Use Cases
To get an idea of how the Booki features change publishing forever, lets look at some use case scenarios.
Book Sprints
I am in an advocacy group working for rights of immigrant workers. We need to create a booklet about workers rights. I read the (free) FLOSS Manuals online manual on Book Sprints and then organise 5 staff to dedicate 3 consecutive days the following week. The first morning we each create an account. I have already created the new book, given it an open license, sent the others the URL, and prepared the Index. We spend 3 hours discussing the chapters and decide who will write what. At lunch on the first day we start writing. We continue to write for the following 2 days. At the end of the last day we output an A5 book formatted PDF of 110 pages and take it to our local printer to make 500 stapled copies. Over the next 2 days peers from other offices log in to improve and build upon our work. We make the book formatted PDF freely available from our website to read or to print for distribution. Each of the other offices print copies locally and distributes them.
Re-contextualising Content
I am a developer that has contributed to several manuals on Free Software. My specialty is Drupal, and I have just finished developing a Drupal based site for an NGO. I want to create a manual for the staff of the NGO so I go to my user page and fork the existing FLOSS Manuals Groups manual on Drupal. I now have a standalone version of the manual on my account, any alterations I do will not be reflected in the original manual unless I merge the changes up stream. I remove several chapters not relevant to their needs, and add 4 new chapters. I mark the new chapters as “Copyright : all rights reserved” and private so they are not reusable or seen by anyone else using the system. I write these chapters with information that is specific to the NGO and replace several existing screen shots in other chapters with screenshots of their website. I export the material to book formatted PDF, upload it to lulu.com print on demand service and buy 2 copies of the perfect bound book for the office of the NGO to use as inhouse training materials. Later another organisation with similar aims and needs for their website calls me for a meeting - I use my version of the Drupal manual, remove the case specific material, upload it, buy it, and bring the book to the meeting.
Translating
I am a volunteer Farsi translator living outside Iran. I want to translate a book on How to Bypass Internet Censorship from the Sesawe Booki Group into Farsi. I fork the existing manual from the Sesawe Group to my user page and add it to the Farsi FLOSS Manuals group. I force a machine translation of the content and mark all chapters “to be translated”. I message others subscribed to the FLOSS Manuals Farsi group that I need some help and with 3 others we translate the material and mark all the chapters “to be proofed” or “requires technical proofing” as we complete them. When we are finished I invite a friend to proof the content for us. She takes 2 weeks, doing it in her spare time. After each chapter is proofed she marks them “complete”. I contact Sesawe and they use the Booki embed api to put the complete manual in their website. Later I output the manual to book formatted PDF (with bi-directional text support and reverse binding), upload to lulu.com, buy it, and use it in my portfolio.
Multiple Formats
I am an educator and have written a text book on digital design using Booki. While writing I kept the book private but invited select users to view the material and leave comments – this was great feedback for me. Now the book is completed and has been picked up by a publisher – I output an .odt file from Booki and open this in OpenOffice.org, save to a .doc format (the publisher does not know about free software) and send to them. I also negotiated a Creative Commons license for the material with the publisher. I release the book on my website using the embed api and invite translations. Within 4 weeks there is a completed Spanish translation which is uploaded to a print on demand service and sold through my website. A Portuguese translation is ready 3 weeks later. After an enthusiastic response to the Portuguese translation in Brazil I output the material to multiple column PDF suitable for printing on large format newsprint. A school district in Sao Paolo finds a local printer, downloads the PDF for free, and produces 1500 copies on newsprint and distributes for free around schools – this costs the same as printing or buying 30 printed books so I feel good and the schools make a huge savings.
Portability
I am invited to facilitate a Book Sprint on farming techniques in a remote area in West Africa. The venue is a farm with no internet connectivity. I know a little about how to install web services so I download and install Booki on my laptop. At the Book Sprint we have 4 laptops connected to the local network version of Booki running on my machine. We write the book in 5 days. We output the book formatted PDF from my laptop, print the book at a local printer and distribute locally as educational materials. Later I upload the sources to the version of Booki running on my own server so others can access and reuse the content as they please.