Living Publishing

I began publishing e-books in 2017.

Over the past eight years, I have written and published a historical novel trilogy, One Hundred Years of Sinking, and three volumes of the travel series, Our Journey. I have also written two reference guides for publishing e-books and two free e-books, for a total of fourteen e-books exceeding 1.5 million words, and over thousand pictures, along with two free audiobooks. In addition to releasing new titles, I have continually maintained and updated all of my books.

All of the work—writing, editing, proofreading, translation, cover design and production, image processing, e-book output, uploading to major platforms for sale, and subsequent revisions and updates—is completed entirely on an iPad. It is truly one person, one device: full-stack publishing.

Through this workflow, freedom takes form—freedom of thought, creation, and publication. Yet—ultimate freedom—the sustained expression of thought, with the constant possibility of revision—is also realized.

At the beginning, I wrote, edited, and proofread in Word on the iPad, then uploaded through the iPad’s Safari browser to Amazon and Kobo, which automatically converted the Word document into an e-book. I would download the converted ePub2 from Kobo and upload it to Google, Readmoo, and Pubu—one Word document covering five platforms. Only for Apple did I upload via Pages on the iPad to the Apple Bookstore.

Now my workflow centers on Pages. I write, edit, and proofread in Pages on the iPad, export directly to ePub3, and upload via iPad Safari to Amazon, Apple, Google, and Kobo.

The ePub3 files generated by Apple Pages are refined in both appearance and typography, with a clear logical structure and clean underlying code. They perform excellently across platforms, download and open quickly, and—naturally—display most beautifully in the Apple bookstore.

My books are text-heavy and image-rich, yet they open instantly across platforms. This is partly because the ePub3 files generated by iPad Pages represent a current benchmark in e-book quality. More importantly, from the very first day of producing e-books, I set a single ultimate goal: every book must be editable and updatable at any time, always appearing before readers in a living, evolving state. To achieve this goal, four principles emerged naturally:

First, streamline the workflow. All revisions and adjustments must be made at the source. Whether writing in Word or Pages, modify only within the Word or Pages document; never edit the exported ePub’s book.css stylesheet. The exported ePub is the end product, while Word or Pages is the mold. If you do not modify the production mold but instead alter the finished product, you will face endless terminal files to revise. Every single textual change and every updated edition would require code edits.

Second, simplify formatting. In the Pages document, first define the necessary paragraph styles—headings, body text, captions, poetry, and so on. Every element of text, including spaces and blank lines, must be assigned to these styles. In the end, no part of the book should fall outside the predefined style system. Remove all unused styles; even custom styles should be kept to a minimum. In this way, the exported ePub will contain no cluttered or redundant code. When a reading system parses a book, it must first parse this code; if the code is concise and clean, the book will open instantly across web platforms and reading apps.

Third, optimize images. All images inserted into the book must be cropped and compressed in advance to achieve the smallest possible file size without degrading quality. My books contain a large number of images, all preprocessed. This ensures that even long epic volumes exceeding 200,000 words and containing hundreds of images can be kept between 9MB and 15MB. Such file sizes are easily handled by all reading systems. Each update uploads swiftly—as easy as saving a file—and readers download and open the book in seconds.

Fourth, minimize components. My ePub files embed neither covers nor fonts, further reducing file size. Covers are uploaded directly to each platform, where they are displayed by the platform itself. Fonts are left to the reader’s choice: on different reading devices, readers can freely select their preferred typeface, font size, and line spacing. This is precisely one of the advantages of e-books, and it also avoids two risks: first, embedded fonts may conflict with fonts installed on the reader’s device; second, embedded fonts may not render correctly on certain devices.

Producing e-books in this way is like an assembly line. Once I finish writing, I publish immediately, and update in real-time. With my iPad in hand, anytime and anywhere, I can write, publish, list, distribute, update, track sales, and receive payments in one continuous process—without crossing platforms, devices, or software. Publishing and continuous maintenance are effortless.

Readers always see the latest version on the web. In reading apps, a simple tap on Update downloads the newest release—just like a software update on a device—so the book in hand continually improves. Those who prefer not to update may keep their current version in the app and consult the web edition for what is new.

Disclaimer: 

Living Publishing is a sovereign, single-device, full-stack publishing architecture in which an independent creator manages the entire process—from writing and production to global distribution—while treating the work like software—iterating continuously and keeping it alive.
It is NOT to be confused with institutional “Dynamic Publishing,” multi-channel distribution, collaborative editing systems, or layout-production technologies, and does not rely on multi-author or organizational workflows.
The core principle, concept, and methodology of Living Publishing constitute an original intellectual framework proposed by the author, H.L. Phoenix, and has been successfully practiced for eight years. It remains entirely independent of any third-party organizations or agencies.