We published my alternative budget as a PDF download on Wednesday. Six hundred people have accepted our invitation to download it for free, and some others have made a donation, for which the team here are grateful. We did, however, have some questions for those who might have downloaded this, as we wish to know whether this publishing format does work.
In particular, we want to know whether we are using the correct page size. A4 is conventional, but that size is a print convention, not necessarily designed for the web. Would a smaller page size be better?
In addition, we are using a 12-point font, which would be entirely reasonable for a printed publication but may not suit readers who read this document on phones or other mobile devices. Would a larger font be better?
We are also curious about using a PDF format. This is by far the easiest and quickest for us, but we have tried an e-book format, and whilst we have not, as yet, either mastered the art of doing so, or been very comfortable with it, pushing ourselves outside our comfort zone is something we might have to do. Would an e-book format be better? We would need some indication of significant demand to make that effort worthwhile.
Should we also think more broadly? In particular, if we were to use an e-book format, should we also make publications available on Kindle and provide them with proper ISBNs, and so on, and should we, in that case, also publish them as actual books using the Amazon print-on-demand service? We did this for my book, 'Money for Nothing and My Tweets for Free'. That was not a very cost-effective exercise, if I am honest, but traffic on the blog has increased threefold since then, and so things might have changed by now.
There are too many nuances in these questions to turn them into a poll, but I would appreciate your comments. They would help, as would confirmation that the publication was helpful just as we made it available, if that was the case.
We have more plans, and knowing which direction to go in would really help.
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I have not downloaded as yet, quite simply because the link wasn’t working at the time, but will do so (with contribution!) over the weekend. The only feedback I can offer is that I do not have shelves stacked high with hundreds of books and, where ever possible, download on to my Kindle. Why? Because I can adjust the font to suit my eyesight as I age, I can set it to automatically adjust to the correct light with far less glare than my iPad and, most importantly for me, it is ultra portable. I’m used to saving and sending or dragging and dropping pdf’s to my kindle but it is still a bit of a faff but, am I bovvered? No, not really
Thanks
I think PDFs are the preferred document format. Most operating systems can view them, as can most Browsers.
MS Word (.docx) and digital documents (ePub) often require an additional viewer to download.
A4 is the most common page size in Europe, “letter” in the USA.
I think that software has the option to shrink PDF pages down to whatever physical page size is being used.
And Adobe Acrobat has the option to “reflow” text on a page to fit the display.
Thanks
“I think that software has the option to shrink PDF pages down to whatever physical page size is being used.”
They do! The HP print software on my computer can format the page to the size you want to print..
Just downloaded a couple and had a brief look – all looks fine on my Mac. I like PDF – straight forward and readable on this machine or my ‘phone for breakfast time reading! Also happy with a simple A4 based layout as I’m used to it and it works for me. I don’t use e-book formats or Amazon so that’s not something I can comment on.
Thank you very much for all your efforts.
Thanks
As a micro publisher we use BookFunnel to deliver reading files. They will give the user the option of a pdf or any e-reader format so suits everyone. It is not an expensive service and widely used.
The files are type-set and formatted using some Mac-only software called Vellum. It will produce output suitable for all the major e-book platforms, generic e-reader files or pdfs suitable for print. It comes with excellent instructions and support and is easy to use.
I hope that helps.
I will take a look
We have tried Vellum, but it is really weak on covers. How do you overcome that?
We use Affinity Designer to create covers and upload them to Vellum as a jpeg.
If you are using the ‘Print’ option when you generate files with Vellum to produce a PDF, it will not have a cover because it is designed to be printed as the inside of a physical book. A wrap-around cover design would be done separately. If you generate an EPUB it will have a jpeg cover image with it suitable for the device you are targeting.
If you use BookFunnel, you can upload your jpeg cover, the PDF version of the text and an EPUB version. The reader then has the option of a PDF to read in browser or print, and EPUB suitable for whichever device they prefer. I generate the Print PDF and the generic EPUB with cover and upload those.
If you decide to stick with PDF only, I think you could upload your Vellum-generated PDF into Affinity Publisher and add a cover page. I don’t have experience of that though as I have never needed to do it.
Many thanks. We will look at all this again.
I tried a couple of times but got error messages.
I’m happy with pdf.
Thank you!
Have you got it now?
What platform gave the messages?
Download is easy and quick – easy to select a particular publication.
A4 is a good option especially if you want to print.
PDF is the most common and gives no trouble with fomatting changes
All good.
Thanks
PDF and A4 was fine.
Really interesting proposal.
I have since donated.
Many thanks
One thing I’m noticing is that links aren’t working. Looks like there are a number of links in the PDF like on page 27, “pricing” and “shareholder”. Neither link to anything. I’ve scanned some pages and it doesn’t look like any of the links work. Are those supposed to link internally or externally? What is the original content of this file? (html/markdown/word doc)
Internal linking would be nice. If I’m on the contents page and want to read part 8 it would be nice if I could just click on it vs having to scroll to page 49.
That is odd. I thought they did work. They do in the source document and my pdf. I will check. Thank you.