Idea for Practice led 'artefact'

Hello Everyone!

Well I have been reading some people's blogs from class and they are really good, really inspiring, so thank you. I thought that I would post an additional, separate blog from the lectures as I have chosen what I am going to do for my practical led piece of work for the assignment worth 60%. ‘Finally’ I hear you say! I have already begun to build a Ning page, creating a social networking page consisting of information about e publishing, you could say an e-publishing page about e publishing? I have decided that this class is the perfect opportunity for me to enhance my knowledge of e publishing and also enable me to express on another level my understanding of what e publishing is and what its impact has had on today's society. By creating this site this will open up the multi-model aspect of e publishing enabling users to interact directly with us with a forum, video's, pictures etc. My overall aim, and hope, is that this will enhance my knowledge and other people's knowledge of what e publishing is and people actively interact with discussions regarding the topic.



For my practical project to be a success for the module I will aim to ensure that my social networking site is easy to navigate whilst offering a variety of multimodal based applications that will enable users to interact with both the webpage and contact myself directly about e publishing. I am also ensuring that I link my blog URL to the main Ning web page, inviting all members to join, spurring people on to comment and get the web page going. Of course I will be the curator and manage the web page but in order for it to become a success people must comment and interact with the web page resulting in learning about and being apart of e publishing.

Please would people kindly comment on whether you agree or disagree with the idea I have, I am very open to suggestions!

Thank you very much for your time reading this blog.

Take care and ‘blog ya’ later!’.

elephants_are_supercool

Lecture 5, Blog 5

27/10/2009
Danielle Boden
elu6d2

E-Publishing
Lecture 5
Blog 5

E-Publishing: What effect will technology have on publishing in the 21st century. Looking primarily at direct effects. Think about the ‘shop of technologies’ and how it is going to affect the role of their business.

What are the ramifications of e-publishing?

Looking online at the BBC



News pages this gives an example of how technology (e-publishing in particular) has changed. You will have a typical BBC News story which until approximately 10 years ago would have been submitted to the general public via broadcasting on television reading only the first few lines of the press release.

If it were the Guardian writing there would be more writing.

At this time also people would have written in to comment.

Example of how the process of a story and distributed and commented on last decade;
- Headline.
- Editorial.
- Comments from the public, which are sifted through at the publisher’s choice.
- Gone by the following week unless you went to a local library archive.

This is seizing to happen by today with the World Wide Web, giving us a new version of the news.
- WWW.BBCNEWS.CO.UK
- Main Headline.
- Story.
- Question and Answer on main story page.
- Many child pages in relation to the news story, summary, backgrounds.
- Hypertext, linking one story to another, BUT it is not so much a multi media platform yet.
- Not one person writes the story. Several people do. (Extra, differing reports from other reporters).
- Video’s – Most written stories now have a video in conjunction with the story that has been hyperlinked. This is an interesting factor because hyperlinks connect to external sites that are not the BBC. They are showing readers their sources – direct lines to them.
- Features/Views/Analysis.
- You an bookmark the story or the website onto a social networking site this making you become part of the news by distributing it and promoting the story to others as you believe that it is interesting/important. (If people don’t think that news is not important then it is not news).
- You choose what you read.

What you can see from these lists is that there has been a considerable change in the way in which news is distributed from the 20th through to the 21st century.



When a newspaper is published they place their stories into a particular order to assist the manipulation of the eye into looking at specific stories.
However, when you are online this is different.


When looking at a story online and clicking from hyperlink to hyperlink you can very quickly loose which page you are on. Technologists are looking for a way to prevent this online problem with web browsers but nothing has been discovered as yet.

Videos are another issues with online news. Videos are put with written stories for several reasons; to give the reader the option to read the story or view it (possibly both if you wish), to see two sides of the story (although it is the same story line that is being published when you read something to when you watch it you can interpret it in a different way). However, the issue with videos is that they can be very slow in uploading and actually don’t contain the level of detail that a written story would have.

Technologies;

- Hyperlinks, enable you to jump from one story to another.
- Video/Audio, sometimes a video is useful for an audience but most literate people would choose to read a story rather than watch it as you can choose what you read and you get more detail as to what the news is (you can easily skip what you watch plus most of the time there is advertising at the beginning of the video). Despite this, if it is a sports item it is the reverse. People would rather see the action (what’s happened?) rather than read about it.

Does an online facility of the news elevate a story?
It is a fact that it is very good to give a reader the option to read in the newspaper, online or watch a video, but does having an article online or a video change the story? It does in some respects in that it can add a level of emotion through video that a newspaper article couldn’t unless they were using prolific details.

Technologies have epitomised the notion of taking a story out of context and turning it into truth. Nevertheless, is all this choice a good thing?
What is happening in today’s news is that stories are being made out of nothing as due to constant 24/7 news there is a need to fill the slots. The news stations are rushed to produce news and as a result sometimes not enough information is gathered before the story is written or broadcasted and the consequence of this is that audiences quickly loose interest.

The BBC is not the most current online news distributor. If you at American newspaper websites or television news websites what they do that the BBC don’t is allow reader’s to comment freely on an article, whatever their thoughts maybe. The BBC doesn’t carry comments online in the way that they do in America such as the Washington Post where there is always at least 1 comment whereby someone disagrees with the article or what someone else has commented on. Therefore, technology is allowing readers to comment immediately on the story without any editing or pre-approval.

So, why does the BBC not do this?
The BBC does not do this due to one of their core values: ‘to be impartial’. However this could be construed to be slightly hypercritical because it is the BBC whom decides whose comments are published in conjunction with the news story. Their argument would be that is there were only slanderous comments, or only positive comments they would not be fulfilling their remit and also another one of their values is o ‘educate’ and if there are unedited incorrectly spelt comments on their website once again this would result in incorrect procedure.

What is the effect of these comments on a news story?

The first problem created by this is that we don’t know who wrote the comments as when online people use usernames and these comments and change the interpretation of a story.

The Gatekeeper;

A person who controls what content and information goes through the gate (website or written article). However by today the publisher is not quite the gatekeeper that they used to be.
Quotes lead in stories as they do with videos and you have to be in the game to play the game.

ACHIPELAGO



A system whereby you could post and view creative writing or free but you work had to be pre approved and edited before publishing and printing. Journals.

There was an American poet called Emily Dickenson wrote hundreds of poems which during her life not one of them were published as she didn’t send them off to any magazines, newspapers or publishing houses to ask for publishing. It wasn’t until after her death that the pile of poetry was discovered and was published.

Soft systems methodologies and hard systems methodologies.

If you are the gatekeeper and you read something and you like it does it mean it is good? No.
If you like it does it mean that your friends will like it and other readers? No.

In = Poems and stories
Out = Content of the journal.

For this to happen people have to be involved.

INPUTS = Writer who produces
Editor completes a quality check.
Reviewer, is there for a second opinion.
Graphic designers.
Web designers.

Who benefits from this?
Who is the client?
Who wants to content? People who are interested in the content of the journal and are web literate.
Who can stop this? If you don’t fill a journal on a regular basis the funding will stop.

C - Client = Reader
A - Actors = Writers, editors, reviewers
T -Transformation = Technicians, web designers etc…
W - World view = What does everyone else think of it? Reader’s, publishing houses, importance?
O - Owner = Is the writer or the publisher?
E - Environment = Lulu, Amazon. Similar content, technology changes, people stop buying paper and only do things online.

Lulu; If you were a publishing company and you were going to use lulu to create your book then Amazon would sell and ship it out for you how would the process work?

Input = Production (ACTORS) = Client (OUTPUT) =
Technology Lulu Readers – People who are interested
Design Writers in that genre/subject.
Ink Editors
Content Reviewers
Paper
Printing
Facilities

Lulu;

What does it enhance?

- Makes one thing bigger by helping to distribute it promoting it to a wider audience.
- Good for creating and giving gifts on special occasions.
- Saves money on mass-producing books that may not sell and only publish on demand.
- Extends the life of a book as can be saved and reproduced at any time.
- More design options, you can reinvent old novels.
- Encourages more people to write.

What does it replace?

- Publishing agencies.
- Printer agencies.
- No choice
- Bookstores
- Warehouses
- Transport
- Carbon emissions (on the other hand you could argue that it increases carbon emissions because despite initially reducing it as postmen are not delivering vans of books some of which may go unsold but now have t make smaller journeys more often to deliver the odd book or two.)

What does it revive?

- Postal service
- Creative writing/courses
- Out of print texts to be revived and re-read.
- Limited appeal
- Love of books
- Small publishing houses.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog this week.
Blog ya' later!

elephants_are_supercool

Lecture 4, Blog 4

19/10/2009
Danielle Boden
elu6d2

E-Publishing
Lecture 4
Blog 4

Web blogging, what is it?
• Web page has the most recent item at the top.
• Links to other blogs.
• In relation to political candidates now have to have web blogs because people (hundreds) comment on it.

WHY would they want a blog where people can write negative comments and disagree with party political policies?

• Popular
• Everyone is blogging - it is ‘techie’, up to date.



• Primary source of news for a large demographic, for example: Obama claims his success was primarily due to his Web campaign.
• Looking at history if politicians didn’t have their face on the television their reputation was unknown and they would be criticised by the media for not appearing on television, this is very much the situation now with blogging.
• It gets your name out there.
• Builds support

The problem with blogging is that stories get lost in translation and if something is repeated often enough it will become truth. For example: there has been a recent story on the toxic waste where the company have placed an injunction against the media not to report what happened. Therefore the people will try to find the answer but it does not necessarily mean that what they have found is the truth behind the story.
Here is the link to the BBC's coverage of this story:

Written article by the BBC.

Original written article by the Guardian.

Twittering is just an extreme form of blogging.

Liability and slander… who is responsible? On blog sites you agree to terms and conditions not to slander however you may not realise you have agreed to these conditions, as most people do not read the small print. There is also a disclaimer whereby the web publisher, (blogger.com etc…), advise that the opinions held on this site are not necessarily that of the publisher.

So what is the importance of truth in blogs?
• It is a propaganda tool. (‘blogasphere’)
• Known as ‘astro-surfing’ because there would be a big back lash if an extremely was told, bad implications.
• No opinions on blogging have an origin point.
• Animosity! No person or institution. ANONOMOUS.
• Other than politics or companies (institutions) to humanise and deliver their opinions.
• Blogs are casual and has a human face (real blog) – how many are actually like this? It is a way of communicating.
• However: there are t ways of defining blogging there is the technical definition of a web page with the most recent post at the top or the definition of blogging in practice.


Why is a blog not a political tool?

RSS: Really Simple Syndication. Putting the word out to people. RSS Feed.
XML: All in one content and can be distributed in different ways.

Read. Write. Web The basic idea is useful. You don’t have to go looking for it all it comes to you.
On the Bangor Website and even your own computer you can subscribe to certain RSS web pages through your URL. To do this save it through your fire-fox.

FLOCK: Social Web Browser. Look for RSS feeds.



Webpage. XML. Ends in RSS. Channels, items have a title and a link.
Feed: You don’t often create these yourself, and you don’t normally keep them up to date manually.

Tags: - metadata about the construction of an RSS feed. You wouldn’t make a website like this.
The browser knows that it is and RSS feed made up of an XML format, therefore the dtat base creates the code for you.

Moral and legal implications of adding value to your webpage have links back to the other/original article. Google-ad-sense – Gives you a code that goes on your webpage.
How do they make money form it?
Advertising – From every click your money accrues.
= Industry.
Sponsorship.

Increase profile as an industry expert – get their name out there – raise profile.

Money doesn’t taint anything it just makes it possible to produce. You can’t use blogs as a reference point because you don’t know who wrote it, it is not a reliable source. You can do background research to see if it can be more reliable.

So, how can you quote something from a blog?

Is it a source?
There will have been no peer or editorial reviews. No one is checking for spelling, grammar or formatting mistakes.
The facts and sources need to have been checked and double-checked. It might be your opinion but is there support to back up why I am or could be right.

In my blog entry in week three looked at publishing a book and had to think about it in a blog.

Artefact. Editorial project where you make things available, however, do we understand what is being described?

Why do we need to e-publish theory in action – learn it then apply theory.

e-kindel.

Potentially opening up the changes I your opinion about the traditional book. It is something you don’t know about until you try it.

Easy access to texts.

Recombining content
= Adding value
Different layouts and design

For next week;

What are the possibilities of publishing and e-book and how can I best leverage that?

What sort of project are you going to be doing and why?

Look at other peoples blogs and leave positive and negative feedback of evidence of sources, arguments, strengths and weaknesses.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog this week.
Blog ya' later!

elephants_are_supercool

Lecture 3, Blog 3

13/10/2009
Danielle Boden
elu6d2

E-Publishing
Lecture 3
Blog 3

Lulu: An online publishing site that gives you the facility to turn ay text, or photographs into a book within an hour.




In the olden days a Scribner would be employed to write letters on behalf of companies ad most importantly copy contracts! There were no duplicating machines in those days therefore everything had to be copied by hand.

Gutenberg Project: Collecting texts that are out of copyright in America.




Copyright: The issue with text, when is its expiry date?

There is no need for a licence to sell an online book this is just for third parties. A Gutenberg licence gives you the facility, permission and conformation about the text that is on the Gutenberg website as to whether or not you can use and sell it.

Question: Does copyright belong to one person? i.e. if you can publish Emma on Gutenberg then who owns the copyright? You or Penguin books etc that are still publishing Emma today?

Orality and literacy:
Print and writing are two different things.

1) Profound effect on society as once something is written down on paper there is no going back you can’t change it.
2) Paper is tangible but who owns it?
3) There is more of an importance on spelling and grammar.

The written book has also secluded us as a person because before you would sit in a group of people listening to the stories being told but now there is the infamous saying of ‘I will go and take my book and sit in a quite corner’.

The effects initially on the world when print became available was that there was uproar that it was expensive so not all classes could afford it but also regardless of this people could read for themselves therefore decipher if they wanted to believe something or not and interpret it in their own ways. In relation to the bible the printed book brought along the reformation because before a limited amount of people would tell the story of the bible and when doing so would speak in Latin so it was kept as private as possible, now it as being written down, translated etc it meant people could decide for themselves. People did no like this shift in story telling and mass producing text and this is the similar transition that we are seeing now people do not want to change as the whole way in what you trust is dependable.

The 21st century book: Typesetting and then printed but now we have files.
These files are standardised.
PDF: Run through Adobe.
XML/HTML; Hypertext mark-up language. Standardised version of the text XML.
Book Meta; metadata, data about data.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog this week.
Blog ya' later!

elephants_are_supercool

Lecture 2, Blog 2

06/10/2009
Danielle Boden
elu6d2

E-Publishing
Lecture 2
Blog 2

Referencing: Everyone needs to use the Harvard referencing system to enable people to find what you have used in your coursework (Self led report, 60%)

A week will be from Monday to Monday to post each blog.

Contents of a blog:
For your blog you should look at:

- Talking to yourself/Personal chain of thoughts
- Ask and answer questions
- Agree or disagree with anything said in class or further reading?
- Critique
- Any information you have heard or read integrates it in with you self-taught knowledge.
- Needs to be an informal academic blogs therefore needs; citations, footnotes/endnotes, bibliography, - Links that have been read, class comments.
- How do you present yourself… will this gain you respect?
- List of all your blogs will be in reverse chronological order, most recent at the top.

Central Topics discussed in class:

• How will technology change how we look at view things; history, languages, books…
• How much has actually happened?
• What is the author/reader relationship now?
• How do you keep the online system running – Backlist, long-tail model, fermium model, are there any other models?
• How do you define the business your in? Disruptive technology.
• In the U.K we don’t pick the best we pick what works.
• Synthesising
• Take something and re build it into your own words.
• When they get it right, how and why did they get it right?

Rattle of the Pebbles
By: Jason Epstein



He describes the publishing world as being a ‘cottage industry’.
He explains how the publishing world works in general, (see the publishing value chain);
creation – yes – re-write – quality and control – (spelling and grammar) – copy editing – font/design – typeset – proof reading – bound – marketing distribution – sell – read

General terms:

Publish Value Chain



Publisher:-
Made of; editorial department, desk editing department, marketing departments and marketing acquisition.

Function:-
List building, financial investment, advise taking, content development, quality control, management, co-ordination, sales and control.

Publishing Industry:-
Acquires symbolic content (rights to content, and processes this content).
Locating financial capital to convert this content.
Convert content into books.
Distributes and sell converted content.
Protecting a publisher’s investment.

Symbolic content: Works to a 20/80 ratio but will work out that the 20 will make you money.

Publishing Cycle:
20/80
↓
Profit Ratio
↑ ↓
Take on project
↑ ↓
leads to decide prices and price runs
↑ ↑
Out of print leads to
↓ ↑ ↑
Revert to author leads to Reprint
↓ ↓ ↓
Rights ↓
Complete decision

Publishing rights have four types of capital to keep it going:
1) Economic
2) Human
3) Intellectual
4) Symbolic

Publishing field;
1) Type of content
2) Type of market
3) Linguistic field/Language
4) Territorial field
5) Technological field

E publishing allows you to cut the middleman therefore as a result we are seeing a shift in the publishing field.

Question: What about piracy? With cutting out the middle man who is going to inspect for piracy?

Robin Sloane: An American blogger; He wrote a short story to a small audience through a kindle and through Amazon. Then he wrote another but didn’t post a free version until there was 100 e-kindel downloads then he posted his work. He then went onto do publishing on demand and is requesting people pledge for him to write another story and your investment in the project.

Shift has gone direct from publisher t reader via files. We no longer know what we own. What do we have the rights to do with it?

Project Gutenberg.

What is it? It is a website that has built/building a list of great literatures from passed say authors using money supplied but the government, creating audio books for free.

70% of authors around the world speak English that control the symbolic content. Barriers have now been put up between the author and the publishers as there has been a change in how the chain works i.e. the author, the book, the market, the reader, now just author to reader.

People are less inclined to back new names they prefer to stick with established names, as there are less risks. Over time this has also changed in that as the middle man has gradually been pushed out there are no relationships anymore between the author and the published as text can be given straight to the reader.

Writing has gone from word of mouth, to a small office shared by both the author and the publishers to a big conglomerate.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog this week.
Blog ya' later!

elephants_are_supercool

Lecture 1, Blog 1

29/09/2009
Danielle Boden
elu6d2

E-Publishing
Lecture 1
Blog 1

James Joyce – The last novel. No one wanted to print his book because it contained nudity and poor grammar. They used cheap paper to print the book at the book store whom printed it originally still stands and is running today in Paris.

• Artefact
• ‘Old’ publishing methods

How have we moved from the tangible books to the non-physical nature that is online publishing?

What is the definition of a book in the 21st century?
Does it still have the same meaning?
What is publishing? We now have the opportunity for both authors and consumers to opt for publishing on demand whereby you can have a book published only as and when a customer wishes to purchase it.
Look at publishing like music - Spotify

Course Structure:
• The publishing value chain.



• What is a: book, author and publisher by today?
• Disruptive technology, what is this?
• How are things shifting in the publishing/e-publishing world? E Publishing is more interactive for the consumer, but a physical book is tangible, keepsake.
• Visual novels; gives you the opportunity of different ways of telling stories. Inanimate Alice, you will create your own as part of the course. Look at this and other visual novels for research.

Books also have never always been around before these stories were told by word or mouth.
Word or mouth – Books – E-Publishing… huge leaps in time and massive changes… what went on in-between these changes how have things developed?

Portfolio:
1) Write a blog on Blogger.com each week about the lecture. What you have learnt, positives, negatives, agree/disagree, anything you would like to add, comments, feedback, thoughts and feelings about what you have learnt is there anything else you would like to learn, will you be looking anything up for yourself?

Send link to Eben for the blog so that he can access it and review what has been written for marking, 3 out of the 12 ill be looked at closely an if you miss a lecture this will become one of the 3 that will be marked.
e.muse@bangor.ac.uk

2) Develop and e publishing project, a visual novel.

3) 2000 word critique (what have you created, what are the outcomes, what would you change, positives, negatives, successes, failures, problem, context, method, outcomes and conclusion.)

What is e-publishing?

Definitions;

• Way of telling stories/expressing views.
• Online/World Wide Web so global access/Available everywhere.
• Interchangeable.
• Not set in stone, ever changing.
• Non physical
• Vast audience.
• Direct.
• Multimedia.
• Multiplatform.
• Distribution.
• Interactive.
• Contextual.

- Interactive worldwide access to a multiplatform media service.
- Ever changing interactive worldwide access to a multimedia platform that is without limits or rules.

- Digital distribution of content to a public audience distribution, which may define its own audience.

For next week;
1) Write out first blog.

2) Read J. Epstein (how publishing has changed).



3) Browse through elegies.



4) Read first few chapters of ‘Books in a Digital Age’ by Don P Thompson.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog this week.
Blog ya' later!

elephants_are_supercool