Myia FitzGerald

Myia FitzGerald is a writer from Dania Beach, Florida. She is a self-professed lover of words, language, and culture with an affinity for classical studies of literature, art, and mythology. Her most recent bodies of work have been for commercial businesses in marketing and product development and news reporting for international universities.

Interactive E-Books: Where Did They Come From, and Where Are They Going

Interactive e-books are taking the digital world by storm. However, while recent developments in electronic texts are exciting, the revolutionizing of book interaction is not new. Publish Drive explains,

Even if we don’t count coloring books, pop-ups and all kinds of hands-on books for kids, traditional printed books that allow the readers to interact or change the story some way or another have been around for a while now.

Interactive e-books are mimicking innovations made in interactive print publishing while also creating new features unique to the digital medium.

The new features of e-books increase audience engagement by including media that the reader can play with. Publish Drive continues, “Interactive ebooks come in two major forms: apps and enhanced ebooks.” Essentially the e-books are made for browsing through an app on the web, on a mobile device, or on a desktop, and the app supports the media.

The other option involves creating an ePub file that internally supports all the different media. “Books made this way are called enhanced ebooks, and offer a significant level of customizability. This includes easy to enlarge pictures, embedded video and audio, and excellent accessibility.”

Features of Enhanced E-books

Authors have a vast array of features they can choose to utilize in their interactive e-books. Videos, animations, and voice-overs are popular inclusions. For visual aids, companies like Pearson use interactive diagrams with pop-up labels and definitions, changing infographics, responsive maps, calculators, and other activities that promote visual learning and engagement.

The most salient features though, include supported activities that can usually be found in print books as well. Features such as quizzes, word searches, comprehension activities, and checklists that e-books can generate and check. No more looking up the answers in a guide or waiting for class reviews; the books can do it all on their own.

Two main factors limit the types and volume of additional media that the author can put in their e-books: copyright restrictions and file size restrictions. If copyright prevents the inclusion of videos and other media, then try embedding them. If they block embedding, then link.

Amazon charges a “delivery fee” for some sales based on the size of the e-book, so authors working with them should be aware of that. As Kotobee says, “Otherwise, the main concern with a large file size is happy readers.” Audiences will tolerate large file, i.e. time consuming, downloads for important texts like academic textbooks much more than pleasure texts like novels.

Examples of Enhanced E-books

The interactive e-books on the market typically fall into three categories: academic texts, adult texts, and children’s books.

According to Iltifat Husain, MD, the most interactive textbook on the market is Ganong’s Review of Medical Physiology. The book features pop-up definitions, interactive label diagrams, surgery videos, and extensive annotation capabilities. Pearson’s Biology and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Modern Chemistry also rank pretty high for number of downloads but lack elegance, says Alex Reinhart.

The adult-oriented interactive e-books fit several different genres; novels like The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins and Do or Die by Clark Kokich do well on the market. The most promising entertainment genre though appears to be cookbooks. For example, Look&Cook is an interactive cookbook that includes the usual step-by-step instructions along with voiceover instructions, built-in timers for recipe steps, video tutorials, and emailed shopping lists.

Children’s books typically feature animations and background music like the ones in Two Worlds, One Child’s Heart by Vered Kaminsky and Sparklify the Earth by Sandra Rose Gunn, which Publish Drive’s blog promotes.

Platforms for the Creation and Distribution of Interactive E-Books

Not all interactive e-books have to be coded by hand though. Kotobee offers a platform specifically geared to enhanced text creation through widgets. Flip PDF does the same thing and enables PDF-usable for the initial upload. Apple’s iBook Author, Aquafadas, PubCoder, Atavist, Calibre, and Sigil all offer the same capabilities. Most platforms that facilitate e-book creation will enable enhanced e-books. Platforms for distribution are a different story, though.

Two things determine access to interactive e-books: the device and the distributor. For example, Amazon supports enhanced texts, but their Kindles do not. Kobo tablets support enhanced texts, but leave their apps and other devices lacking. Google Play Books does not support interactive e-books, but Apple iBooks does. Consequently, authors and publishers bear the responsibility of knowing what platform the audience will use.

Success for Interactive Iterations of E-Books

Interactive texts continue to climb the ranks for B2B publishers, students, and casual readers. Map Systems India explains that for students an enhanced e-book “helps them to participate in the learning process, increasing their activities on the platform. For instance, you need not explain them the procedure of completing a task.”

Kitaboo published an article that details all the ways interactive texts surpass regular e-books such as being easier to update and revise. Furthermore, interactive texts provide: more accessibility to readers who may struggle to read a standard e-book; the ability to “link content to additional resources;” and, “Content creators/publishers/institutes/enterprises can set up an assessment for post learning evaluation and even need analysis.”

Kitaboo also claims,

Through the functionalities of interactive eBooks, creators can embed multimedia which makes the content contextually relevant and easier to relate with. Integrating technologies give students an opportunity to learn by viewing 3D models. This adds a layer of information over reality to enhance the learning experience.

Implications for the Industry

Enhanced e-books appear to be here to stay. Snap App says, “This sustained popularity means static ebooks are only going to become more saturated, and readers more numb to them.” Only recently have companies begun to understand how important their digital content is. Reinhart complained about the sloppiness of the e-books publishers are putting out when he stated:

It seems that textbook publishers are only willing to invest effort in multimedia, animations, and interactivity for big intro books—books which will sell tens of thousands of copies to bored students who will generally avoid reading them.

Consequently, good interactive e-books may be far and few between for now, but the ones coming in the future should be truly revolutionary.

Getting Hooked on Reading

Hooked entices young people to fall for reading hook, line, and sinker. The company aims to engage teenagers and millennials through a near-voyeuristic experience via fictionalized text message stories. Prerna Gupta, Co-Founder of Hooked, claims:

The way we consume content is changing dramatically, especially in younger generations. For example, a majority of young adult novels are being read digitally now in the U.S., and that’s increasingly happening on mobile. But the way that books are created hasn’t changed in centuries.

Hooked allows readers to select stories presented as a text message conversation between characters through a mobile app. Anthony Ha from TechCrunch explains that instead of flipping pages, taps summon the next text. The app includes stand-alone stories and chapter series that reach about 1,000 words. Users are offered several free stories along with a charged option for unlimited access of $2.99 for a week, $7.99 for a month, and $39.99 for a year.

The History of Hooked

Prerna Gupta and Parag Chordia previously worked as successful app developers before they founded Hooked, the self-proclaimed “future of storytelling”. After Gupta experienced a panic attack about the uncertainty of their novel and its lack of a typical protagonist, the pair decided to test a selection of their novel on an app and track audience response. They realized that the audience barely finished even the limited best seller excerpts as Gupta explains:

People say that reading is dying. But we refused to believe this. Storytelling is fundamental to humans; some believe it is the essence of humanity. The demand for great stories is ever present. Fiction must evolve with the times.

After attempting various approaches to encourage audience completion, the couple decided to test out text message stories. They discovered that the format appeals to young audiences for several reasons: the text message style ensures brevity, encourages intimacy in storytelling, and feels familiar to an uber tech-literate audience.

What Hooked Has to Offer

Hooked hires college students to write fiction stories for the app. The writers then produce more pieces in the genres that receive the most engagement. Romance and horror top the list of the most popular genres among their teen audience with endless chapters available and an option for subscribers to self-publish.

The success behind the frivolous content centers around young people reading to completion on the app. The content also fits precisely with readers’ parameters for time consumption, tone, and style, which promotes returning readership. Forbes’ Adam Rowe describes the challenge of the text style content: “To keep the audience engaged, you have to be pithy and keep the story moving along at a brisk pace.”

The Market’s Take

Readers are obsessed with Hooked. Gupta claims that “rather than destroy reading, Hooked makes reading engaging for a broad audience. We’ve heard from many teens who say they hate reading books, but they love reading in Hooked. It’s a gateway drug.” Overall, the app boasts 10 million subscribed readers, with over 20 million downloads. Gupta also states that the audience has “collectively reading over 10 billion fictional text messages in the app” and written “a million chat stories of their own, directly from their phones.”

This enterprise offers real-time data about audience interaction along with providing a unique reading experience for their teen readers. Along with the success from their innovation and versatility, the app has also secured substantial investments since its initial conception in 2015.

What Hooked Created

The most business-oriented use results from the app’s original purpose: a/b testing storylines. Gupta told the LA Times, “I think it can push the boundaries for Hollywood in experimenting with new storylines and diverse characters. If you can test stories … you could take out some of the guesswork.”

The app’s analytics resulted in three main conclusions about audience reading patterns that differ from current industry practice. First, the point of view doesn’t matter; readers connect the same with first present as they do third past. Second, readers seldom engage if the piece begins in media res. Third, the race and gender of the protagonist make no difference in engagement, aside from teenage girls actually preferring female leads. Michelle Castillo from CNBC says that Hooked’s audience is “18 and 24, with 69 percent under the age of 25. The average user, however, is 25, and more than half are female.”

This analytic function serves both writers and publishers who are looking to test new material, along with Hollywood execs searching for the latest piece, as David Drake of The Huffington Post writes:

[Gupta’s] team is using this data to transform the content industry and Hollywood is catching on as film studios can test stories in the same way before production. This is the reason why investors, including Greg Silverman, President of Warner Brothers, has invested in the app.

Hooked also creates other avenues of content such as spoiler sites and featured series. One of the spoiler sites, Hooked Stories, publishes complete stories and popular chapters from Hooked free of charge. These sites essentially poach content for readers and capitalize on the app’s paywall.

Featured series, such as “Dark Matter,” are produced for platforms like Snapchat. Todd Spangler describes the series as a “multimedia series [that] blends the chat-fiction format” with voice-overs and illustrations. The featured series last longer than a standard Hooked story and draw massive audiences to the platforms.

Hooked has been enticing readers since 2015 and ranked among the Apple store’s top apps since 2017. The tailored series, which are available in more than seven languages, attracts readers without demanding excessive amounts of the readers’ time. The understanding of readership Hooked provides also proves that audiences, such as the arts, are changing. With an ever-growing audience base, this app has truly transformed fiction reading from flipping through pages to swiping through text messages for a watchers’ perspective.

Changing the World with Worldreader

Worldreader, the lovechild of Amazon and higher education, gained three million new users in 2018, bringing the total number of individuals the company has reached to 10 million according to Publishers Weekly’s Ed Nawotka.

Worldreader, a charitable organization that promotes literacy and learning through technology, was founded by David Risher, previously both a general manager at Microsoft and Amazon’s senior vice president for Retail and Marketing, and Colin McElwee, the first Director of Marketing at ESADE Business School in Barcelona. As an AllAfrica article on Worldreader explains, Risher and McElwee’s initiative “provides people in the developing world with free access to a library of digital books via e-readers and mobile phones.”

Worldreader intends to bridge the gap in education that permeates developing nations. According to CIO’s article “Worldreader Launches E-reading Program in Rabai,” “only one in nineteen African countries has anything close to adequate book provision in schools.” To change that, Worldreader gives away Kindles and Tablets, loaded with e-books, to disadvantaged peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

What Worldreader has to Offer

Worldreader re-evaluates its e-book catalog each year based on reading levels and gauged interest. The 35,000 works that it offers fit all different categories to engage readers fully – AllAfrica says the e-books are “texts for all ages; books that are supplementary reading for education; vocational books; books for low literacy adults; and basic books to get parents to tell stories to kids.”

Worldreader offers three different apps so that readers can access the e-books on mobile devices. The regular Worldreader app enables users to set and track reading goals through gamification and supports offline reading, which the frequently low-fi status of the villages necessitates. The unique language support feature contributes the most to Worldreader’s success: the app supports all modern written languages from Hindi to Arabic.

The organization also offers a “Worldreader Kids” app. Like the original app, it enables offline reading – however, the child-friendly app includes personalized avatars to entertain young ones while they read the illustrated children’s e-books.

The “Worldreader Student” app works on Android devices and supports reading level analysis as well as other insights to help the organization tailor the program for students.

Worldreader also offers a product it calls a BLUE Box, which the charity designed for schools and libraries. The BLUE Box costs $15,000 per package and consists of 5,000 e-books pre-loaded onto 50 Kindles (sometimes donated Android tablets) with full Worldreader operational support. The products Worldreader supports feed directly into its established programs.

Moreover, the charity boasts an incredible range of partners, donors, and patrons. Worldreader is partnered with publishers such as Pearson, Penguin Random House, and Rosetta Books, and supported by organizations like EBSCO, Google, LinkedIn, and the UN. Additionally, Amazon, Samsung, and Microsoft all make products for Worldreader at low cost.

Worldreader’s Reading Programs

Worldreader outlines four major reading programs: Pre-Reading, School Reading, Library Reading, and Lifelong Reading. The “Worldreader Kids” app feeds into the Pre-Reading program, which aims to get parents and teachers reading with young children to establish the importance of literacy young. Worldreader’s 2018 Annual Report says that learning to read at a young age dramatically increases a child’s earning potential which “increase(s) their chance of breaking the cycle of poverty and create(s) inner capacity to build healthier and more equitable societies.”

The School Reading program correlates with the student app and BLUE Box to provide material to both student and teacher. UNESCO states that “an astonishing 617 million children and adolescents worldwide are not reaching minimum proficiency levels in reading. A lack of books prevents literacy acquisition and learning, blocking students from reaching their full potential.” Worldreader challenges this problem by providing students access to online textbooks through their program.

Worldreader has several initiatives in both the Library Reading and Lifelong Reading programs: the Library Reading program has LOCAL (Local Content for African Libraries) and LEAP (Libraries, E-Reading, Activities, Partnerships) which engage the public in e-book consumption. The Lifelong Reading program has AvanzaLee, a Latin American initiative focused on Mexican e-books, and Anasoma, an initiative geared toward gender equality.

Why E-readers instead of Print Books

Donating e-readers makes more sense than providing print books in an environment where scarcity oppresses. As Linendoll from CNN explains,

Carrying heavy loads of books is not practical for Kenyan students who often have to walk miles to and from school. E-readers, however, are a different story. They’re lightweight and portable and give students access to entire libraries, including books from African publishers.

The e-readers also allow for more technological intervention – between being data-driven and fully supported remotely, e-readers encourage more engagement in continents like Africa by supporting African languages. The technological literacy the readers attain also promotes the use of e-readers.

The founders, Risher and McElwee, explain that the previous favor print books held counteracts the goal of the charity,

Donating paper books to a place like Africa is well-intentioned, but it’s actually ill-informed. You can’t actually get the right books to the people you want to get to, at the time they need it. It’s very expensive and highly inefficient.

The expense of sending print books would be astronomical – the cost of production and shipping alone would already eat through Worldreader’s funds, and e-readers contain more content in half the size for pennies on the dollar. The volume and versatility of e-readers make them the clear choice for an operation of this size.

Some might worry though about the danger of theft when using tools so valuable; as Linendoll expresses, “The students, after all, go home to a community filled with poverty.” However, less than a single percent of e-readers has disappeared, which indicates the absences can likely be attributed to other factors, such as moving. “Books and education are really the way out of this, and people take great care of books and education,” McElwee stated.

Worldreader has pushed literacy through e-books with great results on four continents. Though the charity currently boasts 10 million users, Nawotka’s article “Worldreader Added 3 Million Users” reports that, “The stated goal for the group is to ultimately reach one billion readers.” These results should come as great news for e-book authors as Worldreader has expanded the digital publishing universe by opening up audience demographics that were previously left untouched. All an author has to do is write something worth reading.

I, Robot Author

Earlier this year, science-centered publisher Springer Nature produced the online textbook Lithium-Ion Batteries: A Machine-Generated Summary of Current Research. This e-book has no earth-shattering findings on the batteries, but it made headlines all the same: “This is the first time AI has authored an entire research book, complete with a table of contents, introductions, and linked references.”

AI Now

The first fully AI-authored e-book is here. Similarly, an AI-authored travel novel was released this year, though only in print. In The Verge, James Vincent wrote, “For decades, machines have struggled with the subtleties of human language, and even the recent boom in deep learning powered by big data and improved processors has failed to crack this cognitive challenge,” but this no longer holds true. Now multiple businesses have released writing AI in the past year, all capable of producing intelligible sentences.

Google, Springer Nature, and OpenAI produce the most crucial writing AI. Google’s BERT works with NLG or natural language generation. BERT aims to replicate the way language organically flows.

BetaWriter outranks BERT, though, for writers. BetaWriter wrote the first published e-book from Springer Nature. The publishing industry has hailed the 250+ page textbook as a turning point in the advancement of AI writing.

OpenAI’s GPT-2 also holds serious status for authors. GPT-2 excels in language modeling. The program can create anything from a realistic news headline to an entire story length tale from one line of input.

Positive Aspects of Writing with AI

Writing with AI can certainly benefit authors. The bots excel at matching texts in their samples, which makes them ideal for both writing passages in foreign languages and adding multiple versions of an e-book. Macho from PublishDrive touches on this subject saying, “This innovation shows a more accessible future translation market by listening to or reading a book out loud and getting them translated realtime.”

While the AI bots may not be able to write precisely what the author imagines, they can compile large libraries easily. This research aspect helps authors streamline the writing process. As Kevin Waddel points out in this Axios article, the bots’ function ideally to “Dig researchers out from under information overload.” This function benefits both academic writers trying to compile educational or experimental data and the pleasure writer logging settings, mythical characters, and historical events.

Bots also function within an established framework, making them ideal for online authors. Not only can AI compile all the information necessary to make writing easy, but authors can use the formatting “technicality” to format their e-book files with little error or effort. The bots can do all the formatting that people can, so authors and publishers should take advantage of what the bots can reliably do to maximize the payoff.

Downsides to Writing with AI

Writing with AI can come with some real drawbacks, especially if humans don’t run interference. AI learns through what it reads by searching for patterns, but that’s it. Macho explains, “The key lies in EQ or EI – whatever you call it – using emotional intelligence to engage your audience.” AI can only copy writing moves people because people are where the emotional intelligence comes from.

AI also struggles to understand the more profound meaning and context that often fills writing. The more thorough parts of the pattern analysis, deep learning, can still only measure so much. The resulting text, though accurate, is filled with continuity errors and cold opens. These issues regularly leave the reader confused or lost, which deems AI an unreliable tool for writers.

Many experts consider the AI’s self-learning from input to be the most dangerous drawback for writers. CNN and The Verge both criticized the newly available, high-quality AI writers for their potentially dangerous results. Vincent’s article in The Verge says the following:

In the wrong hands, GPT-2 could be an automated trolling machine, spitting out endless bile and hatred.” OpenAI’s helpful research tool could be used to publish hateful propaganda with minimal effort. These downsides and ambiguities raise many questions.

Questions About Credit

Whenever new technology develops, it always takes time for rules and general knowledge to catch up. With AI itself being so new, authors or publishers intending to use it don’t have very much guidance on doing so ethically. Coldewey of TechCrunch raises several questions about crediting when writing with AI:

Who is the originator of machine-generated content? Can developers of the algorithms be seen as authors? Or is it the person who starts with the initial input (such as “Lithium-Ion Batteries” as a term) and tunes the various parameters? Is there a designated originator at all? Who decides what a machine is supposed to generate in the first place? Who is accountable for machine-generated content from an ethical point of view?

Springer Nature credited the program itself in the textbook they produced, but this does not factor in the rest of Coldewey’s questions. In fact, those questions can’t be answered until the industry knows more about the instrument. In the meantime, each user must rely on their instincts for best practices.

Best Practices for Writers and Publishers

Some experts in AI gave their advice to authors and publishers about the truly effective ways to incorporate AI into their trades. Macho wrote, “There are two big areas of publishing where AI can (and will) make an impact: content analysis, recommendation and creation; and audience analysis.”

The best ways to use AI without cutting out the human touch are by using the bots for everything but the writing. Publishers should use the bots for marketing: find out the types of people viewing the content, their preferences, and then use the bots to implement a targeted marketing plan.

Authors should use AI to prepare their library for writing. The bots can compile all kinds of data which allows the author to focus only on producing the text. The bots could even theoretically produce dialogue to help the author create realistic conversations that sound varied and natural, especially if dialogue challenges the author.

Publishers and authors can both use AI to make widespread changes, such as name or location changes. They can also use AI to reformat the text and files for publication or to determine the best place to insert features like images and other interactive aspects. With these options, authors and publishers should feel motivated to incorporate the bots more effectively.

While writing AI advances further and further in ability each day, the writing AI produces has a very narrow audience, as Springer Nature’s e-book shows. People simply have more skill and nuance. AI can be incorporated more into the writing and publishing world, but only at the writer and publisher’s discretion.

Choosing the Right Platforms for eBook Production

Writing an eBook can be hard, like writing any book. It takes time to develop the story and commit it to paper. But then it enters a whole new era of life at the design and revisionary stages. A big part of publishing an eBook, or even a print book, is the actual making of the eBook files. There are many different types of files, half as many publishing platforms, and a hundred more writing and converting platforms. If the book is being published traditionally, the publisher will likely take care of all the designing and formatting, but if it’s not, it’s up to the author. It can be daunting to navigate the world of coding software without any guidance. The first step is deciding which file type, or types, will be most effective. Then, based on the file type, a conversion platform can be chosen. If it’s early enough in the process, a writing software will have to be chosen, too. Each choice is important and should speak to the needs of the author and eBook.

File Formats

There are four main types of files that eBooks are trafficked in: ePub, Mobi, PDF, and iBooks. The best format depends on the audience and the material. ePub is the best option for many because it reaches the widest audience and is available on the most devices, even newer Kindles. ePub can display either fixed text- for eBooks with heavy image or video embedding- or reflowable text. ePub files are essentially a ‘website in a box’, as it contains all kinds of files inside that allow the reader to navigate the text, images, links, etc.

The Mobipocket eBook files, or MOBI files, started as a proprietary file and was then adopted for the Kindle. Its files technically have a smaller audience because not all devices support MOBI files, but Amazon is the biggest eBook distributor worldwide. To help safeguard against piracy, MOBI displays both reflowable and fixed, and it by default has DRM, or digital rights management.

Next, having the smallest audience is iBook. It is only compatible with Apple products, which is not a problem if that is your target audience. The main distinction of iBook is the difference in CSS extension. Also, iBook does not afford the same interaction as Mobi and ePub.

Then there is the PDF, or the portable document format, which is a proprietary file of Adobe. PDFs are a frequent medium in the business world because they are great for fixed text. The audience sees the page exactly as the author does. It affords some interaction with links and has great results with pictures. However, PDFs often create reader problems, such as the text being too small. They are good for newsletters or short, free website extras. But these files generally aren’t ideal for eBook stores. They are very user-friendly, however, and rarely require a conversion platform.

Writing Platforms

The desired file format will influence the writing platform. Many people use Microsoft Word or Google Docs. The benefits to these platforms are clear: most people are familiar with the interface, it can export directly to PDF, and they’re good for dictating. Unfortunately, these are the only benefits. Both platforms have formatting issues and will require a conversion platform that can do some major heavy lifting for organizing, formatting, and designing.

One of the most popular author platforms is Scrivener. Of the purchase-necessary platforms, Scrivener comes in the lowest at $40. It is one of the few platforms designed for long term writing, is easily navigable, supports files of any type, and focuses on organization. It can be intimidating but contains features like the Corkboard for storylining and research, the Outline for quick editing and writing, and the Progress Bar where goals and progress are set and tracked. Scrivener will show pages side by side from different places in the book for easy description, editing, or fact-checking. It also tags metadata automatically. While Scrivener is hailed the ultimate author platform, it only exports to PDF, and so requires conversion software. Lastly, it does not enable collaborative editing and has a sharp learning curve.

An online author platform, Reedsy claims a distraction-free writing environment with collaborative editing. It publishes to ePub, Mobi, and PDF which makes it a great conversion platform as well. It focuses on an available ‘professional market’ where authors can link with editors and beta-readers directly but doesn’t handle any code manipulation. Consequently, this wouldn’t be a good designing platform. But it is free, and comes with an instructional blog, so it is great for new writers or authors only looking to produce one work.

iBook Author is another option for writing, but it quickly gets complicated. There is an Apple Pages extension separate from just iBook Author. IBA only exports to iBook; AP only exports to ePub. The two are not interchangeable and cannot be switched between. Not to mention, neither offer any advanced content design options. They can function as writing platforms, although they are probably used more for conversion.

Converting Platforms

Then there are the conversion platforms. These platforms convert documents from PDFs- or Docs or Word- and turn them into publishable files in ePub, Mobi, or iBook formats.

Reedsy has a separate conversion site that is somewhat popular. It supports heavy image editing, document styling, and additional document add-ins and exports to PDF, Mobi, and ePub. Like the writing platform, it is fully online and supports reflowable text and fixed text.

InDesign is a proprietary editor belonging to Adobe. It is great for working between Adobe programs like Photoshop or Illustrator. It is not cheap but comes in the Adobe license package. It is very in-depth and allows for great modification but can also lead to great confusion. InDesign handles images well and works in XHTML and CSS already formatted for ePub. It is great for the pros but has some drawbacks. Specifically, if images aren’t properly anchored, they can be pushed to the back of the eBook, it wasn’t designed for long term writing, and it is difficult to navigate. Lastly, InDesign only exports to ePub.

Another software conversion platform is Pressbooks. It is fairly cost-effective for authors on a budget and exports both ePub and Mobi. It has great brand support and was specifically designed for eBook-stores with print on demand options. The downsides of this platform are that it barely supports images, the templates are better suited for fiction writers only, and the design options are severely limited. Still, if the eBook is an image-free, fiction novel then Pressbooks will do nicely.

Similar to Pressbooks, Vellum comes with a larger price tag. It was designed for eBooks and only runs on Macs. Vellum is an efficient and simple platform. This platform is perfect for an eBook that is already complete and in need of conversion on a Mac.

Sigil is a software conversion platform that lets the author, or designer, deal directly with coding in the interface. It runs on all processing systems and only publishes to ePub. It offers full text translations and an easily navigable outline, as well as metadata editing. All in all, Sigil is a fully supported, but strictly conversion software.

Finally, Calibre is a free platform that converts nearly any input file into almost any output file. It exports to ePub, Mobi, Docx, and even TXT. Because of the lack of actual design or editing interface, Calibre is a more effective tool for readers building an online library, and not necessarily for an author publishing an eBook.

There are even more platforms available for writing, editing, and converting. While these platforms fit almost every author’s preference, no one should stop looking for their ideal one. Most of these platforms offer student and academic discounts, and frequently have sales and free trials. Some are better for pros, looking to publish frequently and with little effort. Some are better for the busy writer on the go, who wants to craft their eBook by themselves. Writing, designing, and coding eBooks can seem intimidating, but with all the platforms available, publishing online has never been easier.

Edited to remove repeated paragraph