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The Independent Publishing Collegium, in a departure from traditional publishing, brings authors and publishing professionals together to collaboratively develop and market titles. This unique model is designed to create a more open and dynamic environment in which to publish books that meet high standards of excellence and have lasting resonance with readers.
A collegium (col-le-gi-um) is a group whose members pursue shared goals while working within a framework of mutual trust and respect. The Independent Publishing Collegium provides collaborative editorial, design,
production and marketing services through its network of publishing experts willing to share their skills, knowledge, connections and enthusiasm with others who prefer to publish their works themselves.
Independent Publishing Collegium books are published in association with the Okanagan Institute.
Making the Decision to Publish
The Independent Publishing Collegium provides the support and services required to take your ideas and needs and turn them into tangible objects - or digital objects - that will deliver value for money, and real results. Publishing, no matter what form it takes, can be daunting, complicated, and potentially wasteful of time, money, and resources - unless it's done right. We make it easy, and cost-effective.
Here are the most common reasons companies, organizations, institutions, and individual decide to publish:
To Celebrate Your Successes. You're an individual with a story to tell about your achievements or insights. You're a family who wants to have a memorial of one of its members, or the whole clan. You're a business that wants to contribute something to your community, or celebrate a benchmark in your history, or ensure that your customers are aware of all you have to offer them. You're a community, or community group, with a story to tell, or funds to raise, or people to acknowledge for their contribution.
You're a trade or professional association with ideas and information that need to be communicated to your membership. You're an institution - school, library, museum, art gallery, hospital, university - that has an anniversary or special event to promote. No matter what you have to celebrate, there's a way to use words and pictures to achieve it. That's the true power of publishing.
To Sell. A lot of business is simply making connections with other people. Every smart business person knows that it's not what you know, it's who you know. Every business person can tell more than one story how a chance meeting turned into a sale. And every business person can tell more than one story how a brochure or catalog, or some other printed material, was the key factor in getting new business. Whether it's a new product or service you want to introduce, or a regular reminder to your existing customers, print materials - brochures, catalogs, spec sheets, manuals, posters, inserts, magazines, and other sales collatoral - help keep your message in front of those who drive your business: your customers.
To Make Information Available. If you could keep your customers informed of every reason why they should do business with you, don't you think you could do more business? A consistently applied publishing program delivers real results for just that reason. The more information a potential customer has about you, the more likely they're going to remember you when it comes time to buy. By using print publications in tandem with online media, you can achieve real results cost-effectively. Similarly for organizations and associations - an important part of your mandate is member information services. The better job an organization or association does at keeping information flowing, the more successful it will be. Finding a cost-effective and effiecient way to create, package, and deliver that information is the reason for you to use the Independent Publishing Collegium.
To Serve Your Customers. Making business information available is one of the most important ways to serve your customers. If you take serving your customers seriously, you'll find lots of ways to use print and online technology. How about making forms available online so potential customers can pre-qualify themselves? Whoever answers the phones in your organization can tell you that their time is usually spent answering the same questions over and over again.
These are the questions customers and potential customers want to know the answer to before they deal with you. Printed documentation, sales and specifications sheets, online FAQs (frequently asked questions) will remove another barrier to doing business with you and free up some time for your harried phone operators.
To Influence the Media. Every kind of business, every organization and institution, needs the exposure that the media can bring. Press kits are becoming more and more common as promotion tools for business, because every newspaper, magazine, radio and television station is starved for good news. Digital images of your products and services, and digital text covering every aspect of your business can be edited and outputed on tight deadlines - all available on your website for easy downloading and use by busy journalists.
To Reach Specialized Audiences. If your market is specialized, consider whether print or online media are the most effective to reach it. For example, most universities already offer Internet access to their students and most K-12 schools will be on the Internet within the next few years. Books, athletic shoes, study courses, youth fashion and anything else that would want to reach these markets needs to be on the Web. The more specialized, the more practical digital publishing becomes.
To Open International Markets. You may not be able to make sense of the mail, phone and regulation systems in all your potential international markets, but online you can open up a dialogue with international markets as easily as with the company across the street. Effective use of digital media is certain to bring international opportunities your way, and is an efficient and cost-effective way to grow your business.
Going the Digital Route
Digital publishing uses the computer as a communications medium. It is the use of the computer to present information that might otherwise appear on printed pages, and putting it on the World Wide Web.
It may appear at first sight that developing digital publications is simply a question of taking existing paper materials and putting them online or on disk, but this is not the case. The computer screen is a different medium to paper and so digital material needs to be specifically developed with this in mind.
Also, digital publishing is not a means of replacing paper publications. Its role is complementary to paper, a medium that is unlikely to be replaced in the near future because of its portability and ease of use. However, online publications can be distributed and updated much faster than their paper equivalent. A further advantage is that they integrate the product information with the product.
Deciding What to Put Online. There is a basic rule of thumb to answer this question. Put a document online if the value of having it online exceeds the cost of putting it there.
In general, the following kinds of documents are suitable for online display:
Information that is urgent.
Documents that frequently change.
Documents that have many cross references.
Large reference works.
Instructions, reference manuals and tutorials.
Documents that take advantage of computer display and storage.
Documents that should not appear online include:
Anything that requires detailed reading.
Documents that are needed away from the computer or by non-computer users.
Those with graphics that are too complex or too large.
Organising Digital Publications. There are four elementary structures used in digital publications: sequence, grid, hierarchy, and web. The most effective way to organise material is by means of linked topics. It is possible to incorporate this into all four of the above structures. To improve use on the part of the reader, the links should provide a sequential path through the main thread of the publication.
Occasional sidetracking may prove useful also, but it is important to ensure that these additional links are quick and do not unnecessarily distract the user from the main points of the document.
To make the material more user-friendly, organise the document the way the user naturally thinks it is organised. An imposed, artificial structure will quickly discourage the reader from making full use of the publication. Progressive disclosure of information, beginning with very simple concepts, also gives the reader a better feeling of familiarity with the material.
When displaying online publications, we must take into account that a typical display on a screen is only 30% as large and as little as 5% as sharp as a paper page. It is also a different shape. These facts mean that we must take special care in deciding on a display format. The display must minimise disruption to user's work. This is best achieved by having a smaller, scrolling window which the user can position to one side of their main work screen. Most help screens on popular software packages now employ this method. Within this window, it is very important to have a standard location and format for titles, menus, navigation buttons and so on. This goes back to the idea of making the user familiar and comfortable with the document. A consistent look and feel to the page elements is the most effective way of assuring user-friendliness.
Lists, tables and graphics all make the display more open and attractive. You can also use colour practically, such as for highlighting the difference between different categories of information. However, take care to use it sparingly and not simply for decoration. Font attributes are very significant. All fonts should be at least 10 points in size. Keep all standard texts left justified and avoid having lines that are longer than 60 characters.
Most of the general guidelines for good style in writing also apply to online publications. There are a few basic rules that should always be followed:
Use short and simple words and sentences.
Keep the tone informal but not chatty.
Standardise terms, grammar, spelling and abbreviations.
Limit paragraphs to one idea each.
Use cross references for related topics.
Give concrete, clear examples.
An Aside: the Beginning and End of Books
The book is the culmination of the long and difficult development of language, in a sense the largest grammatical construct, far beyond the sentence, the paragraph or even the more quickly digestible story, essay or article. It is the most integral and complex means of conveying one mind to others through words, calling upon, and seemingly reciprocating the most complex form of verbal attention.
It is for all these reasons that books can have a deep effect on how we view the world, basically changing us. These changes are not limited to individuals, but can be society-wide, altering politics, establishing new modes of acting in the world, new global outlooks, spawning new movements and ideas of all kinds.
Is the age of the book as we know it coming to an end? Not the material thing - the bound book with paper pages - but rather the book in its wider meaning as a unique mode for channeling and holding our attention and imagination.
If, as some insist, the book is in decline, then the sustained, reflective and disciplined mode of thought the book made possible may be declining as well. And, if so, the generations that follow us will be different kinds of people, living in a different kind of world.
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