I continue to make ebooks for Standard<\/a> although my rate has slowed down. This is mostly due to choosing longer projects instead of sticking to plays. I think I am on number 38 now (a collection of Wodehouse’s golf stories). I also do reviews of others’ submissions, which is this weird mishmash of proofreading, code checking and editorial oversight\u2014a combination of skills I didn’t think would be all that easy to acquire.<\/p>\n All in all I enjoy it immensely and intend to keep participating for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n Back just before the new year I interviewed with Bright Wing<\/a> for a job I hadn’t applied for. That didn’t turn out (afaik they just didn’t fill the position) but I kept gently reminding them of my existence and finally picked up some work. So far I have created\/remediated four public domain ebooks for them: Theodore Dreiser – An American Tragedy<\/em>, Charles Dickens – Bleak House<\/em>, Elizabeth Gaskell – North and South and T.E. Lawrence – Seven Pillars of Wisdom<\/em>. And it looks like I have another project in the pipeline for next week and it might even be something original this time. Hopefully this will turn into an ongoing gig.<\/p>\n It’s been interesting work, mostly for the understanding of different publisher’s systems and requirements and I was finally forced to learn to use Sigil<\/a> (which I had played around with previously but ultimately ignored in favour of using a straight-up text editor).<\/p>\n This (different publishers’ systems and requirements) brings me to an important topic that I am trying to learn\/participate in\/promote. Just a disclaimer first, this is a huge<\/em> topic and well worth a much, much longer post, but I am just going to give you a bit of a rant and leave the meat of the issue for later.<\/p>\n A traditional bound book sucks for accessibility. You need two good hands and two good eyes to read it. You could probably get away with one of each but the experience starts to deteriorate rapidly. But what could you do? But ebooks, ah, ebooks offer a world of possibilities, don’t they?<\/p>\n Way back when, when ebooks were in a fledgling state and sales were minimal, publishers embraced ebooks reluctantly and, quite frankly, poorly. But these days \u2014 sadly (to me) much under the influence of that monolith of capitalism Amazon \u2014 ebook sales have increased to over 20% of a publisher’s total book sales revenue. The books themselves are getting more and more sophisticated in design and format and the readers much more ubiquitous.<\/p>\n Industry standard programs lie Adobe Indesign has made great strides in their approach to converting a print book to digital format and many other tools have continued to progress to the point where creating an ebook is relatively simple for any publisher.<\/p>\n In conjunction with all that the issue of accessibility has also continued to be addressed and many working groups like NNELS<\/a> here in Canada, Accessible Books Consortium<\/a>, The DAISY Consortium As a result there exists now a robust standard now that allows an ebook to be created in a way that helps various technologies to present the material to make the experience enjoyable and fluid for a broad range of disabilities.<\/p>\n Great stuff.<\/p>\n The problem is change is hard and publishers are stubborn.<\/p>\n I know, I know, that’s not totally fair but it is a realistic overview of the situation. In order to create a born-accessible ebook certain jobs have to shift around, new skill sets have to be learned and priorities have to change. To remediate old ebooks to the current standard takes more money, more time and an even more specialized skillset. All this costs money and time and most small publishers don’t have either. The big ones \u2014 the ones who should be showing leadership and have a bit more money \u2014 are a bit more on the stubborn side if you ask me; although I admit shifting a production process is infinitely harder when you produce 1000 books a year than when you produce 10.<\/p>\n Still, you get the point.<\/p>\n Hah, if I knew that I would be a lot richer than I am now. But…<\/p>\n You’d think if the technology types could sit with the communication types to make the process clear and then the government types provided a bit of money then this would straighten itself out pretty quick. Right, I know. Lol.<\/p>\n But I watched a panel a while back talking about the issues surrounding ebook remediation and two things struck me.<\/p>\n Of course it’s not always that simple. Especially if you are dealing with textbooks, or specialized publications that require a lot extra coding. But there is absolutely no<\/em> excuse for producing a traditional fiction-style ebook that is not fully compliant with the accessibility standards. None. It’s just ignorance and\/or laziness.<\/p>\n And we can fix both of those. So let’s…<\/p>\n P.S. My<\/em> biggest issue remains the kind of communication and misinformation that surrounds the whole ebook production process. It’s just not that hard, and making an ebook accessible in the first place (or remediating old ones if you have to) is currently wrapped in some sort of mystique and arcane-ness \u2014 and a whole lot of mumbo-jumbo. Again, to me<\/em>, it comes down to piss poor communication and misguided advocacy in an age where driving public perception, propaganda, and manipulating the message have reached a high art. I can’t help thinking it’s a matter of mistaken priorities.<\/p>\n P.P.S. If you want to learn more about ebook production, coding and even what’s necessary to meet the standards, I encourage you to take a swing at volunteering for Standard Ebooks<\/a>. There is a great step-by-step<\/a> and I have even written a guide on how to go about getting started<\/a> for those of us more editor and less coder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The State of Ebooks Update Standard Ebooks I continue to make ebooks for Standard although my rate has slowed down. This is mostly due to choosing longer projects instead of sticking to plays. I think I am on number 38 now (a collection of Wodehouse’s golf stories). I also do reviews of others’ submissions, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15100"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15100"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15107,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15100\/revisions\/15107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Bright Wing Media<\/h3>\n
The General State of Ebooks<\/h2>\n
Ebook Accessibility<\/h3>\n
\nCreating the best way to read and publish<\/a>, Benetech<\/a>, and the World Wide Web Consortium<\/a> have all been working together to develop and modify standards that will hopefully help the broadest swath of disadvantaged readers.<\/p>\nSo what’s the problem?<\/h3>\n
What’s the solution?<\/h3>\n
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