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That’s the title of an article in Martin Taylor’s ereport:

One of the challenges ebook publishers face is poor ebook production tools. The tools that are out there are usually aimed at techies. When Apple introduced iBooks Author  earlier this year — an authoring environment that is powerful, supports rich media, and is very user-friendly — it brought this issue into stark relief.

But there’s good news on the horizon as lots of companies jump into this vacuum. Adobe is the big one, but there are lots of start-ups too, many in an interesting new category: online ebook production tools.

I’ll take a look at three online applications that have emerged over the last few months:

PressBooks Vook Inkling Habitat Another advantage: A low entry cost, including free options, opens them up to smaller publishers. Unlike online conversion services such as Smashwords and BookBaby — which automatically convert marked-up documents to ebooks with little customisation— these new offerings include visual authoring environments and some also add workflow management to accommodate multiple editors and contributors. Another advantage: A low entry cost, including free options, opens them up to smaller publishers.

I’ll start with PressBooks but look out for Vook and Inkling reviews over the next couple of weeks.

Read the rest at the site.

(Via eReport.)

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