Takin’ a look at the Vook Builder tool. Will it be easy drag and drop? Will it take the coding out of digital books? *fingers crossed*
At first glance, the Vook Builder (for digital books) looks like an editing page for a blog post. Symbols are all familiar.
There are four layout styles to choose from, all clean and easy to read e-book styles. #VookBuilderBeta
Each style can be customized using tools and buttons on a sidebar, like alignment, text size, space between lines. #vookbuilderbeta
Hell, it’s already easier to use than MS Word. *snerk*#vookbuilderbeta
Lots of font choices, some obnoxious, but maybe bad font usage will help to separate crap e-books out from the rest. #vookbuilderbeta
Changed text to illegible font in bright yellow. It’ll be a hit! With people who sell Advil for eye/brain strain. #vookbuilderbeta
Now highlighting all the text in a color that will make the whole page gray for the colorblind. #howtomaketheworstvookever#vookbuilderbeta
Hmm. Highlighter might be useful for “blank” inserts for a Madlibs-esque story. #startingtogetideas #ruhroh #vookbuilderbeta
Note how I am having fun with this digital beta, rather than screaming about difficult interfaces. #goodsign #vookbuilderbeta
I spy outline (“list”) tools with my little eye. Ooooooooooh. Makin’ TOC and references pages easy-breezy. #vookbuilderbeta
They have guidelines for uploading content from Word. They even have sample docs. Good. #ineedalltheguidingicanget#vookbuilderbeta
“Text in a pre element is displayed in a fixed-width font, and it preserves both spaces and line breaks.” Good. #vookbuilderbeta
They’ve got formatting for “tip boxes.” Those would prolly turn into snarkastic side commentary, in my case. XD #vookbuilderbeta
Oh, correction. They don’t generate an ISBN, but they do generate an identification number in lieu of ISBN, which is OK.#vookbuilderbeta
@vooktv I tend to live-tweet anything I beta. If I took notes instead, I’d never get around to blogging them. XD
You can use a pre-bought ISBN or Vook will generate one for you, which takes the work out of getting one. #vookbuilderbeta
Think I’ll grab one of my MS, follow these guidelines, upload it, and see what I get. #vookbuilderbeta
Photoset: Screen grabs of the Vook Builder beta. Vook is a company that puts out interactive digital books….http://tmblr.co/ZcyMHwJuRoMH
I like that Vook suggests Gimp as an alternative to expensive photo software. Keepin’ it affordable for the masses. #vookbuilderbeta
Not too keen on how Vook seems to sign me out if I leave the page for a while to deal w/something. Auto-sign-outs ruin my workflow.
@ColleenLindsay I still get people trying to pitch me MS b/c I was an editor…YEARS ago, for a comic book publisher. Details they ignore.
Did u/l of an MS .doc to Vook Builder that I’d already prepped for e-formats. Results were a file that’s 90% ready. Zippy!#bookbuilderbeta
My bold and italics are all in the Vook conversion. Phew. *big sigh of relief that that converts correctly* #vookbuilderbeta
Started reading ebook that was open on my NookColor, went, “Hey, this is familiar,” then remembered it’s just the mock-up of my MS.#blond
Granted, I wasn’t doing anything fancy. Just a basic text ebook w/one image. Vook can do audio & video, too. #vookbuilderbeta
Still, for two paragraphs I got to read my own story cold, as if it were someone else’s book. Glad my reaction wasn’t “Who wrote this crap?”
And I only just signed up for and started using Vook Builder for the first time this afternoon. #vookbuilderbeta
I just noticed that SMART QUOTES were added during the file conversion, half of them the wrong way. WTH. NO, JUST NO.#vookbuilderbeta
With Vook Builder, uploaded a .doc MS, easily fixed minor format issues, and created epub + mobi files in half a day. #vookbuilderbeta
So it looks like if usually u do NOT to use smart quotes, you need to convert your doc to smart quotes before u/l to Vook to avoid errors.
I can’t find any way to “delete all” of you upload the wrong doc into your Vook. Having to delete each ch manually. UGH.#vookbuilderbeta
Watched epic battle between teeny tiny bug and teeny weeny spider on my wall. The bug escaped, and I cheered. #happyending
That was a waste of a chunk of my time. There needs to be a “delete all chapters” option, Vook. Or ch checkboxes + delete.#vookbuilderbeta
Which is the case for me on both counts. RT @eBookNoir:@CheriLasota @audryt I’d say more for fiction and if word is your source document.
Super slim scroll bars for online editing trend is driving me bat-shit. I use no mouse wheel. I have to be able to CLICK ON that thin bar.
@RKCharron I’m still playing around with both of them, but like ‘em so far.
Aside from a couple of minor formatting fixes and having to manually delete every chapter when I u/l wrong doc, Vook has been really easy.
@RKCharron For easy e-publishing, try Vook Builder:http://vook.com/ For easy website building, try Wix:http://www.wix.com/
I still haven’t had to use ANY code, not any CSS or HTML, to make my ebook with Vook Builder. Thank you, designers. #vookbuilderbeta
Have been waiting years for the intuitive, easy-use, drag & drop online tools that are being spawned this year. Finally!#thisisagreatyear
So far, I highly rec Vook. Still playing w/it, though. RT @CheriLasota: Ooh, do u reccomend Vook? Try Atavist yet? @eBookNoir
Also, pleased as punch that I can download test or final versions in epub and mobi formats and distribute as I please. #vookbuilderbeta
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A funny paradox of the eBook revolution — it’s easier than ever to create digital books, but frustratingly complex to share them and difficult for readers to actually read them without the right device or application. eBooks have turned books into pieces of software and publishers into software companies. The very smart Peter Brantley first articulated this distinction for me in an email remark, but it’s a concept — a new kind of category and role for book makers to fill — that we’ve been thinking about for as long as we’ve created eBooks.
Software companies create software that runs on devices, not — in most cases — that runs itself. An eBook is fundamentally a Website wrapped up and rendered as a discreet, downloadable and fixed digital artifact that needs to be accessed and experienced on a device; be that a mobile reader, tablet, or computer. Publishing companies — when they only made print books — created objects that didn’t need devices. Physical books were the device and the experience simultaneously. Perfect objects, really. Self contained experience delivery system that were the experience itself. Like a piece of fruit, or a painting.
For thousands of years, the only requirement to consume textual content for a reader was literacy. Cave pictograms, clay tablets, pamphlets from Gutenberg’s printing press — all the reader needed to get the message from these forms was the ability to see the symbols that comprised them and comprehend their meaning. Writers and publishers created texts for readers, and they were usually creating actual text. Not so in this digital world.
To put it more simply:
If I write a book long hand or on a type-writer or print it out from Word and give you the manuscript, you can read it immediately.
But if I write an ebook and give it to you — you can’t read it. You need to put it on a device first.
That’s a crucial differentiator between print and eBooks, the requirement of this new form of the book to have a companion device.
And it’s why publishing companies really have become software publishers. They’re creating software every day — and the sooner they begin to adapt the best practices and processes of the most successful and prolific software publishers, the faster they’ll be able to dominate this rapidly evolving eBook landscape.
]]>Vook’s the product of heroic work from our design and engineering teams and voluminous and insightful input from hundreds of closed beta-users, whose feedback helped make the platform what it is today.
Here’s a roundup of what the press has been saying:
Publishers Weekly’s Craig Teicher: ”. . . could indeed be a game-changer.”
Digital Book World’s Jeremy Greenfield: “Call it iBooks Author without the marriage to Apple.”
Next Web’s Anna Heim: “Could Vook (and similar ventures) be about to disrupt an entire industry?”
Betabeat’s Jessica Roy: ”We find this act incredibly noble.”
TeleRead’s Paul Biba also recapped the launch.
We’ll have more updates on what we’re doing and the response from our users. And go try Vook for yourself. We want to know what you think! You can write [email protected]. I’m standing by.
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The NYTech Meetup event was smashed with attendees and lines so long one of our team members was turned away. It’s the kind of thing that helps establish a start up. Along with companies such as Tatly, Sonar, and Etsy, we got to pitch Vook for six hours straight to a constant stream of SXSW attendees. The event was held at the Cedar Door on 3rd street with a free flowing bar—which meant the questions became progressively more abstract as the evening progressed. But what more could a young company want than the opportunity to explain our product to as many smart people as possible? We can’t thank the NYTech team enough for launching this event and including us. Jessica Lawrence spearheaded our involvement and much of the activity that we witnessed. She and the NYTech Meetup have built something powerful. And personally, it was as much fun as reading the constant NYTech listserv emails, which is saying something.
]]>Everyone from the DOJ to Amazon.com is weighing in on the best way to price an eBook. It seems like a good time to bring up our eBook pricing whitepaper again; especially in light of us commenting in an MSNBC article on the DOJ investigation. Beyond the struggles between the big players, we wanted to highlight what we’ve learned publishing digital content and help you understand some ways you can think about pricing an ebook — or even just buying one.
It’s all about the algorithm
Digital retailers have invested millions of dollars in developing algorithms for optimal pricing on their products — with one goal in mind — to maximize revenue. This can benefit of the retailer, the publisher and, in most cases, the consumer. In our whitepaper on pricing, you can see how these algorithms work. Depending on factors like the category and discoverability of a given title, a higher or lower price may get you to that sweet spot.
But, what about control?
Algorithms that magically maximize revenue sound great, but there are times when a publisher may wish to have more control over the retail price. For example, when there is a substitute product, such as a physical book, whose sales may suffer from heavy discounting. Until now, publishers did not have the tools or the fine control necessary to make these fine adjustments.
Have it both ways
The latest publishing platforms, such as Vook, give both the feedback (daily sales reporting) and the control (interface for changing metadata on the fly) needed to maintain price integrity of their valuable content.
The legal implications of the DOJ and Agency pricing will work themselves out in time. But hopefully the publishing companies will soon be able to start “engineering up” as opposed to “lawyering up” — so they can begin developing interfaces and applications with companies like ours to make the most of digital books in a more flexible pricing environment. Take a look at our full whitepaper and let us know what you think the best way to price an eBook is.
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But we’re a digital publishing operation so of course we’re piling on this Two Minute Hate. If Franzen’s railed against eBooks and decried Twitter, what better way to zing him then to make a Franzen targetted eBook out of Twitter itself?
We sourced some top tweets from #jonathanfranzenhates and bookified them with Vook, thereby creating hypothetical Franzine kryptonite—a digital book version of a social media stream of tweets attacking the author for questioning its right to exist, wrapped up in another digital medium (the eBook) the author detests maybe more.
In movies, people are always realizing they’ve succeeded-but-too-ambitiously by doing something that symbolically indicates they’ve “destroyed the thing they love.” I think this happens in Boogie Nights, or Adaptation. If that TV trope has any basis in fact, our platform is definitely a victory, as it’s allowing us to cleverly abuse an author whose work we love. But so it goes in the digital future!
Click this link to get the ePub version of “The eBook Franzen Would Hate”
To download and read it, click here for instructions.
And much respect to Storify and the Guardian, whose Tweet stream story inspired us to make an actual eBook book.
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The event’s on Sunday, March 11th from 6 to midnight at the Fast Company Grill at Cedar Door. You can RSVP for your spot here.
The Managing Director of NY Tech MeetUp is Jessica Lawrence, and she’s the driving force behind the showcase. It features a host of great companies (including some of our favorites, Warby Parker, Sonar, and Skillshare), the opportunity to pitch your ideas to angel investors, and the chance to drink with entrepreneurs and smart people who are making it here and on their way to making it everywhere. Stop by and see us!
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We partnered with Ernst & Young and Knowledge@Wharton to produce Global Banking 2025, a free enhanced eBook that tackles the biggest questions facing financial institutions today with thoughtful text, sharply produced videos and great insights from the smartest minds in the business.
Before Vook, firms like Ernst & Young had to rely on information jammed Websites, cumbersome printed reports or long DVDs to share their knowledge. Thanks to Vook and eBooks and mobile devices, they can now compress their findings into an easy to read, great looking eBook. Since our platform makes it easy to integrate video, audio, images and text, we’re able to apply the advantages of the eBook format to many different kinds of content.
We’re proud to have produced this eBook with Ernst & Young and Knowledge@Wharton; and especially happy that we can share it with you for free. It’s a great introduction to the kind of titles you’ll be able to make on Vook very soon; and of the advantages eBooks offer diverse industries.
eBooks aren’t just for books anymore. . .
]]>That feat’s got to be the eBook equivalent of Lin’s remarkable rise to b-ball dominance, and if video games can rejigger to show his new stats, books should be able to move just as fast (especially with Vook, where they don’t require any coding).
This kind of publishing is going to become more and more common. eBooks are turning out to be a remarkably easy and straight-forward way to deliver content to mobile devices. They’re the smartest kind of tech innovation—one that’s an improvement on what exists and an improvement that actually works.
In a recent New York Review of Books essay on eBooks, Tim Parks remarked, “The ebook. . . would seem to bring us closer than the paper book to the essence of the literary experience.” He considers—like us—the literary experience to be the reader’s experience of words in a sequence. Bound books were a great technology delivery system, but the fundamental technology between the covers—one of the oldest technologies in the world—is writing. When you unite the latest and greatest devices (the iPad, the Android, Sony’s Tablet, Kobo, etc) with that primal innovation, you can begin to see a kind of ‘omega point’ for text-based content. All that’s been missing is a great way to get the content into eBook form smoothly.
It’s appropriate that books on individuals like Jeremy Lin are kicking off this revolution—his success is inspiring and unexpected, but it’s the kind of thing we should have seen coming. Luckily, now we can produce literary experiences that will help us make sense of this dazzling new world almost as quickly as it changes.
Congrats to Jasson Allen Ashlock, Alan Goldsher and Movable Type. You’ve got a winner!
]]>Now, by extending our platform to others, we’re certain we’re going to produce 10,000 titles in 2025—after all, our beta users built some 500 plus books in only 60 days.
I’m laying out how we think about the future after reading a post from blogger and eBook consultant Leonard Feldman on our and Inkling’s move to offer eBook publishing platforms directly to creators. Feldman’s headline wonders if our decision is a smart one, but his column is more thoughtful than incendiary. No entrepreneur needs to be reminded of the difficulties ahead, but we appreciated Feldman’s clear grasp of the challenges.
Start-ups only succeed if they are using technology to solve a problem — the more gnarly the problem the more motivated that we get. For publishers, that problem is making quality ebooks smartly and efficiently. How it’s done today is absurd: it requires multiple software packages, a multitude of vendors, a slew of touch points with content shipped overseers and shipped back. It does not make sense that the people who are best at finding authors, curating content and editing manuscripts are strapped with this mess. The costs — direct and in lost opportunity — are staggering.
Fixing it is difficult — and that’s what technologists love to tackle, hard problems.
Inspired by the difficulties that we experienced producing hundreds of titles, we came up with a better and smarter way to create quality eBooks. Keep in mind that start-ups thrive by being responsive and flexible. Our investors love that we can respond to rapidly unfolding challenges and opportunities in a fast-changing industry. We don’t need to react to the upheaval. Instead, we take advantage of it because our team is smart, agile and accustomed to operating in disruptive industries.
In the end, we’ve always been determined to extend Vook. Check out this press release from 2025, where we announce what we were then calling the ‘Mothervook’ platform, which will “provide a streamlined system for creating multi-media ebooks.” The Vook platform is what makes us who we are. We’re eBook technologists, providing technical, engineering solutions to the knotty problems of digital books.
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