What Makes an Ebook Really an Ebook?

When is an ebook better than a printed book? When it includes resources that a physical book could never provide. I picked up a copy of The MacSparky Markdown Field Guide (an excellent resource for anyone using Markdown) and have been thinking about what really constitutes an ebook ever since.

I opted for the PDF version of David Sparks and Eddie Smith’s ebook. The PDF version is actually the secondary option, though, with the iBookstore version taking precedence. I prefer PDF for flexibility, despite being one of those people who mostly buys their hardware from Apple.

The reason that the iBookstore version might be preferable is because of the sheer amount of non-written content built in to the ebook. Every section seems to have something in addition to some very well written content, like a screencast or an audio interview. The same multimedia content came along with the PDF, though it isn’t embedded in the document. All in all, The MacSparky Markdown Field Guide weighs in at 130 pages, one and a half hours of video and one hour of audio.

We all have a working definition of a ‘book’ as a bunch of written content, perhaps with some images thrown in. But what happens to that definition as we shift over to reading our books on devices that make integrating video and audio content extremely simple? I wouldn’t be surprised if the definiton of books expands to include most types of content, though I’ll be very surprised if the word disappears from use — there’s a few too many of us bibliophiles out there for that.

On the surface, I love the idea that I can have all sorts of media in my reading material. But I want more data: how easy is it to process this mix? I shift back and forth pretty easily, but I spend all day glued to a computer monitor. For some readers / watchers, I could see this mix being very helpful, but for others I could see it causing distractions. Integrating more materials could change the interpretation of books: if there isn’t a video about a certain section, it clearly couldn’t be important. I know I get hung up on points in given books that the author may have included as a throw away. Will those points get lost.

I found The MacSparky Markdown Field Guide incredibly useful. I don’t expect to have answers about the right way to integrate media content for quite a while, but it’s a topic worth paying attention to. We’re going to see more examples every day, for the near future.

A Little Bit of Markdown Makes a World of Difference

Over the past few months, I’ve made the switch to writing just about everything in Markdown. It’s a bit like writing in HTML — but much easier! I’ve reached a point that it would be hard for anyone to convince me to go back to my previous approach. I’m becoming a bit of an evangelist to convince other writers to start using Markdown, along with a few associated tools, to make workflow management much easier.

My Previous Approach

Prior to switching to Markdown, I wrote out blog posts (along with most other text) in a bastardized version of HTML. The goal was to be able to copy and paste what I wrote as plain text, without having to go through and change styling on specific words after I loaded a post into WordPress, or wherever else it was going.

You’ve probably seen horribly wrong results from cutting and pasting styled text from something like Microsoft Word into WordPress — if you haven’t, I strongly suggest against relying on this approach if you routinely write for the web. But, at the same time, writing in a text field on a browser just seems like begging to lose hours worth of work. Many sites now have some level of auto-saving built in, but it’s not something you can count on.

All of this added up to my adding in certain HTML tags directly as I wrote. But doing that can be a little distracting. Trying to figure out what a headline should say, as well as remembering which tag will result in the style you want can be a hassle.

Markdown to the Rescue

HTML is what’s known as a ‘markup’ language. So is Markdown, albeit greatly simplified. It’s easy to remember — asterisks do a lot of heavy lifting, as do octothorpes (also known as pound signs). It’s almost like adding a few little symbols to remind yourself to go back and add formatting latter. Luckily, though, with the right tools, the formatting winds up adding itself.

For me, those tools include the following:

  • Marked: This little app makes everything else possible. I write in Markdown in a variety of different programs, but I always have Marked running. It lets me generate live previews of what my text actually looks like from different types of files, as well as copying my work as HTML, so that I can drop it into a blog editor — or exporting the file as HTML, RTF or PDF.
  • Sublime Text: If you’re writing in Markdown, you’re going to want to write in some sort of text editor. I’ve been learning to code, so I just use the same text editor for everything. As an added bonus, there are some plugins for Sublime Text that make it into a great word processor. However, I only use Sublime Text for shorter peices of work — for longer pieces, it can get unwieldy.
  • Scrivener: For longer projects, I’ve started using Scrivener — not only is it Markdown friendly, but it has a ton of features for making big writing projects very easy to deal with.

That’s about $120 worth of software that makes my writing life much easier than it has been in the past. But you don’t need any of it to get started. You can rely on just about any text editor you may already have and try out some free tools for whatever platforms you’re working on; many content management systems have plugins that let them handle Markdown natively. Give it a whirl. I promise, you’ll be surprised.