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Harold Mansfield
08-05-2010, 10:52 AM
I saw this today and thought it was really interesting, especially considering how many published authors we have here on the forum:


Anthologize is a free, open-source, plugin that transforms WordPress 3.0 into a platform for publishing electronic texts. Grab posts from your WordPress blog, import feeds from external sites, or create new content directly within Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a single volume for export in several formats, including—in this release—PDF, ePUB, TEI.


Anthologize is a project of One Week | One Tool a project of the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. Funding provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities

Article:
Publish Your Own Book With WordPress and the Anthologize Plugin - WPMU.org – WordPress, Multisite and BuddyPress news, tips and resources (http://wpmu.org/publish-your-own-book-with-wordpress-and-the-anthologize-plugin/)
Link:
Anthologize (http://anthologize.org/)

jamestl2
08-05-2010, 03:53 PM
I've always thought WP might be a great way to publish a book or novel, even without a plugin. Where the homepage might be the cover, Posts could be pages of the book, Categories could be chapters, etc.

I just never have though because it's not exactly something at the top of my to-do list.

Lyrafire
08-05-2010, 09:03 PM
That is massively cool! Thanks for the tip. I'm going to go install the plug-in right now, so I don't forget about it.

Business Attorney
08-05-2010, 09:34 PM
Harold, I've been thinking about an idea for a blog that this plug-in might be perfect for. Thanks.

Harold Mansfield
08-05-2010, 09:40 PM
Harold, I've been thinking about an idea for a blog that this plug-in might be perfect for. Thanks.

Sounds interesting. Keep us posted.

I've always thought WP might be a great way to publish a book or novel, even without a plugin. Where the homepage might be the cover, Posts could be pages of the book, Categories could be chapters, etc.
I saw one a while back,I think it was a screen play and the guy made it look pretty cool...the navigation was great...thinking back he probably had to do a lot of work on it..this was around Wordpress 1.9 so it was a while ago.


That is massively cool! Thanks for the tip. I'm going to go install the plug-in right now, so I don't forget about it.

If you end up using it, let us know how it works.

Lyrafire
08-05-2010, 10:56 PM
I certainly will. With some (probably more labor-intensive-than-I-would like) tweaking, I hope that it might be a relatively easy way to develop a free e-book. If you've ever tried to learn a layout program like Quark, you know why I'm so excited.

vangogh
08-05-2010, 11:31 PM
Definitely a cool plugin. The one bad thing (and it's not the fault of the plugin) is some people will just grab every post on their blog and mechanically run it through the plugin and think they have a book.

I'm also working on a book that will contain a lot of content that I've posted about in the past. I'm planning on rewriting everything, though I also planned on using the blog posts as source material. It might be interesting to see what the plugin does as I'm in the process.

Lyrafire
08-05-2010, 11:39 PM
Yup. Gotta be selective and craft for freshness and cohesiveness. I won't be doing it in earnest for a while, but it's hard to resist the temptation to do a mock up, just to see what I can see.

vangogh
08-05-2010, 11:46 PM
It's the cohesiveness thing I was thinking about. Like I said I'm putting together a book and most of what's going to be in it is stuff I've written about already. When I wrote about it on my blog it wasn't organized to be in a book so I couldn't just grab posts in order and think it would make a book. I'd also want to be able to rewrite things to make it better. Writing blogs posts I give away for free is very different than writing sections of a book I'd charge for. Also the format is different so it allows for me to add different things.

Hopefully most people would see it the same way and not think they could just copy blog posts word for word and in order and think it would make a good book.

You should definitely do a mock up. At the moment I've only gotten as far as putting together the outline. I have other things I need to get to first, but soon (I hope) I'll be fleshing out the outline and writing the pages.