Booktype: An Open Source, Cross-Platform Approach To E-Book Publishing

Despite Apple's protestation that the iBooks Author EULA was misinterpreted, the idea of a book publishing system that could be used to grab copyright of the prepared text is annoying — like the sort of EULAs that seem to give photo-sharing sites unlimited re-use rights of hosted personal photos. New submitter rohangarg points out a publishing system which shouldn't have such problems, and is nicely cross-platform besides: "A new open-source digital writing and publishing platform has been launched by non-profit group Sourcefabric. Booktype allows for collaborative editing and writing of books that can be easily outputted to on-demand print services and eReaders such as the Amazon Kindle, Nook, iPad, and more with a few simple clicks. Booktype source can be found here." The online demo also leads to some downloadable examples (as PDFs).

Comments

LaTeX?

[The_Wilschon]

What are the shortcomings of LaTeX that it is not in this converstation? Honest question, not snarking. What does book publishing require that LaTeX doesn't/can't do?

Re:LaTeX?

[TheSunborn]

The problem is that Latex is made/designed for creating fixed size paper output. It is really not good when you need to output content which can be reflowed depending on the size of the users output device.

Re:LaTeX?

[Simon Brooke]

Very few people can actually use LaTeX. It's an exceptionally user-hostile approach to writing text. Yes, I know some people still use vi, but that doesn't make vi a good word processor. Similarly, LaTeX has exceptional strengths for creating particular sorts of highly technical documents, but for the sorts of documents most people write it is overcomplicated and just gets in the way.

Most people don't want to learn a new language before they can write a simple document. Even if they do want to learn a new language, Markdown is good enough for most people's uses - you can produce damn nice looking documents and, yes, books with it (my toolchain is text piped through a sed script which renders the markdown into rough HTML, through JTidy which cleans that up, through Prince which translates the HTML into nicely rendered PDF, and thence to print. I could use LaTeX - I have used LaTeX - but except for very complicated technical documents it just isn't worth it.

Re:LaTeX?

[0123456]

What are the short comings of HTML for this then?

Most ebook formats are just wrapped HTML.

Re:LaTeX?

[WillAdams]

The biggest difficulties in using LaTeX in publishing:

  - not WYSIWYG (and TeXmacs never got any traction and unfortunately, LyX is different enough that it requires its own acronym --- WYSIWYM)
  - requires up-front investment in creating macros for styles &c., discipline to use them as opposed to the ad hoc finger-painting which all-too-many Word and InDesign documents devolve into
  - document classes must be programmed, not designed
  - not a normal part of the design curriculum, so hiring is hard (I was the only candidate at my first job out of college who had experience in TeX)
  - export to .html has a lot of options (hevea, tth, latex2html), none of which have achieved prevalence and all of which work differently

If typography were easy, Microsoft Word wouldn't be the foetid mess it's evolved into.

Someone needs to package up one of the latex html export options so as to work w/ Sigil or one of the other ePub editors / validators.

Re:LaTeX?

[fyngyrz]

E-Book publishing must deal with non-constant "page" sizes. Even on individual devices - when a tablet reader rotates 90 degrees, the book contents must reflow to deal with the new "page" width. Furthermore, users now expect to be able to change fonts and font sizes at will while reading. Rendering needs to be done in the reader software, not during file preparation.

Tailor-made for HTML. You can specify paragraphs, sections, underline, bold, italic, embed images, hyperlinks... all with reflow and user-specified fonts and sizes and colors.

RANT: That was the original intent of HTML: That the user had control over the look and feel, and the author provided content. It's only been in the last few years that websites started screwing up the whole idea of content following browser resizing -- one of the worst design mistakes made, IMHO, because it wastes the user's expensive desktop space in favor of the designer's "idea." If you're any good, you'll design so you get "that look" at a particular size, then the user can find that and stay there if they want to, rather than being stuck with a hard-coded 1024x window or something like that. You can do some pretty clever things along this line with CSS, but hardly anyone does.

It's gotten to the point where if your content reflows the way it should, a lot of people think you're doing it "wrong." Amazing, really. /RANT

Re:Standard Reader Format

[jank1887]

if only there was some kind of electronic publication standard format that everyone could use. Or some kind of conversion software to get books into this format.

sure, some companies will try to fracture the market, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.

It's called ePub

[Harshmage]

Open source formatting, readable by the major tablet/ebook devices, and has an astounding support for creating and publishing, plus has functions for DRM (though I don't like it, publishers do). See Sigil (http://code.google.com/p/sigil/) for one of the easier writing tools.

I have created books with Booki

[nicestepauthor]

Booki was what there was before Booktype, and FLOSS Manuals used other software before Booki which I also used. The great thing about all this software is that many people can collaborate on a book online, then distribute in in multiple formats:

1). As a website
2). As a PDF that can be published as a print-on-demand book by Lulu or Create Space.
3). As an EPUB (which you can run Kindlegen on to create a MOBI for the Kindkle).
4). As a "newspaper".

Some examples of books I have created:

websites

http://en.flossmanuals.net/make-your-own-sugar-activities/

http://en.flossmanuals.net/como-hacer-una-actividad-sugar/

http://en.flossmanuals.net/e-book-enlightenment/

epub, mobi, and pdf

http://www.archive.org/details/MakeYourOwnSugarActivities

http://www.archive.org/details/ComoHacerUnaActividadSugar

http://www.archive.org/details/EBookEnlightenment

On the Kindle Store

http://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Sugar-Activities-ebook/dp/B0050VAHKW/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1329414720&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Hacer-Actividad-Sugar-Spanish-ebook/dp/B0058DBRVA/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3

http://www.amazon.com/E-Book-Enlightenment-ebook/dp/B005BYST5I/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Bhakta-Jim-ebook/dp/B00730HE54/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1329414780&sr=1-1

On Lulu

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/make-your-own-sugar-activities/12995552?productTrackingContext=search_results/search_shelf/center/1

And soon, The Life And Times Of Bhakta Jim on Create Space.

The Spanish book was translated from "Make Your Own Sugar Activities!" by a team of volunteers, mostly in South America, who likely had never met in person.

Don't underestimate what this software can do! It isn't perfect, but in time it will change how we author and publish books.