Have you ever read an e-book or at least had a chapter or two sent to you to read? If you are like most people, you ended up printing the book and reading it that way. E-books have commonly been treated like normal books that contain pages of text with few illustrations. If you are going to produce an e-book, you need to discover the power of using the Web. You can do many creative things with HTML and graphics to produce a book that comes alive on the screen. Do let yourself be talked into writing the book, text format, and then reproducing it for the Web in long columns of text. Make sure you have the use of photos or pictures to liven up the images you paint with your words. You can make the book truly interactive. You can use interactive checklists that produce a list of tasks for readers. You can ask them to fill in forms, and make decisions that lead them to another location in the materials. The book should also contain links to references so that the reader can learn more than what you are telling them. The possibilities are endless. If you are going to produce an e-book, use your imagination and make the book an experience the reader will want to repeat and tell others about. Reader involvement not only reinforces what you are saying, it gives them the opportunity to grasp materials. Learning by doing stays longer than just reading the material and putting the book on the shelf. Get your audience involved with your story. |
