Books should be as easy to create as websites

Tools of Change for Publishing

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There are countless author and book production platforms to choose from these days. So why would you want to use a new one like PressBooks? In this TOC interview, I sat down with Hugh McGuire (@hughmcguire), co-author of “Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto” and founder of PressBooks to help answer that question. I should point out that I’m a fan of the platform. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we agreed to have Hugh create and produce “Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto” on PressBooks.

Highlights from the full video interview (below) include:

• Start with a web first approach — HTML is a great starting point and allows you to go in a variety of directions for other formats. It’s all about making it as easy to create a book as it is to create a website. [Discussed at the 1:30 mark.]
• Built on WordPress — PressBooks leverages the CMS power of WordPress and will be familiar to a large audience of writers and editors. [Discussed at 3:18.]
• Putting book content online — The web offers a great way to spread information, but ebooks are typically off that grid. PressBooks allows you to leverage social interactions for a book. [Discussed at 4:15.]
• Digital first, POD second — Even though PressBooks is an obvious solution for digital publishing, it’s not exclusive to that. In fact, “Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto” will also be available via POD when the project is complete. [Discussed at 8:10.]
• The value of “free” — “Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto” is and will remain freely accessible on PressBooks. Will that ultimately cannibalize or help promote sales of the paid versions? [Discussed at 9:00.]

You can view the entire interview in the following video.

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