Whilst waiting for the completion of the next edition of the UBSS Irish Cave guide, scheduled for completion on our centenary in 2019, we are considering bringing out an ebook version of the 2003 edition, now well out of print.

What I'd like to know is whether anybody has experience of using ebook guides and what sort of format (epub, mobi, etc) they think works best with this sort of book.

All feedback welcome.

We've transferred Moorland Caver across into the Kindle (.mobi) format recently with a thought to selling a few to bump up the club digging funds now there are only 1 or 2 of the originals left though I don't think any moves have been made to put it on Amazon yet.

I don't think much editing was involved other than getting rid of some indents to move everything across to the left hand margin where possible.

It looks absolutely fine, just as easy to read as the paper version.

My only qualm is that whilst I'd happily shove a copy of a book that cost little more than a couple pints in my pocket whilst out stumbling through the woods, I wouldn't be too keen on doing the same with an electronic device which might cost anywhere from 50 to 500 quid!

Thanks, but what I am hoping for is that someone will have experience specifically of guides & can tell me about links to surveys, maps etc & using an index.

I'm reasonably sure they all have the ability to create links. I created mobi, epub and pdf versions of the Untamed Rivers of New Britain expedition report downloadable from my website (http://www.daveclucas.com/cms/index.php/uronbreport) and interestingly, only pdf's were downloaded.

I would go for either epub or pdf.  I would say it's easy to get an ebook in epub format and to then read it on any device from a monitor down to a mobile phone with free software.  Most technical publications are in pdf only (notable exception is O'Reilly "computer" book publisher).  I bought a "mobi" ebook from amazon and I doubt I will ever buy another. The problem with pdf's is that they display as a printed book page and that means that if the page size is A4 then to read that on a small screen means scrolling across and down the page.  Epub lets text flow and the document re-paginates to suite the display text size.  I don't think I've seen a properly coded epub book - perfect contents with hyperlinks to the destination are common, maps on a single "page" can be opened and zoomed into.

There is a free ebook library program Cailbre that has online guidance to importing a file from Word and converting it to epub.  I think it's the leading program in the field and there are lots of macros to load that support format conversion. I can do basic conversions and I think if you can hand code web pages it may well be very simple to do conversions. Authors must use styles in Word to apply formatting otherwise the epub contains more text setting the format of the content than the actual text. Sigil is a free program to format (and write?) epub files and again I think it would look familiar to a web author.

Thanks, Dave and Peter, that is very helpful.

What a coincidence that one of the threads on here tonight I about 'modern E-Books' when earlier today I had the pleasure of type setting, albeit in a pretend situation before the equipment got picked up to be taken to a museum.

Happy to start a new thread but on a vaguely similarish point: underground at various times we've used an iPad, Smartphone, digital camera playback with cave survey(s) on for route-finding and clearly the best (but most fragile/non-rugged) was the iPad due to its size; there will be an optimum for portability/readability. My question is: when you mention ebooks for caving guides are you including underground use in the proposal?

Might I suggest that for underground reference it would be helpful to include photographs of the more complex junctions or commencements to passages, to aid certainty over navigation.

Cap'n Chris said:

My question is: when you mention ebooks for caving guides are you including underground use in the proposal?

Click to expand...

Hadn't even crossed my mind. 

This proposal is to digitize the existing book. If people wish to take a copy underground using an ereader app in their ruggedised tablet then perhaps we should be writing a rather different kind of book.

Some epub examples:

De Re Metallica epub, kindle and html http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38015 - many "pictures" but no attempt to sort out the "General Index" at the back

A puzzle book epub and kindle with working Contents and Index http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16713

( Graham: I know you are up on copyright matters. http://www.gutenberg.org/ says "Our ebooks are free in the United States because their copyright has expired. They may not be free of copyright in other countries. Readers outside of the United States must check the copyright laws of their countries before downloading or redistributing our ebooks. We also have a number of copyrighted titles, for which the copyright holder has given permission for unlimited non-commercial worldwide use.")

Thanks Peter

.pdf

It appears exactly as you intend it to, almost anything can read it, and it's free to make (not via Adobe, but many other programs can export to it).

NewStuff said:

.pdf

It appears exactly as you intend it to, almost anything can read it, and it's free to make (not via Adobe, but many other programs can export to it).

Click to expand...

Opposing views on this, mulucaver pointed out that only pdfs of his material seem to have been downloaded, but people I know who read fiction on tablets or, especially, phones, hate them as the page is never the same format as their screen.

Assuming the standard is properly implemented, then the whole point of a .pdf is that it appears as you intend it. Granted, my old android phone with a 4" screen will not display it with the same default zoom level as my two high DPI monitors on my desk, but that's just a matter of zooming in. I read a lot of ebooks on both mobile devices and big screens, a lot of which are technical documents with drawings. No issues with any recent (720p or higher) screen on mobile devices, and no issues in *years* on a desktop.

I think for a guidebook I'd want a pdf version. I can then print out survey's descriptions etc in the format the author intended for me to take underground. I'm unlikely to ever take an electronic device caving, or even really on surface hole finding trips.

Generally I'd read a novel etc in epub. But I doubt that would be my preferred e-version for guidebook.

The Weslh & Somerset Sump Indexes as well as "A Glimmering in Darkness" are all available as eBooks on the iBookstore.  Not sure how they render as I have no need to buy them.  I have PDF copies of these on my phone and tablet.  Whilst I wouldn't want to read them on my phone, I can pull up the book and check a fact or two.