Like a lot of people, I’ve been hearing and reading about ebooks for quite a while. As the owner of a communications business, I never find a shortage of new technologies to learn about, track, and try out. Some days I wish I could just spend getting new stuff, playing with it, figuring out how it works, and then writing about it. A close friend of mine does this for road bikes (a passion of mine) and I think that’s way cool. He doesn’t get paid much for doing it but has a great time.
Back to the topic at hand…eBooks. Everyone’s heard of them, millions of people use eBook devices of all flavors—iPads, Kindles, Nooks—and tens of millions of eBooks have been sold. Consumers and students are on top of the wave. But this wave hasn’t really caught hold big-time in publishing technical content yet…but it will.
I got my feet wet (pardon the bad pun) today. I attended a webinar entitled “Creating eBooks: Understanding the Opportunities, Challenges, Devices, and Standards” sponsored by The Content Wrangler. The hour-long discussion was a primer and featured good speakers including:
Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, Ann Rockley and Charles Cooper, authors of the soon-to-be-released, “eBooks 101: The Digital Content Strategy for Reaching Customers Anywhere, Anytime on Any Device,” and publishing production guru, Eric Freese of digital publishing software and services provider, Aptara.