Alpha Group Work

This week, our group corresponded on BaseCamp to lay the groundwork for our project and discuss the concept of adding value to ebooks. After agreeing on the content we will use for our ebook, Mother Goose fairy tales, we discussed several editorial decisions. We decided to segment the ebook by fairy tale, making each story a new heading/chapter in our TOC. We will be adding images to accompany the text, and will be adding corresponding French translations for each tale. We decided not to delineate between pages in any way, as these do not translate to every ebook format, and embedded page numbers would be distracting and unnavigable.

During class tonight, we are uploading all our text content to Sigil and creating the different sections. Becky did a great job of playing with Sigil and figuring out how to drop content into the program. As we upload, we are reformatting the text (removing page numbers, unnecessary punctuation). Once we have the content uploaded, we will discuss placement of images. We briefly discussed adding coloring book images to the text. Right now, we're still getting a handle on the basic mechanics of Sigil and figuring out what our option are for taking the design of our book to a less basic level. We decided not to split up the content in order to complete the project, but rather to work on it as a group, on one computer. We found this method allows us to make faster, more collaborative editorial decisions.

As we uploaded the French translation, we noticed that it lacked the same neat formatting as the English version. Therefore, Andrea spearheaded the effort to ensure that the two French format matched the English as closely as possible (similar headings, indentations, removing hard returns). Fortunately, we have a French speaker, Erin, to help us understand what we're looking at!

The next step: deciding on a style sheet, images to incorporate in the text, and investigating other design options.