As Goes the Web, So Goes Books on the Web
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Abstract
This talk isn’t about how to make better books for the web, it’s about how to use the web to make better books (for all book formats). It’s about tools and processes publishers can use today, and things we could make tomorrow with the current web infrastructure to improve the quality of digital books almost overnight.
While the EPUB spec has improved dramatically in a few short years, it still lags behind the knowledge and tools available to modern web developers. In this talk, parallels will be drawn between current modern web projects and how to use these ideas to alter how digital books are made. Tools and ideas like GitHub, http://www.caniuse.com, pattern libraries, Responsive Web Design, Create-Once-Publish-Everywhere CMSes, and testing/performance suites have obvious benefits to book publishers with only small tweaks. As a book designer turned web developer turned book designer/developer, I’ll show a few projects I’m involved in, and propose a few more that I hope others in the digital publishing community will adopt.
