The Kilbot Factory

Just as the convergence of the internet, music compression and MP3 players opened doors for independent music artists nearly a decade ago, eBook readers and the EPUB format will allow self-published authors to distribute their work to a potentially huge audience and at a very little cost.

eBooks are about to become very popular
We already have the Kindle from Amazon, Stanza for the iPhone and products like Sony’s eReader, but at the moment these are mostly the domain of tech geeks. Next year we will see a slew of devices which will help push eBooks as a more mainstream way of reading books. Apple is rumoured to be releasing a Kindle like device, and other hardware manufacturers are jumping in with their own versions of tablet/media devices.

Offer PDF and EPUB formats
Independent authors should offer at least two formats; PDF and EPUB. PDF’s should be offered as an all purpose solution, if all else fails the user can open the PDF on their computer or most users will be aware of work-arounds to get the PDF to display on their preferred device. However, for a better reading experience authors should also offer the EPUB format, this is currently compatible with a large range of eBook readers and will reflow text to the size and dimensions desired by the user (ie: PDFs currently lack this feature, page sizes are a fixed dimension with a fixed number of words). The world of eBooks is still relatively young with many competing formats, but I believe EPUB stands the best chance of becoming the eBook standard just as MP3s have become the open standard for music files.

You can create professional looking books in EPUB (for free)
There is a new, free program available for creating eBooks in the EPUB format called Sigil. At the moment Sigil only imports TXT, HTML and EPUB documents, this might mean a two step conversion process for most independent authors, for example;
1. You’ve got the book written in Microsoft Word or something similar
2. Export an HTML version
3. Open the HTML version in Sigil and fix any formatting issues
4. Export as EPUB file

Sigil is very new, but a very promising open source project… I imagine it will not be long before a version is released capable of importing MS Word documents natively along with other common word processing formats.

Amazon provides a great marketplace for books
As well as offering the book for direct sale over your personal website, independent authors should also look at selling their work on Amazon. Amazon charge an ongoing fee and take a chunk of the sale price, but they have millions of eyeballs each day so it is very compelling marketplace. To sell on Amazon they require you to join the Advantage program which is $US29.95/month, they also take 55% of the List Price … which I think is steep, but probably not that much different from a brick and mortar bookstore.

Free the words!
Many authors are seeing benefit in releasing an eBook for free in order to establish an audience or to expand their existing base of fans. Sites such as Feedbooks will let authors publish their work for free and gives instant distribution to a range of popular devices, such as the Kindle.

More resources:
EPUB format description on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB
Sigil ebook editor: http://code.google.com/p/sigil/
Amazon advantage: http://advantage.amazon.com/gp/vendor/public/join
Feedbooks guide to self-publishing: http://www.feedbooks.com/help/self-publishing

This week I’ve been porting a simple J2ME mobile phone application to the iPhone. The J2ME application allows users to login and exchange data with a web application via XML-RPC, so naturally I was keen to use the same server-side scripts for the iPhone app. As far as I know, there is no no specific open source framework available for XML-RPC on the iPhone, but the folks at Wordpress for iPhone have rolled their own which is available under the GNU General Public License, and with a little fishing around I was able to get it up and running in my own app. Basic instructions after the jump…

The first step is to download the Wordpress for iPhone source code, either via SVN or directly through Trac (Link for v1.21: http://iphone.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/336/tags/1.21?old_path=%2F&format=zip).

When you extract that zip you will see a folder named Classes and inside that a folder named XMLRPC, drag the XMLRPC folder into your project. You will also need to grab NSString+XMLExtensions.h and NSString+XMLExtensions.m and drag them into your project.

That’s all the required files for the XML-RPC framework and now implementing is fairly straight forward. You need to put the following to your header file:

 #import "XMLRPCResponse.h" #import "XMLRPCRequest.h" #import "XMLRPCConnection.h" 

and to your .m file you need to add something like:

 - (NSString *)loginToServer {   NSArray *args = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"test",nil];   // the param(s)   NSString *server = @"http://example.com/xmlrpc";         // the server   NSString *method = @"loginUser";                        // the method   XMLRPCRequest *request = [[XMLRPCRequest alloc] initWithHost:[NSURL URLWithString:server]];   [request setMethod:method withObjects:args];   id response = [self executeXMLRPCRequest:request];   [request release];      if( [response isKindOfClass:[NSError class]] ) {     return nil;   }   else {     return [response valueForKey:@"key"];          // the response key   }   return nil; }  - (id)executeXMLRPCRequest:(XMLRPCRequest *)req {   XMLRPCResponse *userInfoResponse = [XMLRPCConnection sendSynchronousXMLRPCRequest:req];   return [userInfoResponse object]; } 

You need to enter the appropriate values where I’ve commented, but this bare bones example should get you started. You can see more examples by sifting through BlogDataManager.m file in the Wordpress for iPhone project.

This is probably the most frequently asked question during the web development process. The answer is “of course” but the option that is right for you will vary, you need to have a think about your requirements, your computer skills and your budget. Take a moment to consider the following three alternatives…

Updating HTML via FTP or the cPanel
All our hosting clients have access to their source files either through FTP or through the File Manager in cPanel (see your Welcome letter for login details). If you want to get your hands dirty and really take control of your site you can update files yourself (we pride ourselves on clean code so we’d like to think our HTML is readable by just about anyone :-)). See the great W3Schools site for excellent tutorials on everything you need to get you started.

Content Management System (CMS)
A CMS gives you control over various aspects of your site through an online administration area. The two CMS’s that we predominantly use are Wordpress and Expression Engine, both are very well developed and easy to use, updating content or adding a new page is as easy as using MS Word. If you need to post news or blog entries, run a forum, shopping cart or similar, then you will need a CMS.

Hire a developer by the hour!
This option seems a little self serving I know, but seriously consider how many updates you will actually make per year. If it’s less than 12 updates a year, or one a month, then I can almost guarantee hiring me by the hour will be a cheaper option than a CMS. I have lost count of how many clients who have requested and invested in a content management system, only to let it sit and not regularly update their websites. Adding a CMS, along with training etc can quickly add thousands of dollars to your quote. My standard web fee for website updates is $50/hour, uploading a new photo and changing some words might take 30mins .. so if you make 12 updates a year: $25 x 12 = $300/year.