Are there any plans to eventually release it as an ebook by they way?
I'm actually thinking about it. Once I have everything consistently formatted, I can convert it to a number of formats. Obviously, I think the most prominent one is PDF, which is ideal for reading on the computer, or for printing. However, for reading on eBook platforms, I'll have to also convert it to something supported by eBook platforms, and it's really easy to convert between the different eBook formats. The most common format is EPUB, and then Kindle's AZW and KF8. A bunch of tools are listed here:
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Book_authoring_softwarePerhaps a two-pronged strategy could work here? One where COUNCIL OF EX-MUSLIMS OF BRITAIN is being promoted all over the place, and another where the relation to the Ex-Muslim community is toned down - e.g. on ebook-platforms?
There's many publishing houses that permit publishing of independent eBooks. From my understanding, this will be released for free, and that means we might be even able to get it on Amazon's free book section
http://www.amazon.com/b?node=2245146011 . Of course, we could always drop a copy on
https://archive.org/ which actually has a really good platform for dealing with eBooks.
Also there is an intention to publish a re-formatted Arabic version as far as I recall?
I found a .doc (see
http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=10047.msg790319#msg790319) version of the Arabic with the editable Arabic text. I'm thinking of taking that and giving the same treatment that the English version went through, so we'll have a clean and readable version of the Arabic text. The only thing we need to be wary of, is that the text was on a Christian missionary site, and for some reason, they have the text marked with their copyright on it. No idea why, I doubt they got permission from the author to do that, so I think we should be safe to copy from it anyways. I mean like, it really looks like some fancy OCR was used here, and they don't have the original.
We could either just leave the Arabic version untouched, use the Arabic text, or use the Arabic text and get permission from the missionary website to have the copyright waived for us.
Finally, I'm not sure if anyone wants to claim their own copyright on this, or just have it under the public domain. Do we just leave with authors/translators names, or have it under some sort 'organization'? Doesn't have to be the CEMB.
Let me know what you all think about this, thanks!