A round-up of our seminars at The London Book Fair

We were delighted to see so many faces at both of our seminar sessions which ran on the first two days of The London Book Fair. Here is a round-up of both seminars in case you couldn’t join us at the fair.

Session 1: Digital Publishing Production: There’s method in the madness (The apparatus for digital publishing), led by Tim Oliver

The first question in Tim’s presentation was who should take responsibility for digital production in a publishing house. While we are all aiming to produce one product that can be used on multiple platforms, who is really in charge? Should it be editorial, marketing or the digital development team that takes the lead? It was an open-ended question but one worth considering nonetheless. The seminar emphasised the importance of having a dedicated in-house development team, which can embed themselves within the company and work across departments to provide expert advice and guidance.

Tim also promoted the benefits of having project managers from different backgrounds who aid your company as it adjusts to the digital landscape. Project managers that are digitally savvy, with previous IT and web development skills, can be a valuable addition to your team and could assist relations between designers, developers and editorial staff.

Finally, before you plan your digital product, you should be first aware of what devices your readers use to access digital content. It is only after you have taken this market snapshot that you can consider whether your content would suit a large or a small display. Understanding the specifications of your product could save you a lot of time in the long run and can also prevent re-workings and re-designs, which are both costly and time-consuming. Ideally, you should analyse your backlist and see which past publications can be re-distributed as digital products. Digital asset management is the key and will often be the turning point for your company’s digital progression.

Tim has been involved with our three-day digital publishing skills course, The Digital Publisher.

Session 2: Creating E-Books: The pleasure and the pain, led by Chris Jennings

We were really happy to see that every seat was taken and people were even standing at the back to hear what Chris had to say about creating e-books.

First off, Chris declared that things can only get better for e-books, which is a reassuring thought. He promoted the freedom of the consumer and discussed how embedded fonts can actually harm the reading experience, as you are controlling the capabilities of the reading device. As with Tim’s previous seminar, Chris suggested that you should always bear in mind that reader interaction can have an effect on the visual aspects of your content. You should always be thinking from the reader’s point of view. What happens when I change the font size? What happens when I change the font entirely? He advocated the need for designers to talk to their in-house web teams to discuss usability issues. Flexibility is vital and consumers will be turned-off if they cannot use their device to adapt your content to their reading habits.

However, there is an exception to this rule. Digital content such as poetry should have some mechanisms in place to prevent readers altering the layout as the line design of poetry is often decided by the poet. Inconsistencies with the poetry can occur when readers change their on-screen layout and this can sometimes alter the poet’s intentions.

The best way to trial your digital content is to get hold of various different digital devices. Test your content on each device before you publish your product. Hopefully we will soon have desktop emulators which can assist publishers as they test their new content. Cross-platform publishing is now a necessity and we are now at a stage where we can deliver different styling and add inline audio features, which will enhance the reader’s experience.

There is an obstacle facing many digital publishers and that is simply typography. With a tangible book the designers have a front cover and dust-cover to work with which is often a huge selling point. The page layout of a hard book can be much easier to design with software like InDesign, however it can be harder to create attractive pages if you are creating a product for multiple platforms. On a tablet, especially a grey-scale tablet like the Kindle, making an attractive e-book is much harder. It is much easier to embed multimedia than it is to create a beautiful e-book.

A really useful part of the seminar was when Chris clarified for us the visual differences between ePUB3 with XML. He pointed out that they are very distinct once you know the difference. ePUB3 appears as a table of contents similar to an HTML file. In comparison, an XML file will look like a bulleted list. A useful tip to remember when trying to blag your way through a conversation on coding!

One final question that Chris answered was what the challenges are that are facing digital publishers. The answer was simple: skills. Skills need to be constantly developed to keep up with the evolving landscape. Knowing mark-up language, or at least being able to recognise it, is extremely valuable. You should also have a working, practical knowledge of how to use different digital devices and platforms.

Chris is our tutor on Creating E-Books and Enhanced E-Books.

We would like to thank both Tim Oliver and Chris Jennings for their fantastic presentations and thank all of you who were able to join us at The London Book Fair.