Digital Book Apps / Epub

uieluck · 09-04-2013, 05:27 PM

I've been doing ebooks for about 3 years meow. I've done some mild 'difficult' formatting; sidebars, background images, sanskrit fonts, images etc. etc. However, my coding skills have gotten soooo much better (php, xml, css, xhtml) And I can make simple apps... and I mean simple. However, I want to learn and produce: digital book apps. Has anybody on here done this? And on queue my job wants me to produce a mega complex book (oics attached). Should I attempt something different than an epub/ebook? These are EXACTLY what I'm looking to do:
http://www.oceanhousemedia.com/products/drseuss/
Or this:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/bat...23432721?mt=11

Ideas?
Thanks, uieluck

http://i907.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps22f9c451.jpg

Hitch · 09-04-2013, 07:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by uieluck

I've been doing ebooks for about 3 years meow. I've done some mild 'difficult' formatting; sidebars, background images, sanskrit fonts, images etc. etc. However, my coding skills have gotten soooo much better (php, xml, css, xhtml) And I can make simple apps... and I mean simple. However, I want to learn and produce: digital book apps. Has anybody on here done this? And on queue my job wants me to produce a mega complex book (oics attached). Should I attempt something different than an epub/ebook? These are EXACTLY what I'm looking to do:
http://www.oceanhousemedia.com/products/drseuss/
Or this:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/bat...23432721?mt=11

Ideas?
Thanks, uieluck

Well, the A&E book is simply an ePUB, using ePUB3, I'd guess; it looks like it has embedded audio. That can be done with any ePUB, if you just make it for iBooks. If you're making it for anyone else, you're mostly out of luck, as almost nothing, device-wise (which means, big sales-wise) supports embedded audio/video.

The Seuss books are apps. {shrug}. They could be anything at all, anything that will work on an i-Device. I didn't see any available for Droid or the KFire.

Really, the thing you have to ask yourself is, how much can you earn; how much will people PAY to do book apps (trust me--it's not much, unless they're utterly deluded about their sales), and now much do you want to do it? The only place you tend to have big app sales is on the Apple platforms, and it's very unclear to me that books--just books--sell very well on any iTunes-based platform at all. This isn't to disparage Apple fans; but the way the devices are structured, perform and are marketed seem to be oriented toward movies and the like. And there are a number of children's book apps makers out there, along with some DIY book-app-making sites, as well. (You should look into those before you go much further).

Many people thought that the "Immersedition" book was going to knock it out of the park, but I haven't heard a word about that book--or the technology or the company that made it--since it splashed on the scene about a year or so back.

Now, having said that, I have a client that sold 90,000 children's bibles in an app. So....who knows?

Hitch

mrmikel · 09-05-2013, 06:01 AM

Another market might be sports fans for a particular team or sport like golf, but to adults not always broke students.

As you say getting paid is an issue. A person just by themselves and not attached to a big corporation could have trouble being taken seriously by the companies with pockets deep enough to pay for it. They would be reasonably concerned about the ability to scale up to very high volumes in arbitrarily determined time frames.

DomesticExtremis · 09-05-2013, 03:37 PM

Maybe an App gives better digital rights protection
and hence better revenue (though Apple take a
heavy cut).

uieluck · 09-06-2013, 05:15 PM

Yea, the A&E book sucks! No, I don't mean it sucks, but it pisses me off, cause it seems like it's encrypted when you take it apart. Which for me is a HUGE learning part,,, to see how something is made. Then I can emulate or apply that to whatever I'm doing. I'm mainly making this book for ibooks only.
Yeppers, I'm fully aware of the pay, it's booty. However, this is my full time job whom I'm doing this POS book for. It's hard to compete with the ebook houses in India that charge $120 for a book or whatever. So I don't, but I do some freelance from time-to-time.
Thanks for sharing the Immersedition, never seen that before. It might not be hot, but good to know. Thanks for the respones. Anybody else here do shizzle like the Oceanhouse Media shizz?
I'm just trying to "map-out" or "plan" which way or the best way I can do this book.

09-04-2013, 05:27 PM	#1
uieluck Connoisseur Posts: 52 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Denver, Colorado Device: iphone, ipad, kindle, nook	Digital Book Apps / Epub I've been doing ebooks for about 3 years meow. I've done some mild 'difficult' formatting; sidebars, background images, sanskrit fonts, images etc. etc. However, my coding skills have gotten soooo much better (php, xml, css, xhtml) And I can make simple apps... and I mean simple. However, I want to learn and produce: digital book apps. Has anybody on here done this? And on queue my job wants me to produce a mega complex book (oics attached). Should I attempt something different than an epub/ebook? These are EXACTLY what I'm looking to do: http://www.oceanhousemedia.com/products/drseuss/ Or this: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/bat...23432721?mt=11 Ideas? Thanks, uieluck http://i907.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps22f9c451.jpg

09-05-2013, 06:01 AM	#3
mrmikel Color me gone Posts: 2,089 Karma: 1445295 Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Central Oregon Coast Device: PRS-300	Another market might be sports fans for a particular team or sport like golf, but to adults not always broke students. As you say getting paid is an issue. A person just by themselves and not attached to a big corporation could have trouble being taken seriously by the companies with pockets deep enough to pay for it. They would be reasonably concerned about the ability to scale up to very high volumes in arbitrarily determined time frames. Last edited by mrmikel; 09-05-2013 at 12:27 PM.

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09-05-2013, 03:37 PM	#4
DomesticExtremis Addict Posts: 243 Karma: 359054 Join Date: Nov 2012 Device: default	Maybe an App gives better digital rights protection and hence better revenue (though Apple take a heavy cut).

09-06-2013, 05:15 PM	#5
uieluck Connoisseur Posts: 52 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Denver, Colorado Device: iphone, ipad, kindle, nook	Yea, the A&E book sucks! No, I don't mean it sucks, but it pisses me off, cause it seems like it's encrypted when you take it apart. Which for me is a HUGE learning part,,, to see how something is made. Then I can emulate or apply that to whatever I'm doing. I'm mainly making this book for ibooks only. Yeppers, I'm fully aware of the pay, it's booty. However, this is my full time job whom I'm doing this POS book for. It's hard to compete with the ebook houses in India that charge $120 for a book or whatever. So I don't, but I do some freelance from time-to-time. Thanks for sharing the Immersedition, never seen that before. It might not be hot, but good to know. Thanks for the respones. Anybody else here do shizzle like the Oceanhouse Media shizz? I'm just trying to "map-out" or "plan" which way or the best way I can do this book.

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