Conversion Experience

So Quest for Employment is being put into iBookstore form.  By hand.  So far I’m going to say I’m finding iBook Author friendly in all the wrong ways, and not exactly helpful.  There’s some slick elements to it, but the hand-holding functions really don’t help.

It’s very odd, but I I suddenly realized just how many formats I have to work with – not on an intellectual level, but a visceral one.

  • First there’s the main doc, which I just do In Libre Office.  I do a few formatting tricks (avoiding bullet points) to make sure it’s very cross-compatible.
  • I bring it over into Jutoh.
  • In Jutoh I configure it for ePub (for Nook) and Mobipocket (for Kindle).
  • I view it in Calibre to make sure it looks OK, and maybe other devices.
  • Since formatting the book often reveals things to fix, once I’ve done these conversions, I get the spacing and organization right for exporting to PDF from Libre office.
  • Now, if I want a print book, then I also have to take a file and format it to have proper page locations, spacing, etc. for a print format.  This is exported as PDF Inevitably I’m going to blow tens of dollars running prints to get that right, or burn my printer out.  Or both.

It’s educational, but it teaches me one thing – I bloody well love being an author.  Otherwise I wouldn’t do this stuff.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

 

On Making eBooks

(Please note I am holding off on my big review of Lulu.com as I have some special distribution options and services pending, and I want to wait until those are done before doing a full, comprehensive review).

After realizing that eBooks meant I could distribute more of my books to people cheaper, after realizing the geek-fan-otaku readers of this blog probably were big on ebooks, I decided it was time to turn Fan To Pro into an eBook.  Looking back I wonder why I waited so long to do it.

Now I've been predicating for the last year that the complexities of eBook markets were going to be confusing for small publishers, indie writers, and the like.  So, let me state it simply – yes, it's confusing.  Sure, I did it, but it wasn't as easy as I'd thought.

Here's what taking my book to an eBook took:

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