E-publishing

[GuestHouse]

Anyone had any experience with E-Publishing?

I'm planning to have a go myself and wonder if anyone has any tips.

[Crushdepth]

We do a fair bit of e-publishing on our work site and find it incredibly cheap and effective. Can you be a bit more specific - what exactly would you like to do ? What sort of content have you got and who do you want to deliver it to ? Is it a 'one off' or are you looking to set up a system to publish continuously ? Do you want to sell it or give it away for free ?

There are heaps of different media and distribution options - websites, weblogs, ebooks, CDs, email newsletters, forums etc and often using a few different approaches together works better. If you can give us a good idea of your objectives it will help us throw ideas at you

[LivinLOS]

E-Publishing is easy... In the history of mankind it is almost certainly the easiest way to reach the largest audience..

Making money from E-Publishing now thats the tough nut..

In a bizzare twist I know a guy who set up a website that was to facilitate (fiction) writers to post and discuss thier work which in turn (filtered and) got them published in paper media..

[GuestHouse]

I am particularly interested in publishing travel guides as e-books on the web.

I already have a website and I am in the final stages of writing my first full guide book, I now intend to publish and sell via my website.

I am using Word to write the book and I have Adobe 6, which I intend to use as document media when I finally publish.

I am concerend about copyright theft and I need some advice on what payment methods to choose - I expect to start with PayPal.

I am relatively skilled in computer use, both desk top publishing software and HTML SQL etc, see one of my sites FairPrice-Thailand.org

I guess what I am looking for is any pointers you guys might have.

[Crushdepth]

The copyright problem is a big one. Acrobat does allow you to apply a range of useful security restrictions. These include locking a PDF file so that nobody can change it, preventing cutting / extraction of the content and printing of the document (there may well be ways around these, not sure). Ultimately there is nothing you can do to stop people copying the file, the only way to protect it is to prevent access in the first place (paper still has its advantages

Its worth doing a google search for your files occasionally to see if you can find anyone distributing them from a website - we found one scum-ridden organisation who had sucked a lot of *free* (but copyright) publications off our website with a slurp tool and stuck them on their own - along with a lot of other people's stuff. We found a page on their site saying that they would shortly begin charging people to access "their service" ! If you lookup the hosting company you can hassle them to take the site down etc.

Payment is also tricky. We give most of our content away for free so we don't have to worry about it much, however we have found that people don't like to do e-commerce with small operators much due to the lack-of-trust factor. For the web-side going with Paypal is probably a good option (although last I look you couldn't make a payment from Thailand). However, its probably a good idea to provide a range of payment options for people including some 'conventional' ones.

[GuestHouse]

Thanks Crushdepth,

I have already researched my market and I have enough pre-orders to cover my set up costs, dedicate web site but not hardware and software.

I intend to sell the guide but also to use it as the bait to bring people to my site for other services.

I have already had one run in with copyright theft after a magazine in London published some of my work that a 'contributor' had stolen. I was informed by someone I had helped out in the past and I took legal action (Solicitor's letter). The magzine treated my first call with little more than derision but bucked up when the letter arrived and paid my fees plus the royalty on the article plus a statement in their following month's edition.

Searching the net is a good idea and I shall do that occassionaly.

Just as there are plenty of people looking to rip you off on the net, there are also plenty more offering help, advice and encouragement.

Again my thanks