I’m pleased to announce individual chapters of ‘Mapping Media to the Common Core: Volume I” are available as separate eBooks for $2.99 each on Amazon.com. I’ve updated the book/eBook descriptions on the “About” page of the Mapping Media website. Whether you are a current teacher, a pre-service teacher, or an instructor/professor teaching educational technology courses, the availability of these chapters as individual eBooks will hopefully offer you (and possibly your students) affordable flexibility in accessing these e-texts. The combined “Volume I” book, including all six chapters, remains available in eBook and print versions as well.
As you may notice from the individual eBook covers above, I have also officially renamed the Mapping Media Framework to “Mapping Media to the Curriculum: show what you know with media.” There are several reasons for this change. Ever since I started working on this book series, I debated the value of specifically including “Common Core State Standards” in the title. While I know that specific title and focus has opened the door for the book to be used by several different university course instructors and professional development workshop leaders, I also understand it has limited the perceived relevancy of the texts and framework for international educators as well as teachers at private U.S. schools who have not (and will not) adopt Common Core. The repeal of Common Core in my home state of Oklahoma in the summer of 2014 was a dramatic example of how politicized this “standards movement” has become. From the beginning, I wanted to create a digital literacy framework and resource for student digital portfolios which would transcend changes in both technology tools as well as educational / political fads. The “Volume I” book and eBook of this series will retain the title “Mapping Media to the Common Core” for the time being, but I will be revising it as well in upcoming weeks.
In addition to updating the book/eBook descriptions on the “About” page of Mapping Media, I have also added sidebar graphical links to the respective eBook chapters on the Interactive Writing, Narrated Art, Radio Shows, 5 Photo Stories, Visual Notetaking, and Narrated Slideshows / Screencasts pages of the Mapping Media website. I did this using the free “Dynamic Widgets” WordPress plugin. It allows specific widgets to only display on specified pages or posts within WordPress. I also added links to the eBook chapter versions in the sidebar of this website, using the free Datafeedr Ads WordPress plugin.
If you use any of the Mapping Media books / eBooks or the public website in courses or professional development workshops you lead, please let me know via a shout-out on Twitter! This past summer I’d intended to write and publish “Volume 2” of Mapping Media, but ended up just writing an introductory chapter on digital portfolios (which I published freely/openly as a resource page) as well as the chapter on “Quick Edit Videos.” I have not published that chapter yet, and still need to / plan to write the rest of the five chapters which round out the 12 products in the Mapping Media Framework. I’m going to attempt to write the chapters on “eBooks” and “Simulations & Games” over the winter holidays this year. I’ll publish them also as separate eBooks, as well as a combined “Volume 2” of Mapping Media. I haven’t decided yet on pricing, but will likely stick with $2.99 for individual chapters and $9.99 for the combined volume. Amazon REALLY wants authors to offer eBooks at a maximum of $9.99 each, and uses financial incentives on Kindle Direct Publishing for that price point. I will likely acquiesce.
In addition to the changes to Mapping Media I’ve already mentioned in this post, I have also decided to discontinue bulk ordering rebates / discounts for my books and eBooks. I worked with several groups and instructors in the past couple of years who took advantage of those discounts, but the time and effort required in facilitating this didn’t end up being justified financially. The prices of my eBooks are very reasonable and affordable relative to other authors and publishers, so I’m opting out of discounts at this point.
I still could add my eBook chapter “singles” to the online storefront I maintain and pay for ($18 per month, I think) with e-Junkie.com, but I’m not sure if I will or not. When I published “Playing with Media” in 2011 that e-Junkie store was the primary outlet for the multimedia version of the eBook, since I could not get Apple to approve it for sale on the iBookstore, but I now have relatively few sales on that site and probably not enough to justify the monthly expense. This is something I’ll evaluate in more detail in advance of the “Write Well, Sell Well” Writer’s Conference in Oklahoma City in 2 weeks, where I’ll be presenting several sessions on e-publishing. I hope to finally update and re-publish “HopScotch Challenges” before the conference, since there have been major updates to the HopScotch for iPad app in the past year and I’ll be teaching a WWSW conference workshop about publishing eBooks using the Creative Book Builder app. I used CBB to write and publish the “HopScotch Challenges” eBook. I also plan to FINALLY update “Playing with Media: simple ideas for powerful sharing,” but will do that after I write the remaining chapters / volumes in “Mapping Media.” Applying the advice and wisdom of Greg McKeown’s fantastic book, “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less,” I’m working to “prune” commitments and activities in my life so I can focus more on writing and making my “maximum contribution” professionally in several areas related to multimedia, social media, and digital storytelling.
If you have any questions or would like further details about anything I’ve outlined in this post, please let me know with a comment or tweet.
Having the freedom, from an intellectual property standpoint, to make the changes I’ve outlined in this post to my books and writing projects is something I value highly. I do not regret my decision to self-publish, and do not expect to publish any of my future books with a “traditional” publisher. Being a self-published author continues to be both an illuminating and challenging experience, and I hope by sharing my learning journey with others to encourage even more people to pursue this publishing path.
For more resources and links relating to ePublishing and eBook writing, check out my handouts wiki page for “Creating MultiMedia eBooks,” which I continue to share at various conferences and events and update with new resources.
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