Image by Galatas

I’ll be graduating, or hoping to be graduating from university in little over 3 months and with my final deadlines being a lot sooner than that it’s time to start more seriously looking at what I want to do after University.

I have been looking for and applying to the odd job and graduate scheme when I see it, but the main problem I’ve been facing is that not many companies want someone who can start work in 4 months time when they can just as easily hire someone who is available right away. Now that my availability is coming closer I’m going to be upping the job hunt ten fold, of course with me being at the end of my degree the problem with this is that my workload has intensified massively to the point where I feel guilty writing this post rather than getting on with the massive pile of work that I’m trying to wade through.

I’ve decided, so that I don’t feel guilty about doing this kind of thing, to dedicate 2 hours a day to “Post University Activity”. Catchy title I know I just came up with it! These post university activities will range anywhere from writing blogs like these to hunting for and applying to jobs. Basically anything that will benefit me after I finish university.

I’ve been doing these PUA (ok yes I just gave it an acronym so sue me) for the past few days now and one of the main things I’ve been thinking about is what do I do in the meantime? I don’t have any delusions that I’m going to get snapped up straight away once I finish university, Media is one of the hardest industries to get into and it could easily be a few years till I fully break the industry. So again, what do I do in the meantime? I need to make sure my skills don’t start lapsing and most importantly I need to show that I have a continued passion for media and TV production even while I’m being knocked back.

I’m planning on using my experience gained throughout university, adapt it and apply it to the web market by starting an entertainment web series (video podcast) of some description, this is all very conceptual at the minute and you should feel privileged that i’m sharing this Instead of the upload it and forget it model I’ve used, and I’m sure most students have, with all my prior academic projects, this project is going to be heavily pushed by Social Marketing. It won’t be easy but I’m also planning on structuring the project as a business and I’ve started writing a business plan and ways it could make money a year down the line. I actually started looking into this way back in October for my enterprise module, but it was never taken seriously and dropped by the group. Since the business wasn’t interested in it I carried on the research in my personal time and I think I’ve come up with some pretty solid ways that it could be a profitable venture, as long as the views are there. With the correct content and a large enough push in the marketing department I don’t see why this cannot be successful.

However, at the same time as doing all this I’ll still be looking for jobs in the industry just as hard as if I wasn’t doing this project. If I do manage to find a job I’ll carry on with the project but continue it as a hobby or hand it over to somebody else who I trust to carry it on.

Now for the pitch
If you’ve read this far and are interested in helping me out with this project, you’re just the kind of person I’m looking for. I’ll be contacting people that I know are both good and reliable at what they do once my ideas are more fleshed out. But if you want to get involved from the start and have a share in the business, give me a shout either on twitter, facebook or of course in person and we can develop our ideas together.

Image by Yutaka Tsutano

Talking in the context of ebooks, an ebook app is usually something that would be able to read a specific book or a number of specific books defined by the app maker. Where an ebook would usually require extra software to be able to read it such as kindle or iBooks, an ebook app has this software built in so other software is needed.

Since they aren’t constrained by other software, ebook app’s don’t have to be linear and don’t have to be read in a specific order, instead jumping round the content as you see fit. They can also contain many more “enhancements” than the enhanced ebooks can support such as games, quiz’s and other interactive elements.
Before Apple introduced its iBooks app in Jan 2010 along with the first iPad the app store was awash with book apps, with people creating simple ebook readers and uploading them to the store. Apple have recently started pushing developers away from doing this and instead, rejecting apps that could simply be published in the itunes store as a book, stating the following guidelines.

“2.21: Apps that are simply a song or movie should be submitted to the iTunes store. Apps that are simply a book should be submitted to the iBookstore”

It does make sense that Apple are doing this, especially when they are all about simplicity and not confusing the end user. There is no point of having two different places that customers can shop for books on one platform and the only reason why book apps should even exist is if they offer something that an ebook, enhanced or otherwise cannot do.

Image by Andrew Mason

an electronic version of a printed book which can be read on a computer or a specifically designed handheld device.

This may be very all well and good, an electronic version of a book is quite easy to comprehend, but what if there is no book before the ebook? What if someone decides to create an ebook without publishing a physical book first? To get to the root of this statement you need a concrete definition for the word book. Which the Oxford Dictionary defines as:

a written or printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together along one side and bound in covers

If we take away the irrelevant things from the definition that aren’t relivant in the digital world such as mention of gluing and binding we are left defining an ebook as:

An electronic body of written work, which can be read on a computer or a specifically designed handheld device.

The definition we’ve been left with, I’d argue, is too vague to have any meaning. Under this definition virtually anything written on a computer could be counted as an ebook, including what you are reading now, as it’s a body of work that can be read on a computer.

I’ve been looking at this definition for the past hour and the only way I can see that we can get around the problem of a vague definition is adding back in some of the terms that define a book, specifically the “bound in covers” part. If we say that an ebook is something that has a defined end and is bound in one transferable file. This way something like a blog cannot be defined as an ebook because it is both still being written and is not bound in one file that is easily transferable.

An electronic body of written work, contained in a transferable single file with a defined end, which can be read on a computer or a specifically designed handheld device.

Whether this definition will hold against my other research throughout this project, I don’t know. Ebooks are a tricky subject because of the fact they are so new. Time will tell whether the term enhanced ebooks will stick or they will merge into the same thing, at which point we’d need a new definition of an ebook.

Feel free to let me know bellow if I’ve got the definition completely wrong or you see a hole in my definition.

Image by Andrew Mason

Today I’ve been searching more into the format of digital textbooks, finding examples of existing projects and what they have to offer. After way too much googling than I care to admit, I finally came across the term “Enhanced Ebook”.

Not owning a Kindle or iPad I had no idea what this term meant but after a bit more googling I’ve found out that currently enhanced ebooks are basically a normal ebook but with some added extras bolted on the top, sort of like the 2nd DVD in a special edition. Not many people watch them but it allows publishers to charge more than the normal price for essentially gimmicks because people think they are getting extra value for their money.

It’s certainly been an interesting couple of hours researching the topic, I’ve seen people arguing for the last year that the enhancements made to the ebooks are worthless and don’t add much value and finally being declared dead in April of this year. Yet I’m finding that more and more of these enhanced editions of ebooks are being published, Rob Brydon’s Small Man in a Book (Enhanced Edition) for example was published on the itunes store just 2 weeks ago. Interestingly enough though, the enhanced version and the none enhanced version are £6.99 when the hardcover is £5. I’m not quite sure how Penguin can justify this to their customers, I know I wouldn’t pay more for a digital version of a book when I can get a physical copy cheaper.

What constitutes an Enhancement?

Publishers don’t really seem to know right now, it seems that they are falling over themselves to actually find some extra content to strap on to their ebooks to justify charging more for them. DigitalBookWorlds presentation on “Ebooks vs. Apps: Pros, Cons and Possibilities” mentions on slide 11 a list of 7 examples on ebook enhancements

• Collapsible table of contents
• Hidden searchable text
• Internal Linking
• External Linking
• Audio
• Video
• Interactivity

It seems a lot of these items are fillers to bulk out the list, especially collapsible table of contents and internal linking, I think these are more common sense for an ebook rather than enhancements. External linking though I do quite like the sound of, especially for a textbook. A textbook can provide as much information that can be expected of students at a certain level and they could then be provided links to external resources should they want to venture further into the subject.

Final Thoughts

Enhanced Ebooks are just getting started, and people are trying to declare it dead before its even had a chance to take off. Once the tools are in place to create the frameworks for enhanced ebooks they can become even more viable and they will become a lot more attractive to customers when the publishers open their eyes and drop the prices.