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Sunday, February 23, 2014

E-Book Publishing Options

Sometimes the coursebooks we use do not seem to contain what our learners need, or the information is outdated and we, teachers, start adapting or upgrading the content.

E-book publishing sites actually allow teachers and their learners to create textbooks that meet their requirements. Here are 3 of those sites.


The good thing about this one is that it has an in-built cover builder so that you don't have to create one yourself. There are quite a lot of images to choose from for the cover and it also has a table of content option. These two options make it really easy to create a book. In terms of the book itself, there are two options: either to type the book inside the site or upload a written up book from your computer. Video or any other interactive source cannot be added but you can add images.

On the negative side, the book is not embeddable which for me is not such a good option. I need to create a book which I can embed into my learners wiki and/or Moodle, because, otherwise, they will not complete the tasks not to make their posts public.



This site works more or less the same as BookRix but it doesn't have an in-built cover or content options - you will need to create these yourself. It also doesn't have an option of typing the book in-site - you have to upload a ready made book to it but, I think, the book looks a lot better and you can also get an embed code to add the book itself to a site you run for your learners. Th flipping pages also look good.

Issuu also doesn't support any interactive options, but still it is worth having a look at it.

This is the same book but published on Issuu this time.
3. Glossi

Glossi is a fairly simple tool. You use page templates offered on the site. You create your own cover and can search Google for images for your cover or pages you want to create. Video can be embedded easily which makes it a great tool for a flipped classroom. But make sure to save every page you create not to lose the work if something goes wrong.

The book can be embedded onto a site and is very interactive.

Here's what I have created on Glossi.