Category Archives: ePublishing

Bits and bobs on ePublishing…come with me on the journey of discovery, share the thrills, spills and laughter (oh, how I hope there will be some laughter!) of my journey on the road to self discovery…I mean self-publishing… “eBooks, we don’t need no stinkin’ ebooks!”

ePublishing, Killer Application: Dead or Alive, mE

work avoidance or dedication?

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First off, this is most likely neither and both work avoidance, and dedication.

What do I mean?

Well, this is work avoidance in that although I am only presently commuting to work I should really be studying my ITIL V3 prep coursework.

This is also dedication because it is about writing (mine and in general).

While getting ready for the (lovely) commute to work this ‘brisk’ English morning (meaning quite cold, a bit windy, but dry), I found the time to read Jeanne Veillette Bowerman’s guest blog post on the Writer’s Digest website regarding the benefits to her as a writer of becoming a twitter addict Confessions of a Tweetaholic.

While finding the post insightful and illuminating, two words in particluar jumped out at from the page (or Blackberry screen, to be precise).

What were those two words? “Two Hours”.

Now, on their own these words do not hold much sway over my life. In any other context they may have had little or no impact.

However, as an aspiring self-published author they rang the “oh my god” bell deep in my chest.

Why is that? I hear you ask.

Well, simples, really.

The maximum time I have to write in any given day is about two hours (if I am lucky, am willing to forego sleeping a full night, and don’t mind looking rough the next day).

Jean spent two hours a day on twitter alone, working her way up to several hundred followers.

This is a successful playwright with accolades and shows under her belt, writing full time, tweeting with fellow writers intelligebly and articulately about her passion (two hours a day!).

On the other end of the tweet spectrum is our dear friend 50 cent, with umpty-thousand followers, tweeting requests for groupies to plunder in the local vicinity. (This presuming we have a clue where in the world he is – I see a new Facebook game – Where in the world is 50 cent? With points for how close you can guess he may be. More on that later.)

Where was I? Oh yes, ‘two hours’.

So, although I fully appreciate the need to ‘get yourself out there’ for us aspiring writers, if all I have to give is two hours of writing a day then I am not sure I will be able to invest the ‘right’ amount of time tweeting to build up a sizable twitter following.

Fingers crossed what takes one two hours a day can be done in 15 minutes instead!

Speaking of rewriting (we were, weren’t we?) I did manage to lose a good few hours’ sleep working on rewriting killer application last night.

Whilst tempted to right-off (or is that ‘write-off’?) several of the characters, fundamentally change the story arc and basically rewrite the whole story from a third of the way in, I recognised the exhaustion levels seeping into my writing decisions and held myself to less drastic changes, forcing my typing fingers to make notes where drastic changes may be required and enforcing the existing and new world rules and regulations within the story itself to drive the narrative.

Last night I either completely chickened out of a ‘proper’ rewrite, or I saved the heart and soul of the tale. Only time (and readers!) will tell.

As for twitter, I’ll do what I can and hope for a miracle. Slow burn media not-so-frenzy here we come! 😉

Back to the scintillating ITIL V3 world of study.

Til next time, this is mE

Em

a day in the life, Compilations, ePublishing, Random Thoughts

junk jettisoned, ebooks printed…and all’s well

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This is just a quickie…I know, I know, usually it takes a good couple of dates, some wining and dining, a few smiles, a hug, a kiss a cuddle…and then onto the final frontier…space…or at least what’s left of it aside from the junk we jettison out there as the ultimate chav planet in the galaxy…but more on that later.

(No, more on that now! Are those in charge of disposing of earth’s rubbish the same senseless oiks who dump old refrigerators in front of their homes on the off chance someone else wants it, or maybe the neighbours will get fed up enough – as I sometimes do – and clear it to the dump themselves? Seriously! If I was an alien race hell-bent on world domination, or just a friendly neighborhood alien race looking to drop in on the newbies and see how they are settling in, whether the kids have found school to be tough, or even just to borrow a few million gallons of oil, and I saw the rubbish floating around our planet by way of dead satellites, space waste, jettisoned rubbish and general debris that we humans have surrounded our planet with…well, I would think twice about visiting. Do you regularly go meet and greet neighbours who have old kitchen sinks dumped in their front gardens? Think about it! We could be missing out on the evolutionary-jump of a sentient race which thinks we are the chavs of the Milky Way…and we’ll never know…and now back to our regular broadcast…)

What was I on about? Oh, yes, I’ve published three compilations of, well, stuff from this blog as ebooks on Amazon – just search for ‘Emerson Freedman’ on amazon, or type in ‘Poemetics’…or even just click on one of the three links to those books on Amazon on the rigth hand side here…no not there…over to the…yeah…to the…to the right…your other right…yeah, there, the ‘Poemetics’, ‘A Day in the Life’ and ‘Storytology’ links. Yup. Those. No, you can’t download them for free. They cost a whole £0.71. Not cause I’m greedy. Cause Amazon don’t do free ebooks. Go figure. Cheapest I could make them….no really…it was….whatever.

So, go on, have a look, download them, let me know what you think. Share them with a friend. This is the first foray into epublishing for me…the first ‘real’ epublishing books I created…by way of Word to Plain Text to Jutoh to Amazon…cool stuff, eh?

Let me know what you think. Feedback is always appreciated. Even if it is not precisely what I want to hear. (The truth is not always pretty, I know. But if you’re going to be honest, go easy…I am more fragile than I look!)

Til next time, bon nuit,

Em (mE)

ePublishing, Killer Application: Dead or Alive, Writing

the rewrite thang

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Some say that the first draft is the beginning of the story. That all we need to do is get the story down in the first draft, beginning to end. Then we can start rewriting it for the second draft. We can clean up the prose, cut down on the fluff, align the story, pull the threads closer and knit ourselves a mean novel.

From recent experience rewriting Killer Application I am not so sure that the first draft of a novel is, as I originally thought, actually a first draft. In my estimation the first draft is more like the clay a potter makes before making the pottery. Or even the dough the baker beats for hours or days before baking the bread.

The first draft, although lovely in its completeness, is just that, the lump of unmolded clay or unbaked bread. All of the ingredients for a good story are there in pretty much the right form and consistency, with all of the possibilities that a wide-open horizon can give.

Only now do I realise that the rewriting, that which defines an author (as I have been told / read many times over), is where we really begin to hone our craft, to shape the dough into something special, something unique, something extremely personal.

Here is where we get to put our own touches in. Like my grandmother baking the boiled egg smack dab in the middle of her meatloaf (oh for a slice of that meatloaf now, so succulent and crumbly all at the same time!), a good author can work in their sense of humour, personal preferences, world view, perspectives, thoughts and feelings into the story without letting it take over.

All the while this weaving is happening (apologies for the inter-changeable metaphors – rewriting really is like a cross between pottery, baking, knitting, weaving and eating egg-centred meatloaf all at the same time, seriously!) the story itself is given new life. Characters that were stretched too thin are removed or fleshed out, killed or fattened (only to be killed off later or even reborn, depending on the angle of the story and where the rewriting takes us).

In truth, I find the rewriting almost more exciting than the original writing. Okay, that is not entirely true. This is a different kind of excitement for I am watching the story mature and grow under my own hands. I get to watch the characters delve into themselves and pull out wonders of unique personality with which I can help them along, or change the story itself. Anything is possible right now.

I am excited by the process of writing. I can see why Philip K Dick used to get depressed after finishing a novel. (Not that I am comparing my writing to Philip K Dick, just the sense of accomplishment at each stage of the writing, and the subsequent emotional endorphins triggered by that feeling of ongoing success and creation.) It makes perfect sense.

I managed to keep myself away from my ebook publishing games this evening, mostly because I wanted to get some good writing time in before going to bed (not too late this time!).

That’s it from me, for now.

Til next time, enjoy life,

Em (mE)

ePublishing, Poems

ePublishing; pain + persistence = perseverance… Does it = published?

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Ok, so now I’ve finally finished a working ePub draft of the first full poetry anthology entitled “Poemetics: Suspiciously Cute, Ode to a Total Stranger”.

Yes, that was the name of a previous shorter ‘volume’ of poetry.

I have ‘unpublished’ that volume (and the others) and combined them all into a single volume, plus a few more poems I had left out of the original 3 volumes.

Altogether this comes to 30-something poems. This anthology will soon be available on both Amazon & Smashwords – I am trialling and erroring my way to the ‘right’ way to ePublishing in a slow elephantine manner. We will get there in the end!

I promised an update on my ePublishing experience, so here it is:

First off, Jutoh works on a Mac. (That’s all I know about the Mac side, seeing as I do not have one to hand to test further – I just know it does work.)

On my laptop (PC / Windows-based) Jutoh ‘feels’ like Microsoft Word, with a lot of the similar commands for selecting text, simple formatting (bold, italic) for easy formatting and editing.

As a first point, I would advise creating ‘Chapter’ or ‘Part’ demarcations, even for something like poetry, as the ‘import’ function (when creating a ‘new project’ in Jutoh) creates a separate ‘Document’ within your ebook for each titled segment.

This is useful as it means that your ebook is broken up logically into bite-size chunks instead of being one long text file.

It also allows Jutoh to automatically generate your ebook table of contents – each document is treated like a different web page within that ebook, allowing for easy browsing and ‘jumping to’ desired sections for your readers.

They can also ‘bookmark’ pages for returning to and re-reading later (assuming their ereader supports bookmarking).

This splitting of the main sections of the ebook up automatically along with creating an automatic table of contents based on those ebook sections is a great improvement over the Smashwords interface.

In Smashwords you are forced to create bookmarks for each section of your document, manually create a list for your table of contents, then highlight each part of your table of contents and ‘hyperlink’ to the relevant ‘bookmark’ section. This is a seriously labour intensive piece of work for any document over ten sections.

The additional benefit of Jutoh ebook formatting over Smashwords is the splitting into separate sections for each segment (Chapter or Poem) as part of the import – Smashwords creates a single long text file which is unwieldy and relatively unattractive in ereader format.

There are also additional benefits of Jutoh over Smashwords in that Jutoh allows you to modify the layout, pages, document, paste in graphics, links, formatting or whatever else you like, as well as choose what outputs you wish to ‘compile’ your ebook to, including specifying the settings you would like to default to for that type of output (targetting Mobipocket-friendly styling, for example).

If needed (such as for my Poetry book) after importing into Jutoh you can go into the document pages in your new ebook and delete the ‘Chapter’ or ‘Part’ text from the titles, select text, format, insert graphics and play til your heart’s content.

To see what the end result ebook looks like (once you have ‘compiled’ and ‘tested’ your newly created ebook), you can download and install Calibre’s free ebook viewer (for both PC’s and Macs).

When you then select ‘Launch’ for your ebook within Jutoh (once the correct format, i.e. ‘epub’, has been ‘compiled’ and ‘tested’) Calibre will automatically launch and import the book into its library. (I presume this standard functionality and that Jutoh will target the ‘launch’ function at whatever ebook reader you may have installed. I may test this further later with Mobi readers.)

You can then review the output in epub format in an ereader to see whether you need to go back and modify anything prior to publication.

Once you’ve formatted your ebook to your heart’s content you can setup a free account on kdp.amazon.com (Amazon’s own Kindle Direct Publishing self-publishing service), ‘add a new title’ and follow the guidelines to publish your epub book.

I used to believe I would have to use the publishing company I setup to buy ISBN numbers to allow my ebook to be published online, however I think there is a way around this.

ISBN numbers are useful for allowing all major distributors to ‘order’ your book. However if you self-publish your book on each of the major online bookstýores (i.e. Amazon Kindle, Apple iBookstore, Barnes and Noble Nook and Pubit – forgive me if I have missed any off this list – I am only just beginning my self-publishing journey), unless you desire to have your ebook searchable by ISBN number there will be very few missed sales in my estimation.

(Let’s be honest, how many people do you know to go online and type in an ISBN number to find a book they want, instead of searching on the title, author or genre? This will be a small minority who would also search by title, author or genre if the ISBN search came up blank.)

I followed the above process using precisely the tools I mentioned above (Word to Plain Text to Jutoh to Calibre…and onto Amazon Kindle for starters) to self-publish my compilation of poetry entitled ‘Poemetics – Suspiciously Cute, Ode to a Total Stranger’.

Please have a look and let me know what you think!

Please Note – I have only just uploaded ‘Poemetics’ to Amazon – it can take up to 24 hours to be ‘vetted’ before being available on Amazon’s website.

Therefore if you are unable to find it the first time you check, please have another go tomorrow.

Your feedback will be much appreciated!

Until next time, keep writing, keep publishing, never surrender.

mE (Em)

ePublishing

ePub from MS Word – easy as 1-2-3, doh-ray-me…

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Hello all out there in blog post reading land.

This is just a quick blurb to let you know that, if you write your poetry, short stories, novels, screenplays or whatever it is you churn out, in Microsoft Word on a PC, you are not beholden to contact a charging “ePub creator” to turn your finished piece of writing into an ereader-friendly ebook.

The makers of the free ‘eCub’ conversion software, which takes plain text, HTML and other formatted documents, have created a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) conversion package called ‘Jutoh’. And at £24 it is a snip.

Getting down to brass tacks, the basic functionality of this software means that we neanderthal Word writers can simply ‘save as’ our novels in ‘plain text’ format, ensuring we choose ‘UTF-8’ encoding (I do not know what ‘UTF-8’ means – it is probably something like ‘Universal Text Format version 8’).

Then download and install the trial version of Jutoh from www.jutoh.com. (You do not have to buy it to create a trial eBook, although the trial puts ‘Created with Jutoh’ at the top of every chapter, obviously this is not the case with the full version.)

Next, open a new project in Jutoh, import your plain text file and cover art.

Then ‘convert’ to ePub or any other format you wish.

You can then change font, graphics, whatever.

It works – I created a version of a Word-based novel entitled ‘Scream’, which I wrote when I was 18, in 5 mins.

Jutoh also plugs into ‘Kindlegen’, Kindle’s own Kindle-friendly ebook generator.In other words, this is the one-stop-shop we need to publish to ebook format.

I have not tried this on a Mac – I have a mate who is trialling this on a Mac to see if it works (Jutoh should do as it is Linux friendly).

Yes, I know if I was willing to go out and pay double the price for a Mac as I did for my PC laptop, and if I were willing to convert (with difficulty) all of my many books, short stories and the rest to Apple’s own ‘Pages’ software, and if I was willing to retrain myself in using ‘Pages’ on a Mac after a lifetime of using Word on a PC, I could publish to ePub format from a Mac.

However I really do not have the money, time or inclination. I might buy a Mac when I have some spare cash. For now I’m a PC and Word type of dude. And for me, and the rest of my PC and Word type dudes and dudettes out there, Jutoh is just the tonic to take the pain out of publishing to eBooks.

Til next time, hang ten, stay safe,

And keep writing!

Peace,

Em (mE)