The Student’s Guide to Digital Publishing

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Creating and Publishing e-Books – Joshua Windus

Development of Digital Publishing in Education – Ella Baker

Censorship in Digital Media – Adelyn Hanlon

AI-Assisted Writing – Lara White

Apps and Platforms: How Digital Publishing has Changed Writing for the Masses - Katie Nobles

How We Read e-Books - W.D. Ralph

Non-Book Digital Publications - Draven Jackson

Effective Writing in a Digital Environment - Myia FitzGerald

Digital Marketing Direction for New Writers - Katherine Baldwin

The Legal Side of Digital Publishing - Kha’Doe-Ra Crosby

Understanding and Implementing Business Models for the Beginning Author - Alexander Meyer

Making E-Books Accessible - Rachel Ward

About the Authors

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to:

Dr. Kirk Curnutt and the Troy University Department of English for supporting the innovative class that created this work.

The pioneers in the field of digital publishing who advised us on the most current state of affairs: Peter Konieczny, Michael D. McNamara, Nina McNamara, Jill Odom, Christine Thompson, and Josh Yohn.

Introduction

Dr. Richard Scott Nokes

You are interested in digital publishing, and you've already taken the wise step of picking up a digitally-published book on the subject. Maybe you are a beginning writer, or maybe you are an experienced writer who now finds that your old skills need to be re-sharpened for digital environments. Whether you want to write engaging articles, edit a digital publication for your employer, or self-publish your own novel, this guide is for you.

The Beginner's Guide to Digital Publishing aims to teach the complete layman or undergraduate. No special expertise is needed. Our presumption is that readers come to this book with little knowledge beyond that of the consumer. Most people find themselves reading and writing in digital environments all day long, yet from elementary school through university have not had a single lesson on how writing for those environments is different than writing for print. Digital publishing went from being on the periphery to being the dominant form of publishing so quickly that most of the pioneers in the field are still alive. As early adopters of digital publishing experimented, they quickly found that most of the evergreen writing skills taught in school still apply. Some of those skills, however, do not apply, or at the very least have to be presented in new ways. Since digital publishing is the future for most forms of writing, beginners need guidance and formal training beyond the skills of traditional print writing.

The Creation of Trojan Digital Review and The Beginner’s Guide to Digital Publishing

In 2018, the Troy University English department began to grow concerned that our students were unprepared for digital publishing. We were excellent at teaching them about the evergreen elements of writing - how to structure an argument, create believable characters, cite sources, engage readers, etc. - but we felt we needed to do more to prepare them for the particulars of writing in the 21st Century. After all, we have every reason to expect that a student who graduates today will spend the next few decades writing material mostly, if not solely, for digital environments.

When we began to look at how other schools were preparing students, we became even more alarmed. Studies in the digital humanities tended not to focus on bread-and-butter issues, but rather on the technical aspects of prestige projects, the kind that can attract government grants. Other schools were focused on basic computer literacy skills, such as how to use standard word processing applications, an approach that is so outdated that our department no longer bothers to maintain the classrooms dedicated to that approach. It is no longer possible even to apply to Troy University, or indeed any normal American university, without having these basic skills. Most English majors who graduate will be working in a space in-between these two extremes. They will be writing, editing, and publishing for digital environments whether they are producing form letters for a large insurance company, they are editors for a newspaper, or they are writing novels - and precious little formal training is available for English majors or anyone else.

When we decided to create a class to teach these neglected skills, my first order of business was to find a textbook - but I could find none that was appropriate. The very few books available fall close to one of the two poles of assuming the reader barely knows how to operate a computer to assuming the reader plans to code a prestige project. I could find nothing that existed in the Goldilocks zone between these two. I considered quickly writing my own guidebook and publishing it for the class to use, but my other responsibilities crowded out the time I would need for such an endeavor.

I struck on an idea. Early on, I had considered that the final project for each student in the class might be to digitally publish a work, but what if the class was focused not on reading a textbook on the subject, but writing a textbook on the subject? I floated the idea to an advanced class, and they received it with great enthusiasm. The students too felt that their training in writing for digital environments was lacking, and they had an almost desperate desire for more. The Troy University English Department Chairman, Dr. Kirk Curnutt offered institutional support, and the Witan Publishing Board of Directors agreed to offer the technological support, and even to fund the project.

As the students themselves were the first to point out, they would be asked to write a textbook on a subject that they knew very little about, so we launched a website, the Trojan Digital Review, and each student was scheduled to produce a series of articles on the subject of digital publishing for the magazine.[1] I would not assign them topics, but they would have to pitch them as if they were freelance writers. The first day of pitching articles took the entire class period for only five of them. Their ideas were amateurish and showed a complete ignorance of the subject. Three months later, their pitches were so sophisticated they generally were only one or two sentences in before I cut them off and said, Yes, that sounds good. If you go to the Trojan Digital Review and look at a student's early pieces compared to their later pieces, you will observe an exponential growth in knowledge, so that the students began worrying less about understanding the subject, and instead began focusing on developing their writerly voices.

The articles on Trojan Digital Review were edited by the students themselves. Every article was assigned a different student editor, and then the final version of whatever they produced was published on the website, warts and all. Within a month, students stopped worrying about their grades, but were instead concerned about the quality of the pieces they wrote. They became aware that the public - family, friends, and potential future employers - could see their articles, and their concerns transformed into those of professionals. Their professional reputations were on the line with every article that was published.

While they were writing and I was lecturing, we also brought in a series of guest speakers to talk about their work, from the editor of a trade publication, to a video game writer, to a systems architect for a digital publishing company. Although each of the speakers covered very different topics, two themes kept emerging: On the first day on the job, no one told them what to do. They were simply given a computer and a desk and told, Here, have something ready by the end of the day. And second, that in every case they were pioneers without intending to be. The field was so new, they had to figure out the rules for themselves. No one was trained to work in digital publishing, yet everyone was expected them to know how.

The first edition was a result of that class. After weeks of researching, writing, and editing articles about digital publishing, the students created a series of chapters that they wanted to write about. Each student was assigned a chapter that could be read either as a stand-alone piece, or as part of a whole. They were instructed to write for the beginner, so that the book would be appropriate for those who want to launch their own websites, to write their own e-books, or for students who are studying the subject for their writing classes. In effect, the audience was who the students themselves were just a few months ago.

The experiment that we undertook with that first edition was wildly successful. Students developed and demonstrated their skills and were able to use it to launch writing-based careers such as law and pedagogy. When I assigned this book to subsequent classes, they were amazed, and often a little intimidated, by what they learned from their predecessors.

This second edition builds on the first. Some chapters from the first edition were omitted because the information in them has since become outdated, whereas others were omitted because they overlapped with newer chapters written by later students. In addition to carrying forward a few chapters from the earlier edition, this edition contains four new chapters.

In Creating and Publishing Ebooks Joshua Windus provides a comprehensive overview of the process of creating and publishing e-books. Windus highlights the various decisions that a writer needs to make, such as choosing between a reflowable or fixed layout, hiring an editor, and selecting the appropriate file format for conversion. Windus also emphasizes the importance of cover art and design and offers tips on finding and commissioning cover artists. The chapter also discusses the significance of securing the rights to artwork and explains the use of ISBNs for identification and distribution purposes. Finally, he explores different publishing platforms and the pros and cons of using distributors versus individual platforms.

In Digital Publishing in Education, Ella Baker looks at the development of digital education from 2009 onward. She focuses on the distinctions between K-12 schools and colleges, and looks at how the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the movement. The chapter focuses particularly on e-textbooks and the potential for interactive features and personalized content. Baker also looks beyond the American context at how other countries have used e-textbooks to improve learning outcomes.

In Censorship in Digital Media, Adelyn Hanlon explores digital censorship and how writers should react to it. She outlines the different content being censored and discusses how different countries censor digital media. Hanlon also explains the technological background of how media is censored. She educates writers on censorship in order for them to be able to avoid it.

In AI-Assisted Writing, Lara White delves into the evolving landscape of AI technologies in the realm of writing and editing in digital media. The chapter thoroughly explores the ways that writers and editors can leverage AI to enhance their work, as well as the potential advantages and disadvantages for writing and editing. White also explores the ways that AI can be integrated into both creative and corporate writing. In addition, the author provides valuable insights on ethical considerations when using AI, highlighting the importance of responsible and fair usage. The chapter also includes a brief section on copyright, outlining the legal implications of using AI in the creation of written content.

An Invitation

We invite you to join us on our journey. I started from a level of complete ignorance, and today am a founder and Senior Academic Editor of a digital publishing company. The writers of this book began struggling to understand even the basic nomenclature of digital publishing, and now are themselves publishing writers of articles and authors of book