#designforepublishing

I have really enjoyed this semesters support module, design for e-publishing and feel like it’s been really beneficial. I chose this class as it was something I have never done before and the other option was printmaking, which I already did last year. I wasn’t really sure how much I was going to enjoy it but I thought it was worth having a go. At the start I wasn’t really that into it. The way that you have to be taught something like that is a lot of watching the board and then having to remember it and try it yourself, which I’ve realised I’m not very good at. No matter how carefully I was watching, by the time I came to do it myself I could never remember the first few steps, meaning that I couldn’t really do it at all without getting someone to help me. This annoyed me, because I’m usually a fast learner, so I think this is what put me off a bit at the start. I then had the idea of taking notes while my tutor was talking, meaning that when it came to do it myself, I had noted down the key stages and I was normally able to do it without a problem which was great! Since that I have definitely enjoyed it more, and have found that each lesson I am learning something new. A couple of people in the class had done things like this before, but it was all totally new to me so everything I was being taught I found amazing! As soon as we’d learnt the basic steps and we got onto actually planning and designing our final outcomes I started to enjoy it even more. For the outcomes we had to make 2 apps/e-book style things that could be used on a ipad/iphone, using the techniques we had learnt to make them fully functioning on the web. For the outcomes I decided to make a portfolio for one of them, because this is something that I can keep adding to after the module has finished, and can actually be used. I found this one really easy to make, because it was all completely my own design and the only techniques I was really using in it were basic buttons. I knew for my second outcome I needed to choose something that I could include the rest of the techniques in. I considered a couple of options but decided on doing an app for the Dog’s trust, as this is something I feel strongly about and knew I would be motivated to do. As soon as I started this I loved it, and could spend hours at a time creating it without getting bored.  This choice also allowed me to incorporate everything into it such as all the buttons, animation, video, sound, object states, just everything I had learnt really!

Project Gutenberg was run by volunteers as an effort to  "encourage the creation and distribution of ebooks”. Most of the things in the collection are full copies of public domain books, which the project tries to make as free as possible.

I read an article on publishers weekly that spoke about what they believe 2016 holds for digital publishing.

The article, written by  Andrew Richard Albanese and Calvin Reid, started out by talking about the decline in e-book sales since they first appeared. Sales are slowly decreasing, and in August 2015 had dropped by 3.7% compared to August 2014 the previous year. They have a couple of theories as to why this could be, one being that people are now getting used to e-books, so the ‘craze’ is dying down slightly and now the sales are becoming more natural and a realistic idea of how well e-books will sell now that people aren’t as excited about it as they once were. The Launch of the iPad in 2010 also spiked sales, as people were eager to continue purchasing books on their tablet to see if it was any better than the original e-readers such as Kindles. At the same time as the iPad being released, two years of court-protected e-book discounting was also brought in which meant that prices of e-books were fixed until 2012. Now that the sanctions have expired, publishers are allowed to charge whatever they deem appropriate.

As there are no expected changes to the market coming up (eg the release of the iPad) maybe this means that for the first time since the release of the Kindle in 2007, we will start to see how well e-books are actually selling compared to the well-loved traditional books. 

When asked how things had changed since 2012,  Restivo-Alessi stated that oringally it was much more about the ‘product’ but now that is a given. Tpday she feels that it is more about how many options can be created for the customers to make their lives easier.

Digital entrepreneur and publishing consultant Richard Nash spoke about the book business approaching a  “plateau of convenience.” One reason he suspects for the drop in sales of e-books, is the fact that they simply do not offer much for the consumer besides convenience. People enjoy going into a bookshop and having the experience of choosing their books, where as with e-books, this experience is taken away. He speaks about how many the next step for e-books is for something to be created to give the consumers this experience in a digital way, clearly it won’t be the same, but maybe it will add a little excitement into the process compared to how it currently is.