Editor’s Toolkit: Successfully Incorporating Links into Your Interactive Ebook

Introduction

Today’s learners have access to more content through a greater variety of media than any previous generation. They are accustomed to a new teaching and learning environment that may incorporate everything from flipped classrooms to distance learning to making video presentations instead of taking tests.

They watch videos on YouTube, listen to TED Talks and podcasts, and may read screens more often than they do traditional print books.

Our interactive ebooks are designed to meet this evolution in learning by including a variety of digital components that can be embedded into your manuscript. An especially useful feature of our interactive ebooks is the ability to add clickable web links to external sources. Our goal is to guide our authors to carefully consider the sources of any linked web content within interactive ebooks to ensure we are sending students to reputable websites that have legally posted content that is unlikely to be taken down for copyright violations or other reasons.

The Advantages of Links

Links to outside content sources are great for:

  • reaching visual and auditory learners
  • incorporating up-to-date content
  • adding variety that keeps students interested and engaged
  • adding content without adding bulk to the book
  • accessing non-print primary sources