"What the photo-copier was to zines, we hope the People's E-Book will be to digital books."
That's my favorite quote from Greg Albers, founder of Hol Art Books, in this fantastic Kickstarter video explaining what the People's -Book is all about. I highly recommend you go and watch it. It's well produced, to the point, and gives book geeks like me reason to rejoice.
The project's slogan is "A free, beautifully-simple tool to make eBooks better," but that doesn't paint the whole picture.
A few months ago Hol Art Books, set out to raise $10,000 to hire the designers at The Present Group to help him design the app. They raised just over $28,000. I'm thrilled for him because the vision they all have in the video and the demo they do in Update #7 look phenomenal.
eBooks as Art Books
When Albers talks about his inspiration, he talks about how time-consuming and expensive it can be to create an eBook. It does take hours, and it can cost hundreds of dollars. His goal is to create something that is free and easy enough for anyone to use. I watched whoever was doing the demo in Update #7 and all I kept thinking was, "Man, that actually does look really easy and fast."
It struck me as pulling in the layout functionality of InDesign, the drag and drop simplicity of DropBox, and the text input of WordPress.
But the coolest thing about the whole project to me is that this is the only one that I've seen that is focused on making eBooks a format for art books. Almost every tool I come across is focused on novel-length eBooks.
Are any of you artists out there looking for an easier way to create art eBooks? What do you think of this?
You can follow everything about the People's E-Book and sign up for their email list at ThePeoplesEbook.net.
Image courtesy of People's Ebook Kickstarter project screenshot
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