Analysis of a Publisher—McSweeneys

The publisher I chose is McSweeney's. Since I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, I have been a big fan of Dave Eggers. I have been particularly impressed with the high quality production of his more recent books, The Wild Things, What is the What, and Zeitoun. They are the type of books that are so beautifully produced, that I hang on to them after I read them, which is something I rarely do. I usually give my books to friends after I read them and tell them to pass them on. These books, however, are so finely crafted, that they actually really do feel like they are works of art.

I visit the McSweeney's website occasionally, but not as often as I would like to. Aside from Eggers' books, I have not purchased a McSweeney's product myself. I have always been intrigued by their products, but they have gone on my list for when I have more spending money and spare time (I have a ton of books on my bookshelves that I have bought over the years that need to be read).

So, investigating McSweeney's business plan in a sense seemed like more fun than work.

The first thing I noticed is the McSweeney's website is very streamlined, simple, and yet styled so that you know that you are on McSweeney's website. It is one narrow column, centered on the browser, with a simple illustration and text. The first links are to the most recently updated items. Right now those items are "Letters to McSweeney's" and "Diversity in the News".

The next series of links is to 826 National. Here is what 826 National has to say about itself:

"826 National is a nonprofit tutoring, writing, and publishing organization with locations in eight cities across the country. Our goal is to assist students ages six to eighteen with their writing skills, and to help teachers get their classes excited about writing. Our work is based on the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success."

I know that McSweeney's was one of the key players in establishing this wonderful organization. The McSweeney's website has links to each chapter: Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Michigan (I know, it's a state, not a city), Boston, and Washington D.C.

One of the coolest things about 826 is that the students leave with an actual finished product, such as a newspaper, a book, or a film.

The next link is to a website for the Valentino Acheck Deng Foundation. Valentino Acheck Deng is the subject of the book What is the What. This is what the website says about the Foundation:

"The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation is a nonprofit organization working to increase access to education in post-conflict Southern Sudan by building schools, libraries, teacher-training institutes, and community centers. Established by Valentino Deng and Dave Eggers after the publication of What Is the What, the Foundation's first major project is the construction and operation of a 15-structure educational complex in Valentino's hometown of Marial Bai, Southern Sudan. The Marial Bai Secondary School opened in May 2009, and is the first high school in the entire region."

The next link is to ScholarMatch (a project of 826 National):

"ScholarMatch is a website and service whereby potential donors can learn more about scholars who need assistance paying their college tuition--and by learning more about these extraordinary students, our hope is that potential donors will be more likely to support the educational goals of the scholars in their communities. Once you become a donor, you will be matched with a specific college student, and you will be sent monthly updates about that student's progress in school."

I think it says so much about a publisher that the links to these sites devoted to bettering the world are placed in front of their own business links. It promotes a feel good mentality. Who wouldn't want to support a publisher that is so active and present? Also, they are no dummies. 826 is basically growing new authors and teaching kids how the publishing industry works. I believe some students' work has even been published by McSweeney's. Also a person interested in the Valentino Achack Deng Foundation is more than likely going to purchase What is the What, if they haven't already.

The next group of links are links that are specific to McSweeney's as a business.

First is the link to Wholphin:

"Wholphin is a quarterly DVD magazine published by McSweeney’s, lovingly encoded with unique and ponderable films designed to make you feel the way we felt when we learned that dolphins and whales sometimes, you know, do it.

Available immediately by subscription and distributed quarterly in the same places you’ll find McSweeney’s and The Believer, each issue of Wholphin will contain a variety of extraordinary short films, docs, instructional videos, foreign sitcoms, and other cinema hybrids that deserve to be seen on very expensive televisions."

So, basically, Wholphin is the film/multimedia arm of McSweeney's.

On the Wholphin website, you can subscribe to the DVD magazine or buy individual issues. Each issue has a list of each item that will be in it, along with an image. Here is where the trouble starts.

When I clicked on "Buy DVD", I had clicked on Wholphin #8. It took me to the McSweeney's Store. At first it looked a smart marketing move, because the first thing I saw was this:

Wholphin site some more, I finally selected the "Purchase" button and it took me to a part of the McSweeney's Store where you can actually purchase any of the back issues of Wholphin, as well as a variety of bundled packages of back issues. So maybe they just need to fix the links under the "Issues" button. Once I found the past issues under the purchase button, I was able to easily add them to my shopping cart.

Another disappointing thing found: there is a Blog button/section, but there is no blog there, you have to click on the link that says "Front", which takes you to the blog which is actually on the Wolphin home page. It's not very obvious that clicking on "Front" will take you to the blog. It seems like they should just take that button off.

There is a super cool "Web Films" section, where, I am guessing, the editors post films that they like that they have found on the Web.

Under "Downloads" it looks like you can download select individual films from past issues for $1.99. This seems smart. Perhaps a person doesn't want to buy an entire issue, so they can simply purchase the one they are looking for. The only thing is, it doesn't look as though each individual film is up there to purchase, only a select few. It seems to me they would do better to sell all of the films there, as each issue has at least 11 films in them, and past issues are only $15, so if a person wanted to buy 11 films separately, they would be spending $21.89 (more than a back issue), but getting the exact films they want. That would be a win/win situation for the publisher and the customer.

Another aspect I liked is that when you go to purchase a Wholphin subscription, on the right hand side, you are offered other McSweeney's subscriptions in combination with Wholphin. So, a McSweeney's subscription is $55, and Wholphin is $50, the combo is $95, you save $10. Or if you get all 3, The Believer is $45, so you would save $15. They don't do that math for you anywhere if you click on the combo. It seems like it might help to go that one extra step.

One last observation. It seems that as a subscriber, you get the 4 issues of Wholphin, but you don't have any other value-add: there is no extra web content, at least nothing that requires a subscription (meaning that anyone on the web also would have access to the content on the Wholphin site). It seems like that may be an area of opportunity there which they aren't currently exploring. There is also no option for a web only subscription. It seems the only type of subscription they have is the old fashioned kind that they mail to your home, which seems particularly absurd for a multimedia-based subscription.

The next business link is to The Believer:

"The Believer is a monthly magazine where length is no object.
There are book reviews that are not necessarily timely,
and that are very often very long.
There are interviews that are also very long.
We will focus on writers and books we like.
We will give people and books the benefit of the doubt.
The working title of this magazine was The Optimist."

Wow, where length is no object? Basically a magazine that the editors pick whatever they want, not based on production costs or length or marketability? These people are super freaking cool! And they are flying in the face of conventional publishing wisdom!

The home page has a sampling of full articles from the current issue, as well as a listing of other highlighted articles in the issue (not all articles are fully available without a subscription). There is also a link to the full table of contents. After that is a link to a full article from a past issue, and then links to back issues:

On the left-hand side, there are buttons to click on for the Current Issue, Back Issues, Online Exclusives, Subscribe, Search, Contributors, Contacts, About, and a link to the McSweeney's Store.

If you click on Current or Back Issues, you get a combination of full and incomplete stories. The incomplete stories end with this blurb:

"To read the rest of this piece, please purchase this issue of The Believer online or at your local bookseller."

For the most part this makes sense to me. Of course many, if not most magazines use this tactic. It seems to work reasonably well. I do wonder if it wouldn't help them to simply have all articles posted in full on their web site. It seems to me that since they really embrace the fact that their articles have no limit in length, that the average reader would probably tire from reading on screen (and most likely wouldn't want to print out a large number of pages) and would want to have the printed version anyway. And then, of course there is the beauty of the article being reached by so many more people when it can accessed by search engines, as we have discussed in class. What really does confound me, once again, is that you cannot subscribe to an online version of The Believer. Why not offer it, especially if they can't stomach open access of the whole shabang, at least offer a password protected online version.

The Online Exclusives are full articles that are available for anyone to read. At least they offer that.

There are also links to books published by McSweeney's on the right-hand side. When you click on one of those books, it takes you to the McSweeney's Store, to the purchase page for the book you clicked on. That seems exactly as it should be to me.

Above the books, prominently displayed, are links to their Twitter feed, Blogger site, and Facebook page. Very smart! And it looks like they are great at updating them on a regular basis and not in a canned corporate manner.

Through the McSweeney's Store, a person can easily order a new subscription, back issue, or bundle of The Believer. The subscription combo that popped up when purchasing the Wholphin subscription doesn't pop up on the top right hand side of the page. Instead, it is hidden far below where the text describing the subscription ends. I think this combination package is smart and that they should move it up to the same location it is in when you go to purchase Wholphin.

The next link, next to Wholphin and The Believer, is Voice of Witness:
"Voice of Witness is a 501(c)(3) registered non-profit book series that empowers those most closely affected by contemporary social injustice. Using oral history as a foundation, the series depicts human rights crises around the world through the stories of the men and women who experience them.

Our mission is to:

- Empower those most closely affected by contemporary human rights injustices

- Engender greater awareness, discussion and action in response to these injustices

- Provide our readers—from high school students to educators, policy makers and advocates—with compelling, reality-based human rights documentation that can be used for teaching, training and advocacy.

Voice of Witness books provide a reality-based understanding of ongoing injustices in the United States and around the world. They have been taught in colleges and schools throughout the world, and have been adopted as key resources by national advocacy groups and their member affiliates, including the ENOUGH project, STAND and the Save Darfur Coalition."

So, it is basically a non-profit book series/division of McSweeney's Books. Wow, again, this publisher is showing its social conscience and finding ways to disseminate vital information to people as a non-profit. Meaning they are not trying to make any money off of this endeavor.

It looks like right now Voice of Witness has 4 books for purchase (through the McSweeney's website). And they are providing all 4 books as a bundle package for $45. This is a good deal, as they actually do the math this time and point out that it would cost $64 regularly (although their math is off, as 2 books are discounted by $2, so it would actually be $60).

They also have 8 upcoming books, and if you want to support any of the upcoming publications, they have placed a Donate button in a prominent location. And the Donate button does link to Paypal, and it seems to work.

They have a regularly updated "Events" section, which lists upcoming fundraisers and speaking engagements, as well as a "Volunteer" section for those who want to be more involved. They also have a sample curriculum for teachers.

The next links are to their Twitter feed, iPhone App, RSS feed, and Facebook page. Just like with The Believer, it looks like they regularly update their Twitter feed (several times a day). The Facebook page is oddly set up as though McSweeney's is a person, and you have to have "Timothy McSweeney" confirm you as a friend before you can have access. This doesn't seem like a good use of Facebook to me, although I guess it kind of confirms the "cult" of McSweeney's (I found this quote from Wikipedia, "[My family] would always get letters from someone named Timothy McSweeney ... He claimed to be my mother's long-lost brother ...[Letters] would always include flight plans, like he was planning on coming to visit. I don't know if he's real or not. My relatives deny it, but who knows?")

The last link before the literary part of the McSweeney's site is a direct link to the McSweeney's Store.

We have already looked at the store as accessed by the corollary sites, but let's take a look at the store head-on.

First, there is the About McSweeney's section:

"McSweeney’s began in 1998 as a literary journal, edited by Dave Eggers, that published only works rejected by other magazines. But after the first issue, the journal began to publish pieces primarily written with McSweeney’s in mind. Since then, McSweeney’s has attracted works from some of the finest writers in the country, including Denis Johnson, William T. Vollmann, Rick Moody, Joyce Carol Oates, Heidi Julavits, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, Ben Marcus, Susan Straight, Roddy Doyle, T.C. Boyle, Steven Millhauser, Gabe Hudson, Robert Coover, Ann Beattie, and many others.

Today, McSweeney’s has grown to be one of the country’s best-read and widely-circulated literary journals, with an expanding, loyal subscriber base and strong independent bookstore following. As a small publishing house, McSweeney’s is committed to finding new voices—Gabe Hudson, Paul Collins, Neal Pollack, J.T. Leroy, John Hodgman, Amy Fusselman, Salvador Plascencia and Sean Wilsey are among those whose early work appeared in McSweeney’s—and promoting the work of gifted but underappreciated writers, such as Lydia Davis and Stephen Dixon.

Recent books and journals have appeared on bestseller lists around the country and have won multiple literary and design awards, including stories selected for the Best American Poetry, Best American Travel Writing, the O. Henry Awards, and the Best American Short Stories. Two of our books were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. Design awards include AIGA 50 Books Award, AIGA 365 Illustration Award, and the Print Design Regional Award. McSweeney’s books have appeared in design exhibits at the Smithsonian Museum and the Pasadena Museum."

They go on to explain the many small divisions of McSweeney's:

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern—a literary journal
McSweeney's Books—has produced over 35 titles
4 Imprints:
McSweeney’s Rectangulars—new fiction series
Believer Books—collects works from the magazine's most popular contributors and foreign books (published in English by McSweeney's for the first time)
The Collins Library—reprints of forgotten classics
McSweeney’s Irregulars—"a collection of irregular books of irregular content appearing at irregular intervals. Most of the Irregulars aim to be funny."
The Believer
Wholphin
McSweeney's Internet Tendency—the website, which recently won the Webby Award for Best Writing

I had no idea that they were acquiring the English language right to publish foreign books. Or that they were producing books that were in the public domain. They really seem to have their hands in many different pots, and they seem to do an excellent job at almost everything (I am talking about their publishing abilities, not marketing, but honestly, although I am finding areas to critique, I think they are outstanding compared to most of the industry).

Also, the fact that they have won so many design awards starts to shine a little light on the fact that they have no internet-only options for their publications. They really do seem to take a strong view that their products are not just text on paper, although they obviously also pride themselves on publishing great writing. This is the description of the most recent issue:

"Our flagship publication, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern comes in many different forms, and it will always contain the very best writing we can find. Here's what we've got up our collective sleeve for the future...

THE AMAZING ISSUE 36 (coming very, very soon!):

Inside this 275-cubic-inch full-color head-crate, there are all the things you'd hope for: a 100-page annotated fragment of Michael Chabon's lost novel, incredible new stories from John Brandon and Colm Tóibín, Jack Pendarvis's "Jungle Geronimo in Gay Paree," a play by Wajahat Ali—eight astounding booklets in all, along with some other things on top, enough for hundreds and hundreds of pages of perusal, every bit of it, like we said, contained in a more-or-less-life-size friendly-looking head. It will fit on your shelf, it is compatible with most hats, and the stuff inside is wonderful—order yours today!"

And this is what the issue looks like:

I can now understand why this type of publication might not clearly translate into an eBook or online subscription. This is truly the tactile sort of product that people talk about when they say they aren't ready to give up print books, although these physical books are pushing the limits in a totally different direction. I think they take a very distinct approach in the physicality of their products. In one little ad blurb on the Store website it says, "we try to make each issue very different from the last. One issue came in a box, one was Icelandic, and one looks like a pile of mail. In all, we give you groundbreaking fiction and much more."

They have a very simple and straightforward FAQ section.

They have a newsletter that you can sign up for, a great marketing tool. It's a way to regularly remind people that McSweeney's is around and to tempt them to subscribe or buy a book based on the content of the newsletter.

There is actually a Combo Subscription button that is incorporated in the main banner of the website. It links to the various combo choices mentioned earlier, with recommended books along the right-hand side of the page.

There is also a Books section which seems to list all of the books currently offered by McSweeney's. This is the only place where I wished there was a search section. If you are looking for a particular book, you have to scroll through the entire book section, and really keep an eagle eye out for the book you want or that you are hoping is there. There is also not an e-Book option for any of the books they publish. Although it seems shortsighted of them, knowing the quality of art and printing that goes into their book, I don't really think they lend themselves to eBooks, at least not at the point where we are with eBook technology. I don't think that McSweeney's is ignoring digital publishing.

There is a section named "T-shirts and More". Oddly the Book Bundles are located under this, and not in the Book section. The rest of the things for sale make sense, but I wouldn't have even known they offered bundles of their books if I wasn't exploring this site so closely.

The last major section of the Store is a Book Release Club section, where you pay $100 (includes shipping) to receive the next 8 books they publish. Seems like a great idea. It's a commitment to buy the next 8 books. What publisher wouldn't want money in the bank for books they haven't even produced yet?

Kind of hidden in the Store is an ad for McSweeney's new iPhone/iPad App, called the Small Chair. It is has a weekly selection from all branches of McSweeney's for 1/2 year for $5.99.

Every book I googled first popped up on Amazon.com, but the McSweeney's website usually came next or at the very least third. So this says 2 things to me. First, they are smart to sell their books on Amazon, as people are more likely to look on Amazon for a book than to each publisher's website. Also, almost all of the books listed were highly rated (all were three stars or more, and most were four to five stars). Second, they have been smart about getting their site to pop up near the top of a search in Google.

So here is where I have to admit, whatever McSweeney's had to sell, I was the sucker who went for it. Since I had always wanted a McSweeney's subscription, and I have now become so much more familiar with McSweeney's, and that cube version of the next quarterly intrigues the hell out of me, I added it to my shopping cart. When I went to look at the shopping cart, McSweeney's was nice enough to let me know about the bundled packages, which I then went for the McSweeney's/The Believer combo. Then I clicked purchase. Which then prompted me that I had to sign in or create an account. With no link to do either. I found the link myself, and signed in, and then was not brought back to my shopping cart. So I added the product again. The rest of the process went pretty smoothly.

At the bottom of McSweeney's Internet Tendency (the award winning McSweeney's website), there are a bout a gazillion links to articles that don't make it into the printed journal. Much of it tongue-in-cheek, it is all worthwhile to explore. There is the Reviews of New Food section, which highlights Santa Fe Ranch Corn Nuts Chips, SunChips in a "100 Percent Compostable Chip Package", and Fritos Scoops, and the Short Imagined Monologues, Open Letters to People or Entities Who Are Unlikely to Respond, Bitchslap: A Column About Women and Fighting, and about 30 other sections. All of these add to the voice of McSweeney's, as well as the brand. It gives you something to come back to on a daily basis, and maybe you will end up purchasing something along the way. I know I am now $90 poorer for the experience, but I can't wait to open up that crazy head box and see what else is inside!

While there are some improvements that can be made on the various sites, most of them are just a way of streamlining the marketing and easing the purchasing process. I think that they do a fabulous job with their websites, and especially with McSweeney's Internet Tendency. I can understand why they might not have online subscriptions available for their products which are so visually rich and engrossing, but I do think they might want to consider some type of online or eBook product. I think that in a world of increasing eBook readership, high quality printed magazines, journals, and books such as those put out by McSweeney's could be valued even more than they currently are, as they are truly the exception in the printed book industry.

Convert Book to eBook Project—Part 6

Darnit. Why am I such a perfectionist? Once I started thinking about how the footnotes really needed to be linked, I was done. So I started doing that this morning. And like I said, the Sigil software is pretty good, but kind of quirky. I figured out how to make the footnote numbers superior "sup". Pretty easy. Well it was for the most part, but at some point something went wonky in chapter one (the longest chapter!!!) And it inserted "sup" and "/sup" in front of every single paragraph. So, I had to go through and change it back, all by handcoding. Very tedious. It also did it again near the end of the book.

I did a lot more cleaning up (mostly of code this time, stuff no one would even see), but again, this took all day, which is much more time than I had anticipated.

Although it's not perfect, I feel pretty good about this. I also converted it into a different format, just for the heck of it. The version below is in fb2 format. I have no way to test it out (it is supposed to be an xml only format), but I figured, why not try it out.

Convert Book to eBook Project—Part 5

Okay, lots and lots of work on this. The Sigil editor really does work nicely (although it's a little buggy, but what do you expect for FREE???). I was able to clean up the book a ton. I moved the images to where they belonged, the photos, and pull quotes, and some of the figures that were in the wrong places.

Dealing with tables in html always scared me, and I had to jump in head first with those to make them look better. I think they look pretty good, although I am sure someone with more html know-how could tweak them even more. My only point of dissatisfaction with the tables is that there are rules that are in the book that don't appear that do appear in the eBook version. It was hard enough to do in InDesign, I have no clue as to how it's done in html, if it even is (I do think it's likely that it can be done).

Also, I fixed all of the links in the Table of Contents so they link to the correct chapter or area. I started to link all the web links, but it's just too much to do, and after a day of playing with this, it's just not worth it (not with one more project to do by Monday).

I also have no clue how to format the footnote numbers so that they look like footnotes. And as I type this, I realize I should probably link the footnote to the actual footnote. But after spending the entire day and most of last night on this, I am going to leave well enough alone.

There was a lot of design/style cleaning up to do, and I am grateful for being forced to dust off my html muscles. I was hoping to dabble a little bit more in xml for this project and to expand my skill set, but it's just not possible, there is just not enough time.

I accomplished my goal of making this book into an eBook, and in fact, I think it looks pretty darned great. In fact, I actually did two versions if you want to count the pdf version (it does have all the requisite links working).

I do think for the amount of time I have spent on this, it is not a small project. I have put at least 30 hours total into this project. I think I bit off a lot more than I had planned on.

Convert Book to eBook Project—Part 4

Okay, this time I tried to convert the book to ePub format straight from pdf. I was feeling encouraged as I was doing this, as there were a ton of choices offered by Calibre for the conversion. But the resulting document is an ugly mess, and it would take way more effort to make this a presentable document than it would the prior one.

None of the links work. Even though I selected to remove the headers and footers as an option, they are included and seem to be randomly scattered throughout the ePub document.

None of the images came through, which was a result that surprised me in my first attempt.

The tables didn't translate at all either, the numbers just run in one long row. I have no idea how I would figure out a way to fix that.

This version did create a pretty nice cover, however. Another nice thing—it was much easier to enter the metadata and tags this way, the program even prompted me to do so. Those are about the best things I can say about it.

This version is pretty useless. I wouldn't even try to edit this one.

Convert Book to eBook Project—Part 3

I think this Sigil program will do exactly what I need. I am reading the entire Online Manual and will get down to tweaking this document into something more presentable. Very excited!

Convert Book to eBook Project—Part 2

This time was my first attempt to convert the entire book into an eBook. From InDesign, I selected "Export Book to Digital Editions". I was then able to open the resulting ePub file by using Calibre. The resulting file was actually not that horrible, although the cover changed a lot. As expected, the font changed and the images look exactly the same, but the type is much larger than I would have thought for the cover and the copyright page.

The chapter titles do not link to the appropriate chapter but the ugly blue default html links are there linking to the different chapter parts, and they surprisingly work. I am not going to fight the default html link. There is at least beauty in the fact that are universally seen as links. I have been playing with Calibre to make it look better, but I am afraid all Calibre will do is convert an existing book into different formats, so I think I might be back to square one if I want to be able to edit it more. I also think that I will probably have to go in and code in xml, especially if I want to get the metadata correct. I am back to my previous thought that converting the entire book was too ambitious, that it might just have to be a chapter or chapters.

The List of Tables and the List of Figures also do not link to the actual tables and figures that were set up to link to in Indesign and that worked in pdf format.

Although the pull quotes did not show up on the colored box with the artwork that they were originally designed as, they still showed up clearly as pull quotes, and I don't have much issue with how they look.

I also noticed that Figure 1-1 did not show up, but it was a whole page size so again, I am not surprised. It most likely needs to be reduced in size in order for it to appear. I will have to figure out what those size limits are. The other Figures seem to be showing up fine which is what leads me to think that it's the size of Figure 1-1.

Another surprise is that the tables don't look bad at all. That is one instance where I can take credit for careful design at the get-go. Although, since I don't have an iPad or Kindle, I am testing it on my computer screen, which I can adjust. If you can't adjust the screen size to make it the width of a table, I can see how the tables might end up being a problem after all. This is kind of difficult to test without an e-reader.

Speaking of, I sent the ePub file to my coworker who has an iPad to test it. She wasn't able to open it at all on her iPad. So far, the only way that I know a person can read this ePub file is by opening it up by using Calibre. I think this might be another example of how the eBook process is broken.

I think I have succeeded in making this document an ePub, but it needs a lot of tweaking. The people who created Calibre say it is a eBook converter, not an editor. They suggest 2 editors: Sigil and Book Designer. The name of Book Designer appealed to me the most, but that website is almost entirely in Russian, so I am going to try out Sigil. I will update with my results.

Convert Book to eBook Project—Part 1

My personal project for the Fundamentals of ePublishing class is to convert a book that I designed for print into an eBook. When this book was created, it was only thought of as a print book, so there was no thought whatsoever as to how it would convert into an eBook. Also, there is the problem of what format for an eBook. I already use pdfs as part of the proofing process, although I don't use them as eBooks, so my initial challenge is to create a pdf with links, not just a pdf of a print book. So went through the book and set up links from the Table of Contents to the intended pages, and I also made the hyperlinks listed throughout the book into active links that will open in a browser. I did most of this in InDesign (CS3), and then did a few tweaks and adjustments in Acrobat Pro (v.8).

Since I almost exclusively work with print publications, there was a bit of a learning curve in doing this. It took a little playing around to make the links look how I wanted them to look, which is just normal (I hate the bright blue default hyperlink look) without the weird default box that InDesign automatically puts around links. Still, if you hover the mouse over a link, the finger appears alerting you to a link. I think this is sufficient, without hitting the reader over the head with the default hyperlink look, but I might go back and adjust the look of the links later, we'll see.

Here is the pdf that I created (click on the image of the book to link to the pdf):

My next step is to experiment with xml, which I have been doing, but I now realize it's unrealistic to think that I can code the entire book in xml from scratch, at the very end of the design process. The more I read about it (which I have been doing for months, the best book so far for me is A Designer's Guide to Adobe InDesign and XML, although it doesn't even talk about eBooks, it talks about XML in a very designerly, non-technical manner), the more daunting it is (this is a 128 page book). However, there are many free/shareware tools that are available to make this process easier. I think it would be easiest to code a book in xml if I knew the book would be converted from the beginning.

I will post throughout the various steps with resulting documents.