EBW training
Electric Book Works has from time to time designed training courses for publishing teams. We have also shared our notes on our Knowledge Base.
- Designing for Digital
- InDesign best practice for print and ebooks
- Making ebooks with Sigil, HTML and CSS
- Multi-format editing
- Must-have tech skills for publishing pros
- Digital Decisions
Designing for Digital
Designing for Digital is a practical course on ebook-friendly book production for designers, editors and production managers. Most publishers are looking to use their content in ebooks or on websites, and this practical introduction helps production teams understand how to work in ebook-friendly ways, even when their books are destined for print.
- Duration: one day
- Participants: minimum four, maximum seven
Read the course notes Download the PDF
InDesign best practice for print and ebooks
This course is for editors and designers who work in InDesign and need to set up documents for reliable export to epub. It is included in condensed form in Making ebooks with Sigil, HTML and CSS.
- Duration: one day
- Participants: minimum four, maximum seven
Read the course notes Download the PDF
Making ebooks with Sigil, HTML and CSS
Making ebooks with Sigil, HTML and CSS is an in-depth, practical crash course in ebook production, ideal for editorial and production staff familiar with InDesign. The aim is to provide your organisation with in-house technical expertise for quality assurance and production-process decisions. We teach basic HTML and CSS (stylesheets) to enable participants to create, evaluate and fix basic epubs, and to know how to tackle problems when they arise. Participants work mostly in Sigil and a little InDesign, learning how best to edit content and control layout.
This course includes condensed versions of Starting out with HTML and CSS and InDesign best practice for print and ebooks.
- Duration: four mornings over two weeks
- Participants: minimum four, maximum seven
Participants must be regular ebook users themselves, so that they are already familiar with the products they are learning to create.
Read the course notes Download the PDF
Multi-format editing
This is a two-day course for publishing and editorial staff, and curious authors, on how to edit content for multi-format output. Increasingly, we’re producing content that will be read on paper and on devices large and small, fast and slow, online and offline. How do we make sure our content makes sense in these different contexts?
- Duration: two days
- Participants: minimum five, maximum twenty
Must-have tech skills for publishing pros
A two-day introductory course for publishing pros who need to understand digital production; collaborate on digital projects; work for web clients and app developers; and brief technical colleagues with confidence.
- Duration: two days
- Participants: minimum five, maximum twenty
Digital Decisions
Digital Decisions is a closely facilitated workshop for middle and senior managers. We cover a range of nitty gritty issues, including:
- technology decisions (file formats, data-asset-management systems, metadata, DRM),
- rights and royalty decisions (territory, calculating royalties),
- product decisions (backlist conversions vs frontlist plans, publishing vs software development),
- administrative decisions (identifiers, reporting and tracking sales and costs),
- workflow decisions (editorial and design processes, managing in-house learning and knowledge, expertise and functional authority, format-agnostic workflows), and
- sales and marketing decisions (pricing models, partners and findability, sales and delivery processes).
The workshop can be held over one or two days, depending how much time you can devote to these issues, and how much depth you need your team to get into. Over one day, the workshop is a useful introduction to the many issues your team has to consider when making digital decisions.
Over two days, the workshop can serve as a strategy session, getting everyone on the same page. For the two-day version, we include a second facilitator to keep notes of key discussions and decisions and write up a report for you of key decisions, issues for further investigation and action points from the workshop.
- Duration: one or two days
- Participants: minimum six, maximum fifteen