THIS IS NOT AN ePUB TUTORIAL

An ePub reader is essentially a web browser with the content local, so an ePub is nothing more than a mini-website.

When you first learn html you crib someone else’s notes. You would take all the header info and tags and just fill in your stuff. You would change the URLs and pictures and body until you had a page of your very own! Once you got down how to make a link and display an image you were set!

Then came CSS and javascript and jquery and ajax and new html tags and dynamic driven websites and a plethora of web browsers. Most people aren’t even trying to keep up. They just fire up a wordpress installation, or a posterious or blogspot or whatever. There’s a huge line between the professional and the hobbyist. We design became more about the design and technology than the content. Use flash or no? Use webkit only effects or no? On and on.

To me this stripped a lot of the fun out of creating webpages. You had to constantly update the content delivery methods or look dated. It’s no longer cool to have a site full of static content. Unstyled html is the devil. Agaon, on and on.

Now enter the ePub. It’s on a 2.0.1 standard. They are working on pushing out a 3.0 standard, but for now 2 is where the game is at.

ePub is a website. This website is compressed and put into an archive and given the .epub extension. That’s pretty much it. It’s a bit more complicated than this, but it’s not as complex as some people would have you believe. We’re more or less back to the days of finding an ePub you like and cribbing the structure. Repeat until you figure out how to do your own. If you are comfortable with a smattering of CSS and html you shouldn’t be too intimidated by creating one of these. I’m going to redesign my This Flap First site and make it into a publishing site. This is what I intended for this site from the time I first bought the domain. I wanted to run a side enterprise selling chapbooks and handmade journals and such, but honestly I don’t make journals and there’s not really a market for selling physical copies of small run vanity press items.

I’ve gotten my EIN number. I’ve filled out Apple’s application for permission to submit to the iBookstore. In the unlikely event I get accepted I plan to submit an ePub of stupid letters. I’m going to go through the same process at Amazon and the Nook store, but as far as I can tell anyone can submit to the latter two. A long ways down the road after I’ve slammed in all my own projects I may consider doing the same for other people, but I don’t see that working very well. I don’t want to become a clearing house for ePub stuff. I just want to find the time to do my own. Who knows, maybe I’ll find the time to create a couple chapbooks to sell as well. Chances are you’ll never see a change. I probably don’t even remember the password to This Flap First.