Creating An E-Book: Part Two

Our team has continued to make a significant amount of progress throughout the past week, moving beyond the formulation of ideas and concepts into the more advanced development of the e-book. Below are several key highlights, along with the next set of steps we hope to accomplish by Tuesday, Oct. 11.

-- Basecamp has continued to help us easily track and update one another as we move forward. Along with continuing to share files, we’ve also utilized Basecamp to monitor our to-do list and regularly exchange messages. After gaining experience with Basecamp, I’d definitely recommend it for future projects.

-- Working together, Lia and Ellen edited the text of the e-book using Sigil, making editorial decisions as needed. For example, whenever one of the Bobbsey twins refers to “Mamma” or “Papa,” we’ve capitalized the first letter of their names. In some cases, dialog was also separated from its speech tag by a paragraph break, and we made the decision to change this.

For example:

Bert and Charley took the big sled out for a private trial on a little hill behind the barn without telling anyone about it. They slid down very swiftly, and as they were walking up again Bert said:

"I think we have a fast one all right, Charley."

We have changed to:

Bert and Charley took the big sled out for a private trial on a little hill behind the barn without telling anyone about it. They slid down very swiftly, and as they were walking up again Bert said: "I think we have a fast one all right, Charley."

-- Sarah designed two potential e-book covers for the group’s review. The selected image is revealed below.

-- I inserted a CSS style sheet into the EPUB package, integrated the cover image and worked to correct validation errors. While the Zen Garden style sheet we originally selected would not work properly, I was able to create a new style sheet with similar elements to meet our needs.

Over the next couple days, we’ll work to finalize our e-book by testing it on various devices and screening for any final glitches before presenting the finished product to the class on Tuesday.