By Shelly Brisbin

February 16, 2022 3:43 PM PT

How (and why) I publish a book every summer

Each year when Apple’s WWDC wraps up, I find myself doing what a lot of app developers do: planning my response to the upcoming version of iOS. But my summers aren’t consumed by Xcode or SwiftUI. My annual contribution to the Apple economy is a book called iOS Access for All: Your Comprehensive Guide to Accessibility for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. You think that title’s long? The iOS 15 edition weighs in at 215,000 words, 11 chapters, and four appendices—all written, assembled and sold by me.

Realizing I’d just published the book’s ninth edition got me thinking about how this all happened, and the extent to which I’ve managed to streamline many parts of the publishing process, while hopefully living up to the expectations of a group of readers who don’t get much attention from other iOS books and overviews.

Beginnings

Before I focused on iOS or accessibility, I wrote books about the Mac, web development, and wireless networking. I worked with book publishers whose end products were heavy, paper volumes you could find on a bookstore shelf. Even in 2012, when I first had an idea for a book about accessibility on Apple platforms, I knew the publishing model I had worked under for 10 years or so had changed dramatically. Who needs Mac Answers when you have Google?

I learned soon after iOS became accessible in 2009 that good search craft can’t find what isn’t online. Lots of knowledge about how to use Apple’s accessibility tools was ephemeral. And what was available quickly went out of date with no one having the incentives or a mandate to fix it.

I decided there should be a book about iOS accessibility, written by an experienced tech author. So, as you do, I pitched some publishers. But despite my track record and an opportunity to own a corner of the market, the answer was no. These publishers didn’t think they could sell enough copies of a book focused solely on accessibility.

It’s possible they were entirely right. But as I started embedding myself into the accessibility community, I became aware that publishers really didn’t know who might want the book I planned to write, or how to sell it to them. At least I had the advantage of being a daily user of some of what I planned to write about. I learned a lot by listening – over coffee and on Twitter – to people who make and use accessible tech every day. They reinforced in me the need to make the book, even if I couldn’t yet prove a market existed.

Self-publishing

The other thing you need to know about my plan to publish a book on my own is that I was on a budget. I would need to spend as little money as possible while still doing a professional job. I was a freelancer planning to devote months of full-time work to this endeavor. And I knew I would need to pay for things like a cover design and a copy editor. I also gave myself a travel budget, but not one for software.

At the last couple of Macworld Expos, I sat in on ebook publishing sessions, where I learned the gospel of ePub as a flexible online format that Apple was already using in what was then the iBooks Store. And from accessibility experts, I learned that it was an important part of special-purpose devices that turn text into audio for blind users.

Coming into the 2013 iOS release cycle, I had a topic, a format and publishing strategy, and a foothold in a community I would need to sell the book.

Maximum Accessibility

A major advantage of ebooks over paper ones is that they’re accessible on devices, where screen readers and text visibility options break down the barriers between readers and content. And you’ll find free ePub readers on all platforms.

As a book builder, ePub turned out to be a great choice, There are lots ways you can build a good-looking ePub. Structurally, an ePub is just a bunch of XHTML files, images, CSS, and a manifest, all zipped together.

A brief flirtation with Pages taught me that using an app that was easy to write in would not yield the book I wanted. (Pages support for ePub improved considerably once Apple discontinued iBooks Author, but it’s still not beefy enough for my needs.) Nor did I choose the popular Scrivener, or the expensive inDesign, both of which will export fine ePubs, and in which many of my writer friends have boundless faith. Ditto Calibre and Sigil, which at least appealed to my desire to think of the book as a giant ball of text.

The way I published the iOS 7 version of the book and the way I do it today are remarkably similar. I work in BBEdit on the Mac, and Textastic on the iPad, then I run ancient AppleScripts that verify the book against the ePub specification, and finally put the files together as a book. Building my book this way is a little like compiling a program. A big part of the editing process is debugging it.

Learning to Ask for the Sale

To promote the book, I became a regular at accessibility tech conferences, bought party sponsorships and tables on trade show floors (these were less costly than they might sound). I even had gimmicks, like business cards with QR code stickers on the back that were easy to scan, even if you couldn’t see them.

I used Twitter extensively, and embarked on a podcast book tour – going on any show that would have me to hawk the book. And you know what? People did have me on their shows – there seemed to be real enthusiasm for what I had made.

Acquired Wisdom

Every couple of years I re-examine my publishing process. I’ve made refinements, like adding shortcuts that help me frame and size screenshots. And because there’s demand for a PDF version, I now build an accessible one based on a Microsoft Word template.

At this point, iOS and the book itself are mature propositions. Like the rest of the software, the accessibility tools in iOS have gained incremental updates each year, but the fundamentals remain, meaning not everyone needs either a new phone or a new book each year.

But people do keep buying it and telling me how valuable it has been to them. So chances are pretty good there will be a tenth edition sometime late this fall.

[Shelly Brisbin is a radio producer and author of the book iOS Access for All. She's the host of Lions, Towers & Shields, a podcast about classic movies, on The Incomparable network.]

By Dan Moren

February 9, 2022 2:14 PM PT

Audient EVO 4: Double the… fun?

Writing about podcasting! Is that all that I do?

Well, technically sometimes I also podcast. Which feeds the writing about podcasting. Really, it’s a vicious cycle.

For more than a decade, I’ve been happily using a Blue Yeti for all of my podcasting needs. While it has its detractors, it’s been a good fit for me: a USB mic that sounds good with my voice, and is simple to connect to my Mac. It’s not the most portable mic (for that I have an Audio Technica ATR2100), but as the anchor of my at-home studio, that wasn’t a real concern.

However, I recently ran into a scenario for which the Yeti has not been ideal. To wit, A Complicated Profession, my Star Wars recap podcast over at The Incomparable. For our coverage of The Book of Boba Fett, I’ve been joined not only by my frequent podcasting collaborator Tony Sindelar, but also my wife Kat.

And therein lies the rub. Though I had two USB mics, the Yeti and the ATR, allowing us to both record at the same time, I lacked fine grain control over those mic setups. The biggest impediment was that in order for both of us to hear Tony over Zoom, I had to setup a virtual interface with Rogue Amoeba’s Loopback, but such a setup also made it more difficult for Kat and I to hear each other. Add in that the ATR is a very directional mic, and it was difficult for me to tell when it might not be set up correctly.¹

Time, then, for an equipment upgrade. After consulting with Jason, I ordered an Audient EVO 4, a small USB audio interface that boasts two XLR inputs for connecting external mics. Since the ATR2100 has both a USB connection as well as an XLR jack, I already had one mic that would work with it.

To supplement it, I picked up a Pyle PDMIC58, as recommended by Marco Arment: it’s an affordable dynamic mic that runs about $20 and sounds pretty good, although I do find that I have to get pretty close to it to be audible, even with the gain up. I added a cheap windscreen and a $15 shock mount and swapped it onto my boom arm in place of my Yeti.

The result was a pretty simple little setup that not only allowed me to easily grab audio from both mics, but let us (via a good old-fashioned headphone splitter) easily hear each other through our monitors, as well as Tony via the computer.

While I don’t intend for this to be a full review of the EVO 4, I do have some thoughts I want to share about the interface now that I’ve used it for a few weeks.

First, the good: it’s an incredibly compact box that can support a combination of XLR and line level input, and features a single multifunction dial on the top that can be used to control volume levels, gain levels for each mic, and the mix levels between your monitor and computer audio. It also uses USB-C, can link both inputs for stereo audio, and supports phantom power for mics that need it. At $129, it’s also pretty affordable, though you can find other two-input audio interfaces for around the same price. And one nice touch that I haven’t seen on many other audio interfaces: pressing and holding an input selector mutes that input; pressing and holding on the volume selector mutes all inputs.

(There are also a few features like Smart Gain, audio loop-back, and speaker outputs that I haven’t really played with.)

All of that’s pretty good, but it has a few downsides. First, though I like the multifunction control, the EVO 4 uses LEDs arrayed around the knob to indicate gain, volume levels, and the current pan of your mix. With the device on my desktop, it can be tricky to read those LEDs, and also tough at times to tell when input might be clipping. (It does seem, from what I can tell, that the buttons for the audio inputs flash red when clipping occurs, but it’s not always as obvious as on a traditional meter.) I also wish that it didn’t require a 1/4-inch headphone adapter, but as that’s a professional standard, it’s neither here nor there.

The construction of the EVO 4 is only fine: it’s all plastic on the outside, which can make it feel a bit flimsy, compared to other audio interfaces. (But that also means it’s a bit less hefty.)

The biggest issue I’ve run into with the EVO 4, however, is sound. Which is definitely a bit of a problem, given that it’s an audio interface. For one thing, it’s not very well shielded: having my phone closer than about two feet causes some pops and clicks to make their way through unless I put it in airplane mode.

Secondly, I’ve been noticing a little click at the end of people speaking: I’ve tested and it’s audible over both my headphones and a pair of monitors I have on the desk, but not on the recording track itself, which leads me to believe it’s connected to the interface’s output. That’s been annoying, and I’ve been trying to work with Audient’s support to track it down, though their response time has been…not exactly reliable. It’s possible this unit itself is a dud, which might mean returning it and switching to a different interface or back to my Yeti until it comes time to record another podcast with two people in the same room.

While I am a professional podcaster, I’m not an audio engineer, so some of this stuff is, frankly, a little bit above my pay grade. I’m intrigued in what breaking out my setup to include an audio interface can offer in terms of flexibility and power, but I do miss some of the simplicity of a mic that plugs straight into my computer. And I have to admit, that I have still cast an envious look at the Shure MV7 to replace my Yeti, since it too has both the USB and XLR interfaces. But I’ve probably spent enough on new audio equipment for one year already.

Probably.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]