Tag: ebook readers

Making my Euclid eBook

• August 13, 2012 • 4 Comments

I thought you might like to see how my Euclid eBook is going, so I made a short video to show how I’m putting it together in iBooks Author, which is a program that comes free from Apple to allow you to make books for the iBooks store easily.

These are essentially ePub 3 books, which can contain video and audio and other multimedia features.

I’m loathe to use all the features as it distracts from the hard work of learning to read. (This eBook is a stealth learning to read book! don’t tell the boys, though!) iBooks Author is quite simple, if you are used to working with layout programs. It has it’s idiosyncrasies, however. I hopping later iterations will get to make things easier.

See what you think.

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Join My Newsletter and get a free Ginger Ninja eBook

• June 25, 2012 • 8 Comments

Some time ago I wrote a new Ginger Ninja story – just a short one, to introduce a new character. There was a bit of interest on maybe making Ginger a TV series. Nothing came of that , but I did have to come up with seven more story ideas and this little story introduced Candy – the local millionaire’s daughter, – who thinks that everything , including Ginger, can be bought.

I read the story again last week. It need a tweak or two and then I thought I would add some illustrations and make it a free eBook to my Newsletter subscribers. All you have to do is fill in the subscribe form on the right and follow the instructions.

Here’s a video about drawing the cover pictures

and here is another video of all the other drawings speeded up.

You’ll find it fits well in iBooks on an iPad. As it is a pdf, it should play on almost any PC, tablet or laptop quite a lot of phones too!  Enjoy :)

My First Kindle eBook is live on Amazon

• April 22, 2012 • 6 Comments

It’s not taken me very long to get my Craig M’nure book sorted out for the Kindle. It took even less to get it uploaded and onto the Amazon Kindle store. about 3 hours – compare that to 2 weeks and counting at the iBooks store for ipad.

The book is available at
US Amazon http://amzn.to/J2cE5h
UK Amazon http://amzn.to/I6wmT0

Ginger Ninja on the iPad – how’s it going?

• February 11, 2012 • Be first to comment!

I forgot to post the last two videos about the ginger ninja on iPad. So here they are. The first one is on the bottom and explains about getting ISBN numbers are my thoughts on where the Kindle is at the moment.

The second video is on top and it takes us to the point where I pressed the button to publish the book. I can’t tell you how excited I was and how frustrating it has been for the last week waiting for Apple to approve the work and make it go live in the Ibooks store.

I have now started work on my second book which is called dizzy DIY and is the first iBook in the Millie and Bombassa series that I will be publishing on Ibooks. These stories have been incredibly popular in libraries and are my most borrowed books. So I hope people are going to enjoy them on iPad.

As you will see from the video on enhancing the books with built in video showing you how to draw Ginger and a video explaining where I got the inspiration for the book. The next books in the series will also have videos and I’m exploring iBook printing so that I can add cut out masks and colouring sheets.

I’ve thought long and hard about whether to include audio or video of me reading the book but I decided that these books are the kind of books that children learn to read with and they will just end up playing the videos and never reading the words if I give them the opportunity. Sorry kids tough luck! :-)

Octopi – the future of ebooks?

• November 6, 2010 • 1 Comment

I’ve been talking about the coming of ebooks for years, and most of the time I’ve witnessed the shutters coming down and the yawns being stifled as I enthused about the future of electronic media.

My argument has always been that one day the technology will be so seductive so clear and tactile that you wouldn’t want to read anything else.

The same old arguments replay: You can’t read an ebook in the bath. (Yes you can, if it’s waterproof.) They are hard to read. (Not if the screen is paper white and dazzlingly high quality.) You can’t curl up in bed with an ebook. (You can if it’s soft and cuddly.)

Recently, as ebooks and ebook readers have started to become a commercial reality, people have been asking my opinion as an author. Also I’ve recently become quite enamoured of cephalopods – squid and octopi – and I’ve come to think that in their study lies the real future of the ebook.

Octopus skin is a brilliant video screen. It can imitate the colour and pattern of its surroundings perfectly. The technology that lets octopi do this would make and incredible ebook reader screen – rock solid with no flicker or bright backlighting, which tires the eyes.

But the amazing thing about octopi is that they can change the shape and texture of their skin at will. That is the way to make ebooks irrisistable.

My big argument against ebooks is that they are homogenous. Real books are individual objects that you can have a relationship with. They have a smell, weight, texture and design all of their own. The physical ebook reader, the kindle or iPad is always the same and has a blanding, levelling effect on the software part of the book. The screen is always the same.

How amazing would it be if the reader (the octopad or cephal-ipod!) changed its shape and texture to suit the book? If it could emit smells and watch your reaction to the text, it could set the scene and atmosphere and bookmark the point at which you fell asleep.

Changing the texture and shape of the reader would make each new ebook new, fresh and original, not like all the other books on you ebookshelf, as they are today.

This will come, It will happen. I don’t know when, but it will. I’m sure that there are labs out there already working on it – bringing electronics and biology together.

And of course if your ebook reader is half octopus, it will be quite happy if you drop it in the bath – in fact it will probably find the soap for you!

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