Current Work

A lot has been going on since I last wrote a post. Back in April I drafted six books: two poetry collections, three novels, and a memoir. So far I have finished the three novels and abandoned the memoir. I would have to rewrite because it’s not just up to par for me. I still have to work on the poetry collections, which is 200 poems. They need to be edited and arranged before I can put them ebook format. Oh, and I need to design covers for both of them…

After I catch up on these two books, I need to write up rough outlines for three more books. I just want to be ready for the July CampNaNoWriMo with several books to choose from while I draft myself into insanity and exhaustion.

Ebooks and Traditional Publishers

I recently read Daniel Handler’s The Unauthorized Autobiography of Lemony Snicket as an ebook. I enjoyed the reading as I usually do. I don’t even hold it against him that he works with traditional publishers.

But I was disappointed how the ebook was put together. It wasn’t an epub file, so I couldn’t adjust the font size. The font size was a little bit small to read on my iPad mini. The file itself was 47 megabytes. Much too large for an ebook. I couldn’t even tell how long the book was until I got to the end. I’ve read other ebooks from Alice Hoffman, who also works with traditional publishers, and the title pages are actually images and not text files.

I’m shocked that the traditional publishers don’t understand ebooks. They would tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I do. I put an ebook together which contained lots of images and text. I build epub files using xhtml and yes, it’s been possible to put images and text together in ebooks for quite a long time. I think it’s easier to put them together using xhtml to keep the images from floating all over the text. Cat Tales of the Frisky9 Scarf Army has more images than any other ebook I’ve put together so far. It is an epub file and it’s 19.6 megabytes. Yes, it’s still a large file, but if I did what the traditional publishers do, it would have been a much larger file.

After seeing ebooks from traditional publishers, I must draw the conclusion that they don’t even care how to do ebooks well. I’m self published and I learned on my own. Unfortunately, I live in a society in which these skills are overlooked and taken for granted. My skills are devalued, but I know how important they can be. The ebooks files do need to be small even with images or else the books may not load on people’s devices.

Back to Amazon?

First of all, I have caught up on all of my books that needed to be edited. They are fully released and available as ebooks from just about any online store now. I also made some more progress on the magazine conversion. I have volumes 7-13 done for The Moon and the second half of volume 6 done so far.

Yesterday, I uploaded 27 of 28 books I have available to Amazon. My free promo book, The Strange & Unusual Universe of Silver Moon Unicorn, I left out because that is a free book. Amazon is somewhat difficult to deal with directly because they aren’t always clear about hidden fees and what they expect from us as far as formatting ebooks or even printed books. I’m not sure why that is. I just wish they had a bulk uploader so I wouldn’t have to deal with them at all.

The only reason I did this now is because I was hoping to increase my royalties. However, I prefer just to use Smashwords because they are clear cut as to what they expect for ebook formatting and everything else related to having an account with them. Also, once an ebook in enrolled in their premium catalog, it gets shipped to other retailers. They don’t always ship to Amazon because Amazon is the only retailer who doesn’t have a bulk uploader.

So, I will try Amazon for now, but there might be problems later on. I will let everyone know if there are problems and what I’ll do about them.

And moving on… I will of course participate in the April Camp NaNoWriMo this year. I will draft at least 2 novels and at least 50,000 words. I may do more depending upon how much time I have. I will be working another job, so that will cut into my writing.

That’s all for now.

More Books and More Books…

I just updated 12 of my book covers and uploaded them. I also created 4 new book covers for the 4 novels that I need to edit and put into ebook form. I feel relieved that I’ve gotten this far on my work.

But I still need to update the images for The Moon magazine and clean up the code in the ebook versions that I’ve done so far. Then I will have to upload those files to Smashwords. It is a lot of work, but I still seem to have plenty of time to work on that project. That is, after I get a few other things done first.

Cat Tales of the Frisky9 Scarf Army

Cat Tales of the Frisky9 Scarf Army is doing well. So far it has sold 46 copies and raised US$359.55 for Dingo cats in Venice, Italy. I hope it sells more copies. But I think it’s done well so far. It is now in the Smashwords premium catalogue, which means Smashwords is shipping it out to other retailers. I also know this book with a link to Smashwords will also appear on Dingo’s website. With that and all the rave reviews and retweets on Twitter, I’m sure the book will sell more copies before the month is out.

I don’t think I can stop now even if I tried… After those four new novels, I have two in a rough form that I will put into the Guardian Series and I have ideas for a non-fiction book and a poetry book. I need to just finish up the editing before I move on to other projects. But it can be hard at times.

Until next time, I will continue to be busy with work…

Adobe Digital Editions—A Review

I’m not sure how long it’s been since epub files have allowed images in them, but it appears there is one ereader which cannot display them properly beyond certain dimensions. Sadly, this same ereader is reputed to be a testing app for epub files. I don’t think it’s a fair test especially when the mobile version of the this ereader works better than it does on Mac. I used the Kobo app on my iPad because they use Adobe mobile software to make the app work.

This is not to attack Adobe. I don’t have to use their software. And I don’t anymore for the simple fact that they are not keeping up with digital publishing. Perhaps they think it’s better to cater to the big publishers, who are living in the past and don’t even like ebooks. They still believe print is the best format for books. Well, that may or may not be true. It will depend upon who you ask.

Unfortunately, Smashwords, the company I send my ebooks to for distribution, uses Adobe Digital Editions to test epub files. I did once learn how to add some extra code to allow Digital Editions to show the cover images correctly. Smashwords does say the separate cover image I send must match the cover image that is in the epub file. They recommend the dimensions to be 1600 x 2500 pixels. Digital Editions can’t handle that large of an image. I have no idea why. But yet the Adobe mobile version can. That’s not to mention the trouble with the thumbnail images.

thumbnail shot

The book on the left doesn’t have any extra code. The one in the middle comes with Digital Editions. The one on the right has the extra code to accommodate Digital Editions. Note that both the books on the left and right don’t display properly as thumbnails.

And now for the cover images.

extra code to accommodate Digital Editions on Mac

extra code in Kobo app on iPad

extra code to accommodate Digital Editions in Kobo app on iPad