Ebook designer question.

[Headcoach]

Please forgive me if this question has already been asked. I have own an international website now for over 13 years. On this site, I design 100's of free hockey drills for 1000's of coach's worldwide in 50 different countries.

For the last 13 years, I have had this product that we get printed called the Pocket Drill Book. It is a book with about 157 drills in a 4" x 6" spiral bound book. Well, the production costs are killing me and my graphic designer broke his back, so he is out of commission for a while.

I would like to convert my book to an ebook. My goal is to design 9 different books for hockey coach's. Here's an example...

Skating drill book
Shooting drill book
Passing
Checking
tactics
Goalie
Half Ice
Short Games
ADM's

Now in the past the book had all of these categories within one book. But it was just too small and limited.

So, I would like for a coach to use an IPad on the ice to use this drill book. One of the hardest things for a coach is to come up with the next drill for the kids to do next on the ice. Each drill should be run about no more then 5 to 8 minutes and then you move on to the next drill.

So a lot of times you will see a hockey coach standing around scratching his head wondering what drill to do next while parents in the stands are wondering why they paid all this money for a coach that is not prepared. This is why I developed the site 13 years ago.

Back then, I visioned coaches using my website on the ice with the ability to look at the next drill so that there wouldn't be any down time. The current paper book is designed for quick reference so the coach can turn to the category he wants.

Now, I have found a ebook software that I have download that I purchased, but it is for desk top computers only. The software is designed for me to secure this ebook with special security to keep the book from going viral. Now, here's the question.

Well the mobile read software allow the user to download this exe. file book to his or her desk top or laptop and then convert the book to a hand held device with loosing the security protocols?

The book will be mainly filled with JPG's, so there readly isn't a whole lot of reading. There is some small text added to each drill to explain the drill but that's it. Well, there be any problem have this converter convert all of these JPG?

Thank you for your help in advance.
Head coach

[toddos]

Any reason you couldn't have them access your website from an iPad? It'd obviously require either wifi at the rink or a 3G device, but if your original vision was for them to use the website then I don't see how that's changed.

Alternatively, I could really envision this being more of an app than a book, with interactive sections, animations of the drills, dynamic recommendations on what to run next, tracking of what drills have been done, roster management and ranking, etc. It sounds like you'd need to hire someone to write it for you, but iOS developers are everywhere these days as long as you have the money to pay them. Specialty apps like this can go for pretty good prices (look at GPS apps, for example -- some of those go for upwards of $100, and people pay for it), and you get all of the protections of Apple's app store (yes, people pirate iOS apps, but the vast majority buy rather than steal).

[GeoffC]

Headcoach

Welcome to Mobileread ....

You pose an interesting scenario ... hopefully you will get other answers, you could try asking in the Workshop here ...

Good Luck .

[Headcoach]

Originally Posted by toddos

Any reason you couldn't have them access your website from an iPad? It'd obviously require either wifi at the rink or a 3G device, but if your original vision was for them to use the website then I don't see how that's changed.

Alternatively, I could really envision this being more of an app than a book, with interactive sections, animations of the drills, dynamic recommendations on what to run next, tracking of what drills have been done, roster management and ranking, etc. It sounds like you'd need to hire someone to write it for you, but iOS developers are everywhere these days as long as you have the money to pay them. Specialty apps like this can go for pretty good prices (look at GPS apps, for example -- some of those go for upwards of $100, and people pay for it), and you get all of the protections of Apple's app store (yes, people pirate iOS apps, but the vast majority buy rather than steal).

First, thank you for taking the time and for getting back to me so soon. During that Bank bubble burst two years ago, I was charging my users $20.00 a year to use the site. But when everyone was loosing all of their money in their 401K plans, my membership went from 1000's to 300.

So, I changed the direction of the site. Which to be honest, I wish I had done this from the start. I opened up the site for free. By doing this, I now have tripled the number of coaches I use to have.

My main goal for the site is to get user to sign up for free, and then market other manufactured hockey product to the users on a commission base and see the manufacture advertising space. I did place Google ads in each drill page and I changed the website's home page to look more like a true "Weblog".

I use to have a blog in the past, but it only provides information to the users and did not drive traffic to the site. So, I have learned that having a blog doesn't work very well unless you can give something more for the user to use. So instead of them now coming to look at content, now they can use the content by siging up on the same page.

How having said that, anyone can use the site for free. All they have to do is sign up and they have 100's of drills to use on their 3G device phone. However, I do not have any of these drills animated. Why? In the past, I thought that having animated drills would not work for someone standing on the ice. The animation needs to be driven by a computer and at the time of developing my site, the hand held devices were not invented yet.

So, I didn't design the site with animated drills. Yes, I know someday that a coach would be able to stand on the ice and look at the site without any problems...but not back in 1998. Besides a company out of the same city that I live is, started designing their website with animated drills. The animation software for drills (at that time) was free.

But, I have found out, that when a coach makes a drill that is to complicated and it needs animation to explain it...kids will still not understand it and neither will his assistant coaching staff. So, I design all of my drills so that they are easy for kids to understand and also give learning value.

So, several years a go to compete with this other site, I developed a "Pocket Drill Book" This way the coach can take it with them...that was my edge. So now that I have a designer with a broken back, I have to change again. This is why I want to go ebook, reather then having then use the web site on WiFi. And yes, we have that at our rink. But does everyone else in the world have this at their rink?

So, by switching to an ebook format, now I can add more information about the purpose of the drill, make it animated, and add other coaching tips to help the coach with the next drill.

Plus, by converting to an ebook format, it would allow me to make different books and make a little extra cash at the same time. Unltimatly, I would like to sell the site for millions, so I can retire to some small island and suck on Mai Tai's all day long.

So, if I can convert this windowsebook design software and the Mobile software will convert it...then I am home free. Will this work?

Thanks in advance
Rob

[susan_cassidy]

Some widely-used ebook formats do not support animation (embedded videos). It sounds like an enhanced ebook, like those supported on iBooks, might work, though, or a complete app, for iPhone and Android, might be appropriate.