audience – she uses Shellfari for the purpose. I don’t know if > there are tools like this beyond Sugar, for young kids. With one click, you > can share books with a person or your neighborhood. And, it has text to > speech. Remember the lovely Living Books from the 90s, with text-to-speech > (and animations) done via recordings, rather than generated? That was hugely > useful for literacy, but not sustainable, and only a few were made. > > James describes wiki-software for making books, called > booki<http://www.booki.cc/>. > I am looking at it for next book projects of Math Future (we are using > Google Docs at the moment). I think I will wait for versions beyond alpha; > meanwhile, James’ adventures with collaborating are illuminating, and echo > my experiences: > > Starting a book from nothing is intimidating. However, once the book > reaches a critical mass and there is no doubt that there *will* be a > finished book you’ll find that getting help and feedback is easier, almost > inevitable …If we didn’t start with the awful machine translated version we > would never have gotten the good one. > > The first thing is that there are good reasons to collaborate and not so > good. A good one is that your collaborator can bring expertise to the book > that you don’t have. A bad one is that you think there will be less work > for you if you have a collaborator. There are many human activities where > “Many hands make light labor”. Writing a book isn’t one of them. > > Mokurai’s Replacing Textbook project involves several Math Future people > such Don “The Mathman” Cohen, and uses > booki<http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Replacing_Textbooks>, > which James mentions. My materials about fractions may go there, as well. An > obligatory Russian proverb: “The world isn’t small, but the stratum is > thin.” I would appreciate if the book compared booki with Google Docs, > rather than Microsoft Word (which isn’t a wiki technology). > > > For scanning books, I may consider building a *Simmons Home Book Scanner > Mark I*. It looks quite easy and the name is fun to say. However, my new > flatbed scanner is fast enough, and I have kid interns who think it’s fun to > scan – at least a few pages at a time. James recommend the batch image > editor Image Magic <http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php>, which > can apply the same operation to multiple images. This will save me a lot of > time when I next scan a book! And for Windows, the mass > renamer<http://www.albert.nu/programs/renamer/main.htm>for files will come in > handy. And looks like Scan > Tailor <http://scantailor.sourceforge.net/> software is even more > powerful, so I will give it a try as well. > > Sigil <http://code.google.com/p/sigil/> is the free EPUB editor James > recommends. And calibre <http://calibre-ebook.com/> is the software for > managing and distributing collections of e-books. > > Overall, the Publishing section of “E-Book Enlightenment” deals with the > technical side of making the book available, and not with the social aspects > of “making the book public” (Doctorow). I would like to see a chapter on how > to connect creators with readers, post-production. > > I will go back to “E-Book Enlightenment” for step-by-step guides to > software and hardware for making books. Screenshots and photos of key steps > make guides quick and easy to use. Thank you, James! > > > Cheers, > Maria Droujkova > 919-388-1721 > > Make math your own, to make your own math. > > > > > > On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 11:05 AM, James Simmons <nices...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> I think I have the book "E-Book Enlightenment" in a pretty good place >> to think about publishing it on the Internet Archive and on the Kindle >> Store. >> > >
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