November 29, 2011 28 Comments

Hugh McGuire on the Future of Digital Publishing and PressBooks

My Media Hacks alum, Hugh McGuire stopped by to tell me about his interesting new company, PressBooks, a new tool to let authors and publishers create books via WordPress and some other magic. Hugh’s been in this space for a while, maybe even before his project Librivox. The premise of what Hugh’s doing now is that he’s figured out a way to take a content management system like WordPress and push the output so that it can be made into a much nicer version of a PDF file, an epub format, XML, and several others.

This interview runs a little long, but it’s really interesting. If you’re thinking about self-publishing, or if you’re interested in one spin on the future of the business of publishing (at least digital), check this out:

Can’t see the video? click here.

And if you find this interesting, be sure to check out PressBooks.

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  • http://www.masterpapers.com research paper writing

    Good really good post!

  • http://iambik.com Hugh McGuire

    Thanks Chris!

  • http://www.marywisemandesign.com Mary Wiseman

    Within 15 minutes I had already published the start of an ebook in pdf form. This is great stuff.  Thanks for the interview and please send more information on epubs and the xml export

    • http://iambik.com Hugh McGuire

      Thanks Mary, the epub part works like a charm … indesign XML… a bit less so.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jimkukral Jim Kukral

    I got to try pressbooks early. It’s a neat tool and I’m sure will be embraced by the self-publishing community. Any tool that allows people to more easily do this right is ok by me.

    • http://iambik.com Hugh McGuire

      Hi Jim – I think I owe you an answer to an email you sent! It’s coming! …

  • http://twitter.com/Glenn_Burdett Glenn_Burdett

    Thank you!  Always straight forward and helpful.

  • http://www.expensiccino.com Carl Natale

    Nicely done. If I choose the “Public” option, can people read my book as I’m writing and comment on it?

    • http://iambik.com Hugh McGuire

      Hi Carl there’s a bit of confusion. In order to have your book open to the general public, go to the global book settings page
      (left sidebar menu): Settings –> Privacy

      Set to public.

      We need to make this a bit more clear … in the works.

      Let me know if you have any troubles …

  • Anonymous

    Loved this!  A concern this presents: as it gets easier and easier, anyone will be able to print and won’t find an editor or a graphic designer for their cover, etc.  Quality will go down…and then who becomes the new gatekeeper for those of us who like to read good books?

    • http://www.thewritedesignco.com/ Marcie_Hill

      We, the readers, will become the new gatekeepers. We will have to provide the feedback needed. Hopefully, they will take heed.

  • Mary

    Chris,

    How do you think about self-pub and going through the traditional publishing process for your books?

    Mary

    • http://chrisbrogan.com Chris Brogan

      I went with mainstream because I wanted the credibility and distribution channels that it affords. After the next two books, I’m willing to go self-published. 

    • http://www.masterpapers.com research paper writing

      NICe Mary reallly nice!

  • http://www.i95dev.com Henry Louis

    It is an interesting interview. I came to know lot of important points by watching this video. Thanks for sharing.

  • http://www.rajeshsetty.com/blog/ rajesh301

    I loved the Pressbooks offering as soon as I saw it a few days ago. You both are awesome in the interview and thanks for sharing this.

    Cheers
    Rajesh

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  • Tumbleweed Analytics

    A very interesting tool, Chris, and it will be one that I research further in the hopes of transforming my own Tumbleweed Marketing Analytics WordPress site into a book. Do you know if the tool helps a blogger to create a manuscript from content that may be presented to a potential book publisher? Thanks.

    • http://iambik.com Hugh McGuire

      Hi Tumble … different publishers have different specifications for how they want their manuscript submissions. Currently we do epub & typeset PDF…. but often publishers only accept MS Word … which we don’t export at the moment….. we might though, or RTF possibly. We’ll see what the demand is.

  • Anonymous

     Eu sempre desejei publicar um livro e esta entrevista chegou na hora certa,
    Vou retweet muitas vezes este post.

  • http://www.ebookwritingmastery.com Liam @ How to Write and eBook

    Much as I love physical books I can’t help feeling their days really are numbered. There are just too many advantages with ebooks and the technology is only going to get better.

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