Back in 2008, we created PDF and epub editions of Moxyland by our friend Lauren Beukes. Lauren had worked with African Dope Records to produce a soundtrack for the book – a collection of songs and ambient music that added to her depiction of near-future Cape Town. We wanted to put the soundtrack into the book, so that you could read and listen at the same time.

This was before the Kindle owned the ebook space, and it was pre-iPad, so Apple hadn’t banished Flash yet, so Flash was still the best way to put rich media in an ebook. We learned more about the obstacles to embedded media than the benefits: sound-quality vs file size trade-offs were tricky to navigate, the PDF version didn’t work on Mac, InDesign actually couldn’t embed video as it claimed (due to a recent bust-up with Apple Quicktime), we had to to-and-fro with our distributor’s temperamental Adobe Content Server, and we spent a lot of time writing help emails and web pages for consumers new to ebooks. We sold the epub edition for several months, and not many copies. (At the time, Lauren was published only by Jacana in South Africa, and we had the international licence. Later, Lauren got a book deal with HarperCollins’ Angry Robot imprint, and we gave up the licence so that Angry Robot could do the international ebook edition. So our ebook editions are no longer available.) It probably lost us quite a bit of money, but it was the cheapest possible education.

When Apple banished Flash from its devices, they effectively made it wasteful to embed audio or video in ebooks, since you had to produce one ebook for Apple (using a new, therefore time-consuming technology) and one for Adobe-based distribution. And Amazon Kindle’s inability to play rich-media ebooks today means you can’t sell on the dominant ebook marketplace. So we’ve been

EPUB 3 will change that. And their are reliable rumours that Kindle will support epub by the end of 2011. So I’m really looking forward to applying what we learned about embedding media (and learning more) when EPUB 3 is released. While the technical method of embedding rich media in EPUB 3 will be different, we’ll benefit from our efforts three years ago. And I’ll finally be able to say Yes to clients when they ask about putting more than text and pictures in their ebooks.

Second, the client – Intercultural and Diversity Studies at UCT – trusted me entirely with the ebook, were happy with the first page design I did (with a few tweaks to colour) and picked the final cover right out of the first round of proposed designs. A rare treat.

The editors certainly made the best choice for their professional/academic crossover market. Here are the drafts we didn’t go with (all use lowres comps from iStockphoto). Click to enlarge.

The project included video interviews with professionals, so the ebook includes links to these videos (we didn’t embed video in the ebook, since support for embedded video is still so spotty among ereaders). We set up an account on Vimeo for this. Vimeo is lovely to work with.

The book is free from iNCUDISA here in DRM-free, open-licensed PDF, epub, and mobi versions.

We decided to give them fresh covers and make them available as print-on-demand books through Lightning Source (the editions you see on Amazon are from LS). Tony only had hard copies of the books, so we had to scan, OCR, proofread, design and typeset them.

These are the new covers we designed (the photo on Deadlines is Tony’s own):

And here are the original covers:

Ironically, Jacana’s cover for The King’s Shilling is more in the style of the original covers.

The African Journal of Rhetoric was produced by my colleague Silma Parker, and I did the cover design.

Gulliver’s Troubles, a book on Nigerian foreign policy, was designed and produced by me. The cover features a cartoon from acclaimed cartoonist Tony Grogan commissioned by the publisher.

The First Ethiopians was also designed and produced by me. This is an incredible work, the result of decades of research by the author. In over 500 pages there are only a dozen chapter breaks, and almost no subheadings. Working with these big slabs of text was typographically both a challenge and a treat.

The cover of South Africa in Africa was designed by then freelance designer Pete Lewis, who is now with Fallon.

The Adventures is the tale of a nose that travelled time and the world to find, at last, the perfect face to stay upon. Margie wrote it for the son of a friend whose nose had been scarred by her dog (only lightly scarred, but it was quite a scare). The illustrations are by Andrew Walton.

This little book is only 97 × 71 mm and 48 pages long. One rarely gets to design a book this size, so it was a lovely break from more routine work. We printed small runs of paperbacks with lovely creamy, bulky paper.

After the launch, reviewer Alex Smith said, “It is a tiny triumph, illustrated with whimsical line drawings by Andrew Walton, and just small enough to fit into a Christmas sock.” And Margie said nice things about us, too: “Electric Book Works worked wonders on a very small book for me in no time at all. The Very Brave & Particular Nose, a story for Jack was put together and published in about three weeks. So anyone who needs something done beautifully and fast – then Arthur is your man”.

There is no ebook version. Yet.