PDF eBook Design.

 

When you are designing eBooks for publication as PDF’s there are some classic design styles. The important thing to appreciate is what readers now want in terms of their User Interface (UI) or to be more specific these days their User eXperience (UX). User experience is a person’s emotions and attitudes towards the use of an eBook interface. Expectations have changed and they are still changing. Technology is changing the way users interact with these interfaces. One of the most significant changes has been the adoption of Gesture Controls (eg Scroll, Pinch, Tap, Hold etc) through touchscreen devices like the Smartphone, Tablet and PC’s with touchscreen. Social Media applications very quickly capitalised on these touchscreen Gesture Control capabilities and they set user expectations.

The scrolling through posts on Facebook with the inclusion of multi-media with pictures, photographs, video and sound all within a post or easily launched from a post established what has become a de facto standard in terms of User Experience. (UX). It does not take much imagination to appreciate that is how readers would now want their eBook content delivered. Although you have to establish a boundary between fiction (total immersion) and nonfiction (partial immersion). Fiction remains highly narrative and non-visual with the reader just totally absorbed in consuming the text. Nonfiction establishes different balances between the narrative and the visual images really dependant on the genre and subject matter. Getting this balance between narrative and imagery becomes critical to controlling the reader’s emotional engagement. Some nonfiction maybe image lead with minimum narrative support whilst in other cases the narrative it longer but supported by a relevant image.

For the author planning and organising content to support an excellent user experience becomes an important part of authorship which in fact moves more towards the film or video editing style of creation. In many nonfiction books the standardisation of the “posts”,being the book pages, defines the required consistency in meeting user expectations. The inclusion of an image in each of these posts further reinforces user experience by meeting a consistently defined expectation. It is difficult to put into words how the reader gets a warm experience brought about by consistency. It is brought about by things happening the way you, the reader, expected them to happen without any uncharted surprises. You expect to see on each page the things you have expected from experience to see on a page. You have been programmed or conditioned to expect things a certain way. When they come out that way it ticks the “comfortable” box in the emotional part of your brain.

Now moving from individual pages to the overall flow of the eBook. You cannot beat chronological or geographical. In the history genre the dates of events. In geographical the points along a route or river. The establishment of a mind map in the consciousness of the reader. So the reader always knows where they are at and where they are going. Giving them a sense of direction. Any branches off need to be clearly identified along with the later return to the main thought path. Every effort has to be made to keep your reader on a logical path of expectation.

Now I know you probably have no interest in the American X-Vehicles but this PDF is presented to you below not so you learn about this content subject but so you get to appreciate an excellent PDF UX. Although as with everything the content may stimulate your though processes in new ways. Its purpose is to get you to experience this particular style of PDF UX. It communicates so much content in a structured and effective way. In this case the Research Designation (X-1, X-2 etc) has been chronologically applied so it reinforces the flow through the book. The concise tagged data (eg First Flight, Last Flight etc) on each page gives you the reader consistency in terms of the data provided on each page. The image which is normally a photograph really engages you with the subject. Even the text tagged to the photograph is consistently concise but being presented in an italic font it differentiates itself from the larger narrative text.  Finally the narrative is concise but gives you the reader the right contextual background. It is a classic case where “precise text generates more effective comprehension” in that the experience is never jaded by making you face too much narrative. The skill of the authors lay in deciding what to leave out and to that end giving them fixed data tags, a photograph, photo tagged text and narrative limited by word count constrained them to a fixed structure and textural conciseness.

Now this post is not about this specific book on American X-Vehicles. It is about how the PDF has formed a defined container for this information. I call this a particular type of PDF Container. The container creates the user experience (UX) and this could be applied to any content. So this could be the bridges over the River Severn from source to sea adopting a geographical flow through the book. It could be the Kings and Queens of England through history. It could be the life of an English Village through the ages. It could be the evolution of the research into the Domesday Book. It could be a feature (eg estuaries) within a geographical county presented in a clockwise orientation around the coast. It is about establishing in the reader a spatial mindset that they engage mentally as a backdrop to support their navigation the content. They know where they have been and where they are going in terms of spatial aweareness.  So as a PDF Container it can be applied to any subject matter. 

The other important aspect about this type of PDF Container is it creates a very different type of user experience (UX) to that offered by a website. Importantly it could be described as “functionally poor” as a website would be “functionally rich”. Now as a reader I believe being “functionally poor” is a good thing. I am left to mentally immerse myself in the content which can consume my consciousness without me having to stop and worry about “the next step”. The other big advantage is it as a downloaded file it is divorced from the inconsistencies of network dependencies. None of the frustrations of streamed content. The user experience (UX) benefits from it offering me the reader a consistent behaviour. It’s a predictable digital resource.

So now take a look at this PDF Container. Hopefully it creates a good User Experience for you. In fact although published back in June 2003 it emulates exactly the current Social Media user experience (UX) paradigm. Scroll, picture, text, scroll  picture, text and so forth. Currently the most popular accepted and effective way of communicating information into your consciousness.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Khliht9xBHLu25H2ctZA6MhxPHY9sdNQ/view?usp=sharing

ePDF. The free eBook.

 

You will note that in the title the term ePDF has been used and this has become a way some people choose to define a PDF when it is being used like an eBook. Technically the term does not exist since the documents produced all end up with the file extension “.pdf”. But some publishers choose to register a unique ISBN number for their copyrighted material when it is in an ePDF format. The addition of the “e” aligns it more visually with the ePUB format for when the book is formatted using the Open Systems EPUB standard. At the same time a book when published in the Amazon proprietary standard it is sometimes called eKindle. But this is not the subject for today’s blog and I will leave further technical discussion on this to be covered in my Digital Documents blog.

So to simplify matters here I will just call them PDF’s. What I want to establish is that in the case of DMB Publishing a very important aspect of the publishing that is undertaken is to offer much of the created content for free. If charging for content acts as an obstacle to readers wanting to read my content then the objective of DMB Publishing is to remove this obstacle by offering much of the content for free. With readers engaged reading the free content it is then hoped they will consider the purchase of some of the content that has a selling price. Importantly it allows for DMB Publishing to both create its own content and select content on the internet that is available free of charge and pass this content through to my readers. But at the same time it is important to appreciate that “free of charge” and “copyright” are two very different attributes of a piece of content. Books given away free still retain their legal copyright. It is an important part of DMB Publishing’s purpose to digitally capture the less popular often local books that are headed for oblivion. Oblivion these days being the skip and landfill as we see paper books disappear from society.

So the point I want to establish here is that within the context of publishing then PDF’s have become the de facto free book resource. Many organisations be they business, not for profit or government provide free PDF’s. But having said that there remain organisations that will charge for PDF’s. Those providing scientific papers or industry specific papers can look to charge very high prices for their content provided as a PDF. One common trend is for businesses to provide their content in an established book brand format as a PDF. The classic case being the use of the “For Dummies” black and yellow brand format and content style with Wiley Publishing licencing its use.

With PDF being, thanks to Adobe, being both open and ubiquitous it has become a truly international means of distributing and communicating content. It has created an expectation that readers like me look to search the internet for these PDF’s and download them for free. With a free Adobe Reader on my iPad the choice is endless and this blog site will introduce to some of these resources.

 

Publishing Industry Changes

 

This blog normally concentrates on publishing content but today (26/11/20) it is about the business side of publishing. So today the business section in The Times newspaper has been inundated with changes within the publishing industry. It should be noted that my view of publishing is it is everything that you have communicated to you. So what are these many business changes?

The first change is really a consolidation of the content owners. The owner of Penguin Random House, Bertelsmann the German media group, is set to buy Simon & Schuster to consolidate its position as the world’s largest book publisher. Bertelsmann will own about a third of the American book market with Harper Collins being No 2.

Penguin Random House owns 325 imprints that publish 70,000 digital and 15,000 print titles a year. Imprints include Penguin Classics, DK, Writer’s Digest Books and Putman. The publisher was formed in 2013 by the merger of Penguin Group, which was owned by Pearson and Random House owned by Bertelsmann. The German company brought Pearson’s stake in penguin Random House in 2018.

The second change is a magazine content owner looking to branch into artificial intelligence (AI). It is the Future group owner of the Practical Caravan magazine and the Techradar website looking to buy the Go Compare (Goco) price comparison site. Looking to move from publishing pure content to adopting individual transactional processing through auto-switching processing, branded Look After My Bills and Weflip, automatically moving users to cheaper energy tariffs. Lead by Zillah Byng-Thorne, who was Chief Financial Officer of Auto Trader, you who have someone moving a traditional publisher to becoming a digital aggregator looking to go real time transactional. With Sir Peter Wood, co-founder of Direct Line and later Esure, one of the big background shareholders you can see how creative thinkers can drive a business to impact the marketplace.

The third change is Codemasters the computer game developer under a takeover by Take-Two Interactive, the Nasdaq listed goliath that owns the game Grand Theft Auto. This is more about the Board of Codemasters making some very large financial gains whilst the independence of another British entrepreneurial business is drawn into a conglomerate.

The fourth change is Netflix boosting its UK production spend by 50% to £750 million. Netflix is having to up its gain to complete with Apple, Disney and Amazon. The battle of the streamers.

Finally the fifth change. Slack, founded in 2013, develops software that has become popular as an alternative to email allowing groups of employees to chat, collaborate and share documents. Now Salesforce, the owner of the popular cloud based customer relationship management (CRM), is looking to take them over. The purchase is to head off a growing challenge from Microsoft Teams which has become the increasingly popular workplace collaboration software Microsoft has its own CRM software under its Dynamics range of business products. Salesforce had already brought into their business two little known workplace collaboration tools, Chatter and Quip, but these were obviously not strong enough to counter the threat of Microsoft Teams.

 

So here we have a number of digitally based industries all dependent on their own patterns of bits in the cloud looking to gain market share. They are looking to grow their cloud based real estates and thereby the flow of income from them. Significantly although advertising income will be an income source they are all dependant on subscription based incomes based upon the content they offer. The spectrum of static content to dynamic content is one of the key differentiators. The more their customers are locked into transactional dependencies, the so called “sticky” solutions usually involving some data dependency or just being the preferred advertised “go to” brand, the more they can grow their businesses. But with the availability of powerful cloud based solutions that can be used by the upstarts and then easily scaled means all businesses need to keep looking over their shoulder for their new competitors.

So if you summarised the business objectives of the above changes you could arrive at these conclusions.

Bertelsmann growing content.

Future Group adding different functionality

Take Two Interactive growing content.

Netflix growing content

Salesforce adding different functionality

Timber Framed Buildings (TFB) - Kenilworth

 

The Timber Framed Buildings of Kenilworth by Steven Wallsgrove was published in 1994 as a booklet. (ISBN 10 Digit 0951270524). To my knowledge this is longer available to be purchased new or second hand. Concerned it would be lost forever I have had the approval from the Author and Copyright owner, Steven Wallsgrove, to digitised it and reworked it into a "scrolled " PDF format  which is available for your free use subject to a Creative Commons Licence requiring you to acknowledge Steven Wallsgrove (Author) and DMB Publishing (Publisher).  

Use the link below to view the PDF.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z_yEUap5muElUs0ZS4AfrcGnIFHgY60i/view?usp=sharing

Second World War - Job Instructions

 

Take a look at this PDF

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14mj2mj4PXvq0cS5IMoHxwrAlUMoofJy2/view?usp=sharing

It may seem strange but an important part of the mission statement for DMB Publishing is to direct readers to lots of free resources. In fact you cannot survive in this internet world unless you do the wonderful free of charge. So how can this be achieved. Well there is alot free these days if you know where to look. Consider that normal copyright ends 70 years after the author’s death so any author dying before 1950 can now have their work distributed by others royalty free. Many publishing houses have locked onto this fact and are busily locating these works and republishing them for resale. In fact they are constantly trawling for these authors and their works. Whilst families of the original authors manoeuvre to re-establish some form of re-ownership of authorship. Fortunately much of the Government’s old published resources are freely made available in the Public Domain. This blog is not about looking at this in any detail (not yet anyway) but to offer you access to a digital resource that I have treasured on my PC’s hard drive for many years. In fact I have just struggled to find it. So what is it and why would it be of interest to you. Fortunately it is in the Public Domain and free to use.

It was created by the US War Manpower Commission in 1944 as a “Job Instructions Sessions Outline and Reference Material” and it is now out in the Public Domain. It has always interested me because it is now 76 years old (2020) but it not only identifies the importance of Job Workflows and Job Instructions but it focusses on the people aspects of training people in the use of these Job Workflows and Job Instructions. So much common sense in one document. It is written in a very no-nonsense style focussing upon how the trainer should deliver the material. But being a process enthusiast myself it also shows both the importance of Job Instruction sequencing (the workflow) and Job Instruction textual detail.

In many current digitally driven workplaces the need for using Job Instructions has all but disappeared. But without them the “system driven” user is left to blindly obey the computer without appreciating the logic and the reason why they are doing something. Ring any call centre with a more difficult question and you will likely get the response that “I need to speak to my manager.” Job Workflows and Job Instructions still have an important role to play as any organisation under “computer control” gets more complicated. Ask Boeing about there737 Max computer problems. This is likely to get even more complex using Artificial Intelligence (AI) processing techniques. The call centre operator in the future will increasingly be asking you to Google it since they don’t know the answer and you will have as much likelihood of finding the answer as them.

Anyway take the time to read this document through and at the end I am sure it will have some impact on your thinking in respect of Training and Processes. Hopefully this will be converted into changes to your Training Process and hopefully the introduction of  Digital Workflows and the use of Job Instructions.

 

 

Purchase as a Kindle eBook or Paperback Book at http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0950871842

Published as a Second Edition in 2019 this Concise Guide has proved quite a popular selling book both in the Kindle eBook and Paperback formats sold through Amazon. In the printed format it measures 13 cm by 21 cm (5 in by 8 in) and it handles like a paperback book. The text has a large print font size and it makes extensive use of tables making for easy reading. The bibliography takes a unique approach with a photograph of the referenced books front covers along with the books name, author, publication date, publisher and ISBN along with a brief book review. This approach to the bibliography supports the DMB Publishing concept of encouraging the reader to access other relevant texts on the subject being covered to gain a broader understanding of the subject.

The background as to why the book was written is worth understanding to put it into context. In 2003 I was a Project Manager responsible for the installation of a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) computer system called System 21 in an American business called Stoneridge Pollak Limited which operated two UK manufacturing plants producing specialised car switches and sensors. The American business had implemented the Six Sigma quality methodology but it had been decided in the UK to transition to using the Toyota Production System (TPS) as the preferred production and quality management methodology. TPS used a lot of Japanese terminology (eg Gemba, Andon etc) which were new to the workforce and to me. So I started a file listing the Japanese term, the English meaning and how it achieved process change. Although there were many more TPS Japanese terms the focus was placed on the Top Twenty in terms of their usage. This proved an invaluable reference document. The ERP system was successfully implemented but under global (Chinese) commercial pricing pressures UK manufacturing proved no longer economic. The UK plants were closed down and I was made redundant 2006.

Whilst seeking work the writing of this book became something to keep me sane and also it had the potential to improve my CV and thereby my future job prospects. Whilst researching the book I came across Edwards Deming along with the other gurus popular at the time. Although I was aware of the name I had never appreciated the significance of his contribution to the Japanese recovery after the Second World War. So whilst retaining the TPS Japanese dictionary element it was decided to extend the narrative into the work of Edwards Deming and the other gurus whilst comparing the Japanese approach to manufacturing to that of the Americans. Then things changed as I got back into a job at National Probation Service as a Business Systems Trainer so the draft was filed away for another day. That day came with another redundancy from the National Probation Service in 2015. So following my normal plan in terms of being out of work out came the draft with a new plan to complete it and get it published.

Although by now my career had moved from manufacturing to a totally office based setting it became obvious that much of the content was just as applicable to office work as manufacturing work. In fact the Japanese tend not to see any difference between how work should be organised in factories or offices tending to integrate the two together under the same methodological approach.

One significant decision I made was to describe the development of Total Quality Management (TQM) in waves of ideas propagated by different gurus. I came up with four waves of innovation in terms of TQM as each wave built upon the previous wave of innovation each lead by different gurus. This seemed to give the subject a more historical perspective. For some odd reason as an author I like the term waves like similarly I like the terms generations and spectrums. The Training Courses I ran in partnership with Business Network from 2000 to 2003 were based upon the Third Wave of the eCommerce revolution. There were four separate one day courses focussed upon the different perspectives of Business, Solutions, Technology and Strategy and although these were very successful they had to be abandoned due to the New York 9/11 disaster in 2003 destroyed the training industry.

These days waves are now expressed in industry and internet technologies as 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 or in the case of network communications as generations like 1G to 5G. They look to compartmentalize the mind into sequenced versions, stages, sections or categories of thinking and innovation. Whilst having a spectrum indicates a blending of things where I like the expression a digital document spectrum which is to be the subject of one of my future books on Digital Documents. In most cases technological innovation evolves over a spectrum as different components of the innovation evolve and come together. The term wave appeals to me since it also reflects the fact that things then build up like an ocean wave does before finally releasing all its energy. The release into the market of a new innovation when things have firmed up is possibly better termed a version or a generation. Increasingly in the computer based world of digital technology terms like platforms and versions of these platforms have evolved as a way of distinguishing different solutions provided by different businesses. Having defined a platform it is about integrating solutions into or onto this platform. The significant new use of technologies in manufacturing has been called Industry 2.0 where computer driven additive processes will be the way things are manufactured in the future. Inevitably it will be by the application of more automation.

Always keen to try to innovate in my book design I made the decision that I wanted to include most of the book resources I had used to write the book. Never liking how nonfiction books tended to create a boring bibliography I decided to include a picture of each books cover along with supporting information. I think it makes the end of the book attractive and readable. It also give me a brief opportunity to share my views on the content of each book. A sort of very brief book review.

You will note in my Concise Guide genre I avoid contents pages and indexes. Although I look to give some structure where necessary using numbered Lists or Stages (eg Top Twenty Japanese Terms) or the use of mnemonics (eg TIMWOOD). The objective being to avoid any large blocks of narrative by breaking up the text so it is readily consumed into the reader’s consciousness. Communicating nonfictions subjects demands a different approach to fiction. Structure is the essence.

Well that is the background. Interestingly as a writer of nonfiction I bounce from subject to subject. I like to investigate and communicate. DMB Publishing has always been based upon my current consciousness and that is certainly unpredictable. So now back to my Estuaries of Devon book and a real masterpiece a book on the Domesday Book. 

Now go on and purchase a copy of Organisational Change - Japan and re-model your consciousness. Or buy a copy for someone else where you would like to re-model their consciousness. The concepts are applicable to any work setting or with Covid-19 the planning of work to be undertaken in a home setting.

Digital Workflow

Purchase a copy http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0950871826

It is difficult to believe this book was written in 2010 and first published in 2011. The book itself was on a subject way ahead of its time. Even in 2020 much of the content is just as relevant and it is still way ahead of its time. Needless to say it did not become a big seller. The subject of the book is far too specialised being focussed upon the Process Engineers working within the IT Industry. Essentially it is about the creation and use of workflow process engines to run businesses and even individual life events. So who is it targeted at in terms of a reader? It would have to be a Process Engineer who wants to think more outside of the “process flowchart mapping” box. With many organisation’s not fully appreciating even the value of process mapping let alone workflow mapping getting sales of this book was always going to be difficult. This was not a problem. It gave me the opportunity to get written down a major "framework" within which the subject of digital workflow could be established. 

Unfortunately I was establishing the term "Digital Workflow" which had not previously been defined within the IT Industry as well as describing it in detail. The term had more commonly been used in the media industries to define the pre-production processing of films. My application of the term was broader applying to all businesses and industries. Possibly a mistake on my part in terms of trying to communicate what the book was about using a term unfamiliar to everybody. But the reality is it was in fact a "digital workflow" and I thought this term needed to be established within the IT Industry. Trying to establish such a term just through a book publication using its name was not good thinking on my behalf. It really needed the "weight" of some industry or media organisations behind it. As I have said previously marketing was never my strong point. But producing the book did involve me in some really exciting new frontiers and oddly enough they depended heavily on "Digital Workflows". Bit like an own goal.    

 The really exciting thing about creating this book was back in 2010 I used the Print on Demand (POD) services of CreateSpace which had evolved from a Company called BookSurge. In 2005 Amazon acquired BookSurge a global leader in inventory free book printing and fulfilment based in Charleston, South Carolina. It was renamed CreateSpace in 2008 becoming part of their Media on Demand services division. Finally CreateSpace merged with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) service in 2018. With Amazon, in my opinion, the leader in the application of “Digital Workflow” technologies the book itself was being produced using the principles described in the book. If that makes sense. It has always been obvious when using KDP that very effective workflow management principles have been applied to their business processes. Well done Amazon. 

 

So what do DMB Publishing intend to do with this book in the future? After 10 years it could do with some revision work but on the whole this could be quite superficial since the fundamentals remain unchanged. But I am unlikely to invest anytime in these changes unless a large specialist publisher is prepared to commit to the marketing and distribution of the book. As they say I am open to any offers. If you are interested please email me at dmbpublishing@gmail.com.