John Maxwell & Shaleeta Harrison
jmax@sfu.ca
Publishing @ SFU
March 2023
Welcome to PUB 607, in which we will cover Digital Production Fundamentals for both EBooks and Audiobooks, in just five short weeks! This course is based on John's decades of experimentation with digital production, which have been distilled here into a set of best practices.
This course presents both theory and practice so that you may come to an understanding of why production should be done this way. The fundamental learning approach in PUB 607 is: working with a simplest-possible technological base, to be able to fool around and play with production techniques in order to become comfortable and confident that you can do these things.
These course materials are available in the PUB607 Canvas course, and also through GitHub, at https://github.com/jmaxsfu/pub607-23 and at https://jmaxsfu.github.io/pub607-23
Shaleeta has compiled a variety of extra resources from things discussed in the lectures.
PUB 607 features four lectures and four demos, and the rest of the time will be self-directed time. At the end of the course (Apr 6) we will hold a friendly show-and-tell session, as opposed to a formal presentation.
Tues Mar 7 - Orientation + Lecture 1: Files & File Management
Thurs Mar 9 - Lecture 2: Text Production Fundamentals
Tues Mar 14 - Lecture 3: Producing Accessible Ebooks + Pandoc Demo
Thurs Mar 16 - Regular Expressions demo + EBook work time
Tues Mar 21 - CSS demo/primer + EBook work time
Thurs Mar 23 - InDesign import demo + EBook wrap-up time
Tues Mar 28 - Lecture 4: Audio Production + Audio work time
Thurs Mar 30 - DAW demo/primer + Audio work time
Tues Apr 4 - Audiobook wrap-up time
Thur Apr 6 - PUB 607 Show and Tell + End of Term!
You'll work collaboratively in teams of three to produce both an accessible EPUB ebook and at least part of an audiobook. The following are the critical milestones, and their dates due. There's more detail available on the Assignments page.
by Mar 9 – Install a text editor on your laptop (suggested: Sublime Text)
by Mar 14 'Acquire a manuscript' to build your ebook and audiobook from.
by Mar 14 – Install Pandoc on your laptop and peruse the User Manual.
by Mar 27 – Produce an accessible ebook using markdown and Pandoc.
by March 28 – Install a Digital Audio Workstation (suggested: Audacity, but GarageBand or equivalent will also do)
by Apr 5 – Produce and record an audiobook version of (at least 1 chapter) of your book.
on Apr 6 – End-of-class show & tell presentations!