‘Heroes Get Hired,’ A Free eBook For Veterans From NBC Publishing & Citi

February 20, 2013 – NEW YORK – A free eBook and guide for veterans, Heroes Get Hired: How to Use Your Military Experience to Master the Interview, has been released today by NBC Publishing. Sponsored by Citi and produced in collaboration with Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) and the Military Spouse Corporate Career Network (MSCCN), this free enhanced eBook by Michelle Tillis Lederman provides a resource to aid veterans in the difficult career transition from military service into civilian employment. Featuring an introduction by Medal of Honor recipient and NBC News and MSNBC military analyst Col. Jack Jacobs (Ret.), as well as editorial input from IAVA and MSCCN, two leading veterans service organizations, the invaluable information provided in Heroes Get Hired includes specialized advice and coaching designed to meet the unique needs of veteran job-seekers and their families. Lederman’s eBook includes job search and interview tips, real-life success stories, and instructional videos that feature IAVA member veterans interacting with seasoned human resources professionals in order to visualize and demonstrate key concepts.  “As a part of NBCU’s continued commitment to veterans, NBC Publishing is proud to create a project that gives something back to all of the servicemen and women that have done so much for our country,” says Vice President and General Manager of NBC Publishing, Michael Fabiano, “It was an incredible collaboration between many organizations and individuals and really focuses on very practical methods to prepare for the interview process.” Citi’s support for Heroes Get Hired underscores the work of Citi Salutes™, a firm-wide initiative that focuses on career opportunities for veterans and their families, partnerships with veterans service organizations through Citi Community Development, and the development of Citibank financial products and services tailored to the greater military community. “Citi employs more than 2,000 military veterans, many of whom faced the challenge of transitioning directly from active-duty service to the civilian workplace,” said Suni Harford, Citi’s Regional Head of Markets for North America. “Through our support of this free e-book, Citi aims to make the job search process less daunting and more likely to end positively: with a great job and a long, successful career that builds on the qualities and talents of our service members and their families.” Heroes Get Hired: How to Use Your Military Experience to Master the Interview is now available in both enhanced and non-enhanced versions as a free download for e-reading devices such as Kindle, Nook, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Sony Reader, Kobo, and Google Nexus. For veterans and family members without access to a dedicated e-reader, Heroes Get Hired: How to Use Your Military Experience to Master the Interview will also be available in full, free of charge, at HeroesGetHired.com. # # # About the Author Michelle Tillis Lederman, author of The 11 Laws of Likability, is the founder of Executive Essentials, a training company that provides communications and leadership programs, as well as executive coaching services. She has delivered seminars internationally for fortune 500 companies, universities, high schools, and nonprofit organizations. She has been quoted in the New York Times, The Star Ledger, Working Mother and Real Simple magazines, US News & World Report, on MSNBC, and Monster.com among others. Her book, articles, quizzes and videos have been featured on USA Today, AOL, Forbes, CNBC, and About.com. Visit www.michelletillislederman.com for more information. About NBC Publishing NBC Publishing is a division of NBCUniversal Media, LLC that focuses on developing digital publishing projects from content created within the NBCUniversal and Comcast family of properties, as well as publishing original works with outside authors and publishing partners. Visit www.nbcpublishing.com for more information. Aabout Citi Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management. Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com and www.citisalutes.com | Twitter: @Citi | YouTube: www.youtube.com/citi | Blog: http://new.citi.com | Facebook: www.facebook.com/citi | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/citi

For more information contact: Marie Wicht NBC News e: marie.wicht@nbcuni.com

NBC Offers Free 'GRIMM' eBook with Season One Recap, Season Two Teaser, and Free Episode Download

The free new enhanced eBook, “GRIMM: THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE,” is now available on Apple’s iBookstore in iTunes for iPad; the non-enhanced edition will soon be available on Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet.

NEW YORK - August 8, 2012 - In an innovative collaboration, NBC Publishing and NBC Entertainment will launch “GRIMM: THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE” today. This free eBook is an interactive companion to the hit television series kicking off its second season on Monday, August 13 at 10/9c on NBC. NBC Publishing has created a unique eBook that expands the "behind-the-scenes" experience for NBC Entertainment's "Grimm" by providing access to exclusive concept art, 3D renderings, video clips, and the introduction of a terrifying new creature in a sneak preview from the Season Two premiere.

As eBooks continue to grow in popularity, the boundaries of digital publishing have gone beyond its traditional definition. Through this free download, NBC Entertainment’s critically-acclaimed show, “Grimm,” has an opportunity to directly provide its fan base with an entirely new viewer experience. In addition to the interactive features, the eBook includes character and actor biographies, photos, trivia, glossary terms, and a free pilot episode for download from iTunes.

In this collaboration, NBC Publishing takes full advantage of Apple's iBooks Author platform to highlight exclusive illustrations, animations, and video from NBC Entertainment to supplement the text of the “Grimm” universe. Similarly, free of charge, fans are able to fully immerse themselves in the making behind the “Grimm” episodes in anticipation of the Season Two premiere. As viewers become increasingly interested in interacting with shows, stories, and characters, this innovative collaboration presents a unique way to bridge the gap between fan and screen.

Both NBC Entertainment and NBC Publishing are thrilled to help bridge that gap. "NBC Entertainment is excited to explore the new Apple iBook Author, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble publishing platforms to create engaging content that our viewers can access from all of their devices," said Robert Hayes, Executive Vice President Digital, NBC Entertainment.

"We're very pleased to offer this interactive eBook to fans of Grimm," said Michael Fabiano, General Manager and VP of NBC Publishing, "We believe loyal fans will enjoy it and hopefully will prove to be a great way to attract new ones."

The free eBook, “GRIMM: THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE,” is available now for iPad at Apple's iBookstore in iTunes. A non-enhanced edition will soon be available for Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet.

###

About NBC Publishing
NBC Publishing is a division of NBCUniversal Media, LLC that focuses on developing digital publishing projects from content created within the NBCUniversal and Comcast family of properties, as well as publishing original works with outside authors and publishing partners.
For more information visit http://www.nbcpublishing.com.

About NBC Entertainment
NBC Entertainment develops and schedules programming for the network’s primetime, late-night, and daytime schedules. NBC’s quality programs and balanced lineup have earned the network critical acclaim, numerous awards, and ratings success. NBC has earned more Emmy Awards than any network in television history.

For more information contact:

Marie Wicht
NBC News
e: marie.wicht@nbcuni.com

Extreme Face Painting (Enhanced Editions): Taking the Scary Out of Producing eBooks

Originally published on Digital Book World

A significant amount of the books we publish at F+W Media are written for people who are passionate about such topics as Design, Craft, Horticulture, Fine Art, and more. The majority of these titles are highly illustrated, which means it can be quite challenging to convert them into eBook form and maintain the integrity of the original print editions. However, it's important to embrace this challenge and strive to produce digital versions of books with the same attention to detail when first published in print.

With this in mind, I'd like to tell you about two enhanced eBooks we released shortly before Halloween called EXTREME FACE PAINTING. The duo features one with 25 step-by-step "fiendish" projects and the other 25 that are "friendly." And though we're pleased with the way both turned out, the winding road to get there was pretty scary at times.

To start, we decided to split the print edition, which features 50 "fiendish and friendly step by step demos," into two separate projects. This was meant to give each focus and frankly to help keep the file size from getting too large. By dividing the content into two we prevented creating enhanced eBooks with very long downloads, which is important because let's face it, most people don't like waiting.

So I believe this strategy put us on the right track, but two new eBooks meant the need to design two new covers! Both came out great but I honestly wish I'd requested the "fiendish" design be as radically different from the original cover as "friendly" is. Instead, the iconic green skull image is identical to the one used on "50" and I can see how this might cause some confusion with consumers. But that's the beauty of digital, if this really does end up being problematic we can always make that change and resubmit. That would be a nightmare to contemplate in the print world!

But one early decision that did take us in the wrong direction was my desire to try and faithfully replicate the format of the printed book. In the original each face painting project is explained using a series of photographs grouped together, side by side. This layout approach works well with a book that's 8 1/2 x 11 in size. But when considering a reading experience meant for a 10" tablet you're now designing for pages closer to 4 1/2 x 6 and smaller still if you include a device with a 7" screen. Don't get me wrong, we more than managed to get multiple images on a page for these digital editions, but during production it became pretty clear that things just weren't coming together as originally planned.

The main reason was due to the captions that accompanied the pictures. Each set of text varies in length so the content appeared cramped and uneven. Plus the book includes an entire introduction of suggested materials like brushes, sponges, and (of course) paints and after being converted from InDesign to ePub looked particularly disproportionate and simply awful.

I knew we had to start over.

So I consulted with my colleague India Amos, who always has great suggestions, and together we determined the best course of action. One key change was the decision to break out each content element, specifically all those "step-by-step" photographs, and give each a dedicated page. This new direction provided the room we needed to present both images and text in an understandable, linear fashion that the reader would find appealing, but more importantly, useful.

This revision was a vast improvement but to me the images appeared as though they'd been copied and pasted into the file and looked more like a scrapbook than an eBook. Granted, the full screen images were nicely framed by our test device but the smaller ones seemed incomplete somehow. We remedied this by adding a gentle border around the majority of pictures, which introduced more presence and dimension.

If you regularly read eBooks then you've probably noticed how captions and photos often get separated as the text size is increased or decreased. This usually results in a frustrating reading experience, so we did our best to ensure that won't happen, especially since the Extreme captions are instructional and meant to accompany the photos as closely as possible.

These enhanced editions also feature a graphical Table of Contents that presents each face painting project using a thumbnail image. This concept adds a level of convenience for the user because it really helps to quickly decide which characters are of interest and prevents having to browse through each step-by-step demo.

And lastly, a terrific DVD featuring the extreme artists/authors, Brian and Nick Wolfe, is included with the print version of Extreme Face Painting. So we re-edited the footage specifically for the enhanced editions and the clips look great, especially in full screen mode. It's amazing to see how the twin brothers transform a willing subject into a "fiendish" green skulled monster or a "friendly" Mardi Gras fairy making these video demonstrations essential viewing.

You can see sample pages of the iBooks version here.

We hope you agree they're spooktacular. ;-)

Happy Halloween!!!

Also available at:
Amazon
Extreme Face Painting: 25 Fiendish Step-by-Step Demos
Extreme Face Painting: 25 Friendly Step-by-Step Demos

Barnes & Noble
Extreme Face Painting: 25 Fiendish Step-by-Step Demos
Extreme Face Painting: 25 Friendly Step-by-Step Demos

Enhanced e-Books: What's All the Hubbub!?

This week I attended the Tools of Change conference (TOC) in Times Square, NYC. If you're not familiar with this event, it's a gathering of publishing and technology pros who come together to discuss the current and possible future of books and reading habits. Overall, I thought it was a very good show and was glad I had the opportunity to be there. In addition, I was a speaker taking part in a presentation called "Ten Secrets of Digital Publishing (They Won't Tell You About)", which was given to about 250 people. It was great to see so many folks in the room.

There were several sessions going on simultaneously covering important issues currently facing book publishers such as e-Book formatting, digital printing, social media marketing, etc., bookended by a number of morning and afternoon Keynotes. Some were good, some not-so-good, but each seemed to have one hot topic connecting them in one way or another. And that burning curiosity on the minds of just about everyone there was e-Books, e-Books, e-Books, or more specifically: Enhanced e-Books.

So what exactly is an enhanced e-book? Well, that depends on who you talk to, but generally, it's a reading experience that includes additional bells & whistles such as video, audio, images, and added functionality like the ability to shake, zoom, and more, depending what digital device you're viewing the book on. At the moment, devices using E-Ink technology like the Kindle, Nook, and all Sony Readers, cannot include video. However, these e-readers can display black & white photos, play audio, and also include features like being able to look up the definition of just about any word within the text, which is pretty cool. Obviously you can't do this with a physical book, so even on a basic level, text read on a monochromatic device capable of such a feature is in fact "enhanced." However most, or more likely none, of the titles available from Amazon, B&N, Sony, and others, allow publishers to add things like an exclusive audio of an author reading, or say a photo gallery of locations mentioned in the storyline, which is too bad, because this would emphasize how even reading a book in shades of black can offer more. You can listen to audiobooks on all these devices and the Kindle does use something called text-to-speech technology, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I believe small but effective enhancements like these that don't cost an arm and a leg to incorporate would be appealing to readers and possibly enough to be perceived as adding value.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the idea of developing enhanced products like Apps that offer a vast array of multimedia features, but overall, there really isn't any strong proof that the average consumer wants all this extra stuff. Can it be that people just don't realize they want it? Maybe. No-one really knows but we publishers are spending a good amount of cash to find out. There are lots of products available now in the App store produced by companies like Vook, Enhanced Editions, KiwiTech, and many, many others created in conjunction with the publishing house, or in some cases directly with an author, and it's all very interesting to watch. I've been involved in putting together a few Apps: one meant to be a fun, free marketing vehicle, the other a work of fiction by David Morrell called The Spy Who Came for Christmas that includes a book trailer, video interview, audio interview, radio spot, complete audiobook synched with the text, as well as the complete text of an earlier work by the author, all for $15.95, the price of the tradepaper edition. The other I had the pleasure of demonstrating during the TOC conference is called Cathy's Book by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman, an intense, content-rich App for teen girls, that's kinda difficult to describe, but here's a video that demonstrates all that it does. And though it's terrific fun and artistically rewarding to work on projects like these, we as publishers need to ask ourselves whether or not the amount of money spent to create books with such interactivity is worth it. In other words...will we make back what we invest?

I can tell you first hand that it takes a tremendous amount of time and effort to make a really great App chock-full of good content. By the time you plan, conceive, gather assets, edit, program, and triple-check your work for quality assurance, 6 to 8 months may have quickly gone by. Plus at the end of all the blood, sweat, and tears there could be a $20K (or more) price tag still to be paid. Honestly, this process has given me pause. And for me the three days I spent at TOC confirmed the most important thing we should do as publishers is to make sure our e-Book files, whether they be .pdf,.ePub, or whatever, are formatted properly, meaning they look as close as possible to the way they do in print. I know of a number of publishers that already take this to heart, but plenty don't, and it's not for lack of concern, but more about lack of awareness. The thing is, if we don't make the basic act of reading digitally a pleasure, why would consumers believe an enhanced version will be any better?

But this isn't easy to do and just thinking about it makes my head hurt.

We're talking about having to focus our efforts on delivering fully formatted files so we know in advance exactly how they will appear on each popular e-reader in the marketplace. We cannot depend on the e-retailers to do this for us. Note I said "popular" e-readers because I've yet to see one person in the real world using a Cool-er, iRex Reader, Alex, or Que, and don't expect to anytime soon, so the immediate need is generally about preparing files for Kindle, Nook, and Sony Reader. But even with just these three main players we're still facing procedures that are extremely time consuming, require additional resources, not to mention production staff members with real editorial sensibilities. Unfortunately sending the exact same .ePub file to B&N (Nook), Sony (Pocket, Touch, Daily Edition), Apple (iPad), isn't going to resolve the issue because each device has it's own way of interpreting the file and most times the text just doesn't look as originally intended. It's enough to make you want to run out of the room screaming! Be that as it may, we have no choice but to address this head on if we expect to build a new digital future for books, whether the landscape be dynamic or monochromatic.

I mentioned the iPad and as you might imagine it was the reading gadget that most everyone wanted to talk about at TOC simply because of all the amazing things publishers are expecting it to do. And with the promise of this incredible tablet looming, one presentation given by inventor, futurist, and author Ray Kurzweil, that really resonated was all about Blio, an eReader software program that displays books three dimensionally and with plenty of enhancements (if desired). But even sans multimedia, this 3D experience developed by the author of The Age of Spiritual Machines, is sure to look great on all tablet computers and may end being one of the best ways to present enhanced e-Books, since Blio can also be used on desktop computers, laptops/netbooks, and mobile devices like the iPhone. Keep your eye on this. It's poised to get a tremendous amount of attention by consumers and the academic community.

I could go on and on and will be revisiting this topic, but in summing up:

1. Publishers need to make sure "straight" (aka vanilla) text e-Book files are properly formatted for ALL e-readers.
2. With great "vanilla" e-Books we can then begin to explore pushing the boundaries of E-Ink devices.
3. Leave the bells & whistles like video, audio, graphics, etc., for Apps and channels like Blio and Zinio.

What do you think?

P.S. - There's another great industry conference that took place this past January called Digital Book World, and if you haven't heard of it, then I recommend you check it out. Much of the above was covered there as well, plus I had the pleasure of being a guest panelist to discuss the ins and outs of online marketing.