American Amateur Press Association E-Journals

Beginning in the mid-1990s, several members who published computer-generated journals also made them available on the Web. J. Hill Hamon introduced a new breed of journal when he e-mailed Whippoorwill E-Comment to several friends in January 2004. His journals were not printed for inclusion in the bundle. He found this format allowed greater use of color, particularly for photos. J. Hill coined the term "e-journal" to describe this type of publication.

Some observers believe anything transmitted by the Internet should be included. Others feel anything called a journal should be formatted to look like a journal (have a title and publication date or number). And there's nothing that says an e-journal cannot be printed and sent to the mailer for inclusion in the bundle.

You can visit the AAPA E-Journal Archive to see what AAPA members have done with the format.

E-Publishing Fundamentals

The first steps to producing an e-journal are the same as any other computer-generated paper. Check out the AAPA's Desktop Publishing page for ideas on using a computer to create an amateur journal.

Because e-journal are distributed as files, publishers need to consider what file format to use. It should be something that is freely available to most computer users and allows formatting flexibility. Here are some comments from AAPA member Dave Oehlers:

"More people will be able to read files saved in plaintext (.txt), PDF (.pdf), Word (.doc), and HTML (.htm or .html) than other formats.

"Of these four file types, plaintext will be able to be read by all and plaintext files are small. The negative of plaintext is that it is plain text: letter art, pictures, and other graphical effects are limited to what can be done with text.

"PDF best preserves the appearance and layout of a document platform to platform, but PDF files can be large and reading them requires the Adobe Acrobat plug-in.

Word does a good job preserving a document's appearance platform to platform (although not as good as PDF), but a Word file can be large and reading it requires Microsoft Word or the Microsoft Word plug-in for the Internet Explorer.

"HTML is the lingua franca of the web; html files are relatively small; html can be read by all web browsers; numerous applications (Word, WordPerfect, Publisher, Excel, etc.) can save files in HTML format; finally, HTML can seamlessly incorporate a variety of elements (letter art, graphical effects, images, sound, interviews). The disadvantage of using HTML for AAPA journals are 1) exact appearance and layout are not maintained platform to platform, and 2) a journal saved in HTML is likely to comprise a number of files -- representing the HTML, per se, and a file for each image, sound, or other component embedded in the page -- instead of one file, as one gets when saving in Word format, for example."

Using PDF

Adobe System's Portable Document Format (PDF) is widely used because the free Adobe Acrobat Reader works on most systems. It allows documents created with proprietary software to be published in a format that can be read on almost any computer.

Adobe sells a variety of products to create PDF files, but does not offer one that's free. There are other sources of free or low cost software packages that create PDF files. For example:

Most of these products create PDF files by installing a printer driver. After installation, use "Print" from the document you wish to create, and choose the driver from the list of printers. You will then be prompted with a Save As.. dialog box, and you will need to choose a name for the file. For most free PDF generators, when the file is created an advertisement pops open, asking you to pay for the "professional" version of the software. Check product descriptions before downloading.

These low- (or no-) cost packages may not handle every detail in the same way as Adobe's products, so be aware that using them may introduce incompatibities with the Adobe reader.

Computer Geeks prepared "tech-tips," PDFs on the Cheap in Windows, that contains useful information.

Creating PDF files is built into Macintosh OS X (10.2.x and greater). At the bottom of the Print dialog box, choose the "Save as PDF..." button.

Pitfalls

Here are some pitfalls to avoid when creating your e-journal:
Unusual Fonts
If your document uses a font that is not available on your reader's computer, the system will substitute a different font. Sometimes the substitution is minor; other times it's glaringly wrong. You may be oblivious to this problem because everything will look perfect on the computer that created the document. If you have different systems in your household, view it on all of them. Or view it on a friend's computer before making it generally available. Avoid the problem by using mainstream fonts, such as the ones originally loaded on your system.

Large Files
If you're going to e-mail your e-journal, you should usually keep its size to under one megabyte. Even that size may cause problems for people who have limited e-mail disk allocation, or who rely on slow Internet connections. Often the large size is caused by imported high-definition graphics. You may be able to reduce the size by specifying a lower density; this is particularly true of pictures whose dimensions have been reduced, but are stored at the original pixel density. If you're producing PDF, be sure to check the size of the final file; it may be much larger than the original (e.g. Word) file.

Distribution

You may choose to distribute your e-journal as an e-mail attachment to your own mailing list. Please be sure the people you send it to are able to receive the file format and size. (Ask your potential readers if they want to receive it before sending.) Send yourself a test copy to ensure everything is set up correctly.

The AAPA offers an archive for members' e-journals. E-publishers send their files to Dave Tribby at dtribby@stanfordalumni.org and he will load them into the archive. (It may take days for this to happen).

Once an e-journal is loaded into the archive, you can send readers an announcement that includes a link to the archive file rather than attaching it to an e-mail message.

Go to the AAPA home page.

This page was last modified May 7, 2008

Dave Tribby / dtribby@stanfordalumni.org