The Book Is the Web Site, and Vice Versa
As the print-on-demand book concept gains increasing acceptance, it strikes me that its popularity should solidify another interesting possibility: a book as a web site. What I mean by this is that a book should be available on the web in its entirety, not necessarily for free, perhaps sponsored by advertising or password protected for access only by a subscriber, but the source file for the book should be a web site. When new information is added or errors corrected, they should be immediately reflected in the book. The web site would be easily browsable and searchable while the book would represent the physical record, to be consumed at leisure without the need for an energy-consuming computer, mobile device, or e-reader. It would be readable in fifty, a hundred, or five hundred years. The web site would display its content dynamically to suit the real estate of the computer or mobile device screen while the book would benefit from typical book features such as headers, footers, page numbers, a table of contents, and an index. The printed book (or e-book) would be generated automatically only when an order was taken. The book’s content would reflect the latest version as reflected on the web site. The two would be one, and yet different.
As a writer, this idea is particularly appealing. I’d like to create content this way for my professional work as well as for the amateur history writing I do for fun. What I’m looking for is the tool that would allow me to do this. I’m looking for a writing tool that creates the web site and the book simultaneously. It would not matter to me that I would need to adhere to strict formatting or tagging rules, or that there would likely be concessions in regard to material such as links or video, which might not translate well into print. These issues are all addressable. The problem is the tool. Does it exist? Is somebody working on this? If you know, please tell me.
Tags: book, e-book, Print On Demand, web site
Consumer, Office, Production |
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By Jim Hamilton, October 22, 2009 @ 4:05 pm
It’s been brought to my attention that wikis do a lot of what I describe above and that Blurb’s (www.blurb.com) BookSmart software can accomplish what I’m looking for in a separate application. It’s close. Blogslurping is one thing. I’d like to see it done with real books as part of a web site. Anyway, this is great feedback. Please keep the comments coming in (even if you are too shy to post a comment here I do appreciate the feedback).
By Michael J, October 24, 2009 @ 11:08 am
One thiing you might look at is Pediapress.org in Germany. They produce print on demand books from wikipedia. One path might be to write the book at wikipedia, then order the POD version from them.
Another functionality is Printcasting. It’s not a book so much as a newspaper. But a book could be done in chapters or serialized a la Charles Dickens back in the day.
@hotprints has an API that connects into social media. As of today, they are live at facebooks with photobooks.
The XML to PDF to POD is appearing all over the web. IMO, it’s a pretty clear path to the next stage of print.
By Bryan Yeager, October 26, 2009 @ 8:04 am
Michael brings up some good services where Web publishing and print meet. Printcasting is especially interesting. We’ve gotten samples from Hotprints here, and while it’s a great idea, I think the quality and templates available still need to be improved upon. In addition to Blurb, we’ve also had a briefing in the past with SharedBook, a company that’s developed similar blog slurping technology to turn blogs and content from Websites into print-ready books (one site the technology is showcased is AllRecipes).
I’m currently finishing a blog post on the collaboration between Wikia and HP MagCloud, which will be posted later today and also falls under this category. I also stumbled upon another service called BookOven, a collaborative space for multiple people to publicly or privately write and edit books. According to the BookOven FAQ, a finished book can be exported to the .epub format for an eBook or PDF for a POD book. It doesn’t seem like there is a direct connection with a POD service, although I have not investigated too deep. It would be an interesting progression to connect BookOven users with something like Blurb or Lulu.