The overall majority of books are currently being made with primarily a printed outcome in mind. To make a digital version of these books, most manuscripts need to be reprocessed , which usually results in customary built e-books. This need for a customized authoring workflow for every electronic version of a book makes it impossible to build e-books in a cost-effective way. In this paper, we propose a novel workflow that incorporates both print and digital book authoring. By charting the currently most widespread workflow Flemish publishers use to author print books and e-books, we are able to identify the most pressing problems. These are the print-first approach, the vendor lock-in situation of the e-reader market, and the high cost of updating and/or maintaining the content of an (e-)book. To overcome the aforementioned problems, we devise a new workflow that follows a digital-first approach using Open Web standards, separating content, structure, and layout. We evaluate the proposed workflow by building a proof-of-concept authoring environment. Using this new workflow, both digital and print books can be built without significant additional costs. The proof of concept is evaluated using an experts group of Flemish publishers, and received general positive reception, with concerns on how to incorporate the proposed workflow into production environments. By not limiting the proof of concept to a fixed data model, it could handle content from more content providers, facilitating further research into the possibilities and future requirements of the EPUB 3 specification.

Nowadays, many people use e-books, having high expectations with respect to their reading experience. In the case of digital storytelling, enhanced e-books can connect story entities and emotions to real-world elements. In this paper, we present the novel concept of a Hybrid Book, a generic Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) artifact that requires seamless collaboration between content and smart devices. To that end, we extract data from a story and broadcast these data in RDF as Linked Data. Smart device services can then receive and process these data in order to execute corresponding actions. By following open standards, a Hybrid Book can also be seen as an interoperable and sustainable IDN artifact. In addition, according to our user-based evaluation, a Hybrid Book makes it possible to provide human sensible feedback while flipping pages, enabling a more enjoyable reading experience. Finally, the participants also showed a positive willingness to pay, thus making it possible to generate more revenue for authors and publishers.

Nowadays, many teachers use e-TextBooks in smart classrooms, having specific expectations regarding e-TextBooks' functionalities. Need-Why you Advanced functionalities of an e-TextBook make it possible to act as an Interactive Learning Environment in smart classrooms that facilitates the teaching process. Task-Why me In this paper, we propose the novel concept of an EPUB 3-based Hybrid e-TextBook, a comprehensive ILE that meets the needs of twenty-first century teachers in smart classrooms. Object-Why document To that end, we map teachers' expectations of e-TextBook with functionalities of e-TextBooks as ILEs. Next we co-design an e-TextBook with teachers. Finally, we develop the EPUB 3-based Hybrid e-TextBook that connects learning content to smart devices in classrooms. We used semantic web techniques (e.g., Hybrid e-TextBook ontology, content annotations) Findings-me The evaluation results reveal that our proposed Hybrid e-TextBook is a comprehensive ILE that provide required teaching tools for teachers in smart classrooms. Conclusion-you Furthermore, the experts' observations together with the rate of students' motivation (81.1%) learning using our e-TextBook show an effective impact on the cognitive and motivational aspects of the desired learning outcomes.