Tag: inspiring uses

inspiring uses of bookleteer

Categories
updates & improvements

New feature: bookleteer online bookreader

We’re really excited to announce a major new feature to bookleteer : an online bookreader allowing you to read and share your eBooks online. The bookreader is built in HTML5 and can be opened by standard web browsers – so now your eBooks can also be read on screen on a computer, laptop, smartphone (iPhone/Android etc) or tablet (iPad etc). Anyone can read an eBook that’s been shared via bookreader, but authors wanting to share their eBooks with bookreader will need to join the Alpha Club for the time being or have a Guest or Pro account.

Short Codes for easier linking

Each bookleteer publication has a unique short code for its bookreader version (e.g. http://bkltr.it/xxxxxx) which make sharing the links easier. The short codes also have QR codes (e.g. http://bkltr.it/xxxxxx.qrcode) for mobiles and other enabled devices to open the link directly:
For instance the eBook, “City As Material : Skylines Ancient Shadows, City Lights” can be found here: http://bkltr.it/iH4ndY and its QR code is http://bkltr.it/iH4ndY.qrcode

The QR code image can be embedded in websites, or downloaded and printed onto stickers, or incorporated into other things (postcards, business cards, other publications etc).

Embedding your eBook in your website or blog

The bookreader also allows you to embed a ‘mini reader’ of your eBook in web pages or blog posts (see below). You can share it in single or double page mode, as well as specifying a specific page to open to:

A link in the mini reader opens up the full screen version.
To see more examples please visit http://diffusion.org.uk/?tag=bookreader where we’ll be adding more embedded eBooks into the post pages over time.

Re-vamped interface for creating/editing eBooks

We’ve also re-vamped the interface for creating and editing eBooks to make choosing the right format easier. Selecting which design (Basic or Custom) you want to use is done by toggling the panes, then selecting the radio button at the bottom of each icon to decide which binding and orientation you want. The drop down menus below allow you to select the Sheet Size (A3 or A4) and the Reading (Left to Right or Right to Left) :

A new section now enables you to add more information to your book such as a short summary, an author bio, the name of the publisher, and copyright statement. This information show up in the bookreader’s information window.

You can add your own personal bio in the “my account’ page then simply click the “add my bio” button to add it to each publication you make rather than fill it in each time:

Acknowledgements & Thanks

The bookreader is open source software from the Open Library, who maintain one of the largest online knowledge resources and are part of the Internet Archive. Huge thanks to them for making this fantastic piece of software available to others to use.

Categories
inspiration

Diffusion Archive Highlight: Beasts and Super-Beasts

A collection of 36 short stories by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), each an individual eBook, the tales in Beasts and Super-Beasts deal mainly with “the presence or role of an animal and its relationship to the humans in the narrative, acutely dissecting their foibles and pretensions” (an exquisite summary by Giles there). They’re in a similar vein to Aesop’s Fables, albeit shifting the focus from the characteristics of animals as analogies for the noble ways people should behave, to the sharp satire of existing human behavior. First published in 1914, two years before Saki’s death, they can now be freely published, re-printed and read due to the expiration of copyright – generally 70 years after the author’s death in the United Kingdom. In this manner, older texts that might otherwise remain undiscovered by contemporary readers, can be openly enjoyed and shared through modern distribution models and publishing platforms like bookleteer and Diffusion.

Categories
inspiration

Sketches In The City

An offshoot of City As Material, Sketches In The City is an occasional series of observational expeditions in various locations across the capital. Mandy, Radhika and I sketch, take photographs and write poems and prose to form a collaborative eBook with underlying themes. Focusing mainly on people and interactions in public places – places that shape, and are in turn shaped, by the people in them – we’ve produced two books so far, and are working on a third.

Sketches In The City was our first attempt, created as a result of visiting the busy Victoria and Waterloo train stations – places which reveal an interesting insight of the human character when bored or stressed. Highlighting the material we collected on the day, this tidy scrapbook was an playful experiment with little interpretation or narrative, letting us take the time to view hectic environments from a different perspective than usual and refine our creative processes.

Sketches In The City: British Museum showcases the unique architecture and exhibits in the British Museum, looking at how visitors observe and interact with them and one another, as well as their grasp on the intangible knowledge that exists amongst that which we can see and touch.

Read them on Diffusion.

Categories
inspiration

Diffusion Archive Highlight: Deep City

As part of the City As Material series, after being our special guest for the Underside event and helping to co-ordinate the resulting collaborative eBook, Layered, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino was asked to produce an individual effort. She created Deep City, an attempt to “extract the individual elements we see in cities over and over again, to help me develop some sort of vocabulary for the cities I know and love, building blocks that make them all melt into one another”. Containing striking photographs of streetscapes, skylines and various nooks and crannies, accompanied by Alexandra’s thoughts and observations,  Deep City is an ode to the cities we live in and their commonalities that we discover over time.

Download, make and read Deep City on Diffusion.

Categories
inspiration

Diffusion Archive Highlight: Belo Horizonte Anarchaeology

A series of four eBooks created by Giles Lane, “Fragments towards an anarchaeology of Belo Horizonte” showcases photographs taken during walks around the city, as part of the arte.mov festival and symposium in 2009. The books focus on certain features of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, such as its Street Art, the Corners of the city, and it’s Waves (waveforms in Brazilian design). Giles describes them as a “very cursory engagement with Belo Horizonte, its people and life. However, the patterns discerned and organised into thematic eBooks perhaps give a taste or hint of what could be revealed in a deeper anarchaeology” – peculiar niches of the city that might have otherwise been taken for granted, are collected as a body of evidence that highlights their significance, as in Waves. They show some extraordinary examples of Belo’s elaborate architecture and graffiti – download, make and see for yourself here.

Categories
inspiration

Diffusion Archive Highlight: The Thetford Travelling Menagerie

A recently published Diffusion Highlight, The Thetford Travelling Menagerie by Lisa Hirmer and Andrew Hunter of Dodolab, is one of the few eBooks so far to use the A5 landscape format, the end result being particularly striking and accomplished. It stands out amongst the Proboscis bookshelves, aided in part, by the lovely illustration on its cover – a procession of silhouetted creatures in all manner of shapes and sizes.

“The goal of The Thetford Travelling Menagerie is to use stories and images of local animals (past and present, real and imagined) to inspire people in the community to share their perceptions of Thetford today. Our stories and images of animals are offered to trigger memories and tales, a menagerie of beasts to conjure up stories of Thetford, its history of change and its current state of flux. What belongs, what’s been lost, what keeps people away, and what draws them in? What can we learn and share about migration, displacement, settlement and change from the creatures and natural world around us?”

It would be great to see more eBooks taking advantage of this larger format – it allows for greater design and really lends the publication a sense of value. It’s perfect for landscape photography, perhaps even for mini coffee table books if using high quality paper and a capable printer, or the Publish and Print On Demand service.

Download, make and read for yourself here.

Categories
inspiration

Pick a card, any card…

Our former bookleteer blogger, Karen Martin, wrote about the effects of using different types of paper when printing eBooks in a previous post, “Paper Selection“, but having just rediscovered a few examples, I thought I’d share them with you again.

Carmen Vela Maldonado created these lovely eBooks by experimenting with different coloured paper and card, as well as cutting out parts and using scanned scraps of paper as backgrounds. So much more impressive then using standard paper, they add a whole new dimension of texture and depth, engaging the reader on a higher level. “A Manifesto for Black Urbanism” by Paul Goodwin, which uses black ink on black card and faint images of urban environments printed onto tracing paper, looks stunning. The map overlays used in “Dusk”, by Saki, also work really well – visual place-marks to a tale defined by its location and references to surrounding areas.

 

Categories
ideas & suggestions

Make up scrap book

The magazines are full of make up tips and latest trends of colours for the new season. Sure I will rip the page out and vow to refer to it the next time I need that handy tip for the smoky eyes look! However amongst all the things on my desk, from books to documents to photos, that little piece of paper will surely get lost in the heap!

It’s great to use Bookleteer as a tool for making scrapbooks for example making a make up catalogue if you like, or even to create your own make up tips. Have a look at the eBook I created on ‘eye make up tips’ below.

It’s quick and easy to print out, and small enough to keep with your make up or can even be folded to fit into your make up bag. 🙂

Either design, upload and print your scrapbook out on Bookleteer or print out a plain eBook and start cutting, sticking and creating your own make up tips scrapbook.

 

 

 

Categories
inspiration

Diffusion Archive Highlight: A Sketchbook of Lancaster by Caroline Maclennan

Caroline Maclennan, a student at Lancaster University who worked with Alice Angus on her As It Comes project, created this eBook to document the research and people involved whilst exploring independent shops and traders in Lancaster. It’s composed of images printed from a mobile pogo printer and sketches, as well as newspaper clippings, tracings of maps and handwritten notes – all contrasted against a rustic brown paper sketchbook, which has been scanned and converted into an eBook with bookleteer. This lends a wonderful handcrafted aesthetic, letting the reader see a personalised account of a project examining human interactions and community, and serves as the perfect accompaniment to the work Alice has produced.

Download and make A Sketchbook of Lancaster for yourself.

 

Categories
examples ideas & suggestions publishing on demand

City As Material Set


We’ve just received the complete set of 10 City As Material books back from the printers and next week we’ll be designing and making the special slipcases to hold them together and collect them into their limited edition (50 copies). The set will go on sale from the 31st March 2011 via the proboscis online store.

We think this is a great way of showing how easy it is for individuals or groups to create and print multiple books in short runs (such as 50 copies) that can be collected together to make a beautiful publication. We will be aiming to add the ability to design and print out your own slipcases to bookleteer later this year, but in the meantime we’re happy to discuss designing and printing custom slipcases for your projects.