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Ask your questions! Get answers! Maybe even useful answers!
Ask anything! Ask about ereaders, or filetypes, or conversion methods, or where to find books, or which authors don't like ebooks, or what software works on which computers, or anything else ebook-related. Preferably, put the question, or part of it, in the subject line. That way, the questions will be easy to find, and new readers who show up can see if their question has been asked before.
Feel free to post links to your journal where you've spelled out your questions in detail (or just make a new post here; it's totally fine to make a long post about "thinking about ebook readers; what's the pros & cons of these two?")
Answer questions! If you know about a certain aspect of ebookery, jump in with answers!
http://www.favecrafts.com/index.php/h
They must have close to 50 books. Or more. You will have to wade thru the opportunity to get firebombed with spam email, but the fact that I (shudder) actually signed up for their newsletter to get to the index may protect you. Or not you might have to shovel your own way to get books to learn how to knit and sew and make benches all by your self.
Books on making bracelets, gloves, hats, cookbooks, carpentry, jewelry, leather, and a gazillion links.
They must have close to 50 books. Or more. You will have to wade thru the opportunity to get firebombed with spam email, but the fact that I (shudder) actually signed up for their newsletter to get to the index may protect you. Or not you might have to shovel your own way to get books to learn how to knit and sew and make benches all by your self.
Books on making bracelets, gloves, hats, cookbooks, carpentry, jewelry, leather, and a gazillion links.
The process of getting Files that Last up and selling on KDP was a straightforward and quick one. It gave me some experience with preparing a book with tricky formatting, and some notes on this might be useful to others.
I prefer supporting Smashwords to Amazon; Amazon takes a closed-platform approach and encourages DRM in books. Still, lots of people buy through Amazon and I'm not cutting my nose off to spite my face.
Amazon, unlike Smashwords, lets you preview your converted book before publishing it. This is a wonderful thing, and I went through several rounds of formatting. The first time, I uploaded a Word file and discovered some annoying problems, especially with XML formatting. All the monospaced text had been turned into a proportional font, and everything was right-justified. This meant that if a line of code wrapped, it was stretched out with wide spaces to the right margin.
I figured out that the better plan was to save the book as HTML and tweak the CSS. (A basic understanding of HTML and CSS should be part of any self-published e-book author's skill set.) OpenOffice saves a file with lots of CSS markup, without which the effort would have been impossible.
A few changes to the styles produced much better results. Where there was a font declaration of 'font-family: "Courier-new", monospace', I removed the Courier-new reference. It seems to confuse KDP's conversion software. For all styles that applied to computer code, I added 'text-align:left'. For a really big block of computer code, I used <PRE>.
If I'd started with KDP, I would have done a lot more fiddling with the styles, but I might want to update both the Smashwords and KDP editions in the future, so I didn't want the two versions diverging too much.
In setting the foreign-currency prices, I could have opted for automatic conversion from the dollar prices, but this would have led to prices with odd numbers of cents. I figured they'd look more attractive to the buyer if they were all x.99, so I adjusted most of them even if it meant charging a few cents less.
Amazon got back to me the same day with the news that my book was accepted for online sales.
I prefer supporting Smashwords to Amazon; Amazon takes a closed-platform approach and encourages DRM in books. Still, lots of people buy through Amazon and I'm not cutting my nose off to spite my face.
Amazon, unlike Smashwords, lets you preview your converted book before publishing it. This is a wonderful thing, and I went through several rounds of formatting. The first time, I uploaded a Word file and discovered some annoying problems, especially with XML formatting. All the monospaced text had been turned into a proportional font, and everything was right-justified. This meant that if a line of code wrapped, it was stretched out with wide spaces to the right margin.
I figured out that the better plan was to save the book as HTML and tweak the CSS. (A basic understanding of HTML and CSS should be part of any self-published e-book author's skill set.) OpenOffice saves a file with lots of CSS markup, without which the effort would have been impossible.
A few changes to the styles produced much better results. Where there was a font declaration of 'font-family: "Courier-new", monospace', I removed the Courier-new reference. It seems to confuse KDP's conversion software. For all styles that applied to computer code, I added 'text-align:left'. For a really big block of computer code, I used <PRE>.
If I'd started with KDP, I would have done a lot more fiddling with the styles, but I might want to update both the Smashwords and KDP editions in the future, so I didn't want the two versions diverging too much.
In setting the foreign-currency prices, I could have opted for automatic conversion from the dollar prices, but this would have led to prices with odd numbers of cents. I figured they'd look more attractive to the buyer if they were all x.99, so I adjusted most of them even if it meant charging a few cents less.
Amazon got back to me the same day with the news that my book was accepted for online sales.
For a while now, Smashwords has been saying on its Channel Manager page: "Smashwords and Amazon are working to complete technical integration." This has delayed the appearance of my book on Amazon. Today I got an email from a moderately well-known writer with strong social media connections, who said she'd like to buy my book and possibly recommend it, but its not being on Amazon is an obstacle. I explained how she can get the book for Kindle from Smashwords, but I'm sure a lot of her readers would rather deal with a direct Amazon purchase. It isn't necessarily better, but it's familiar.
Does anyone know anything more about this situation and when it's likely to be resolved?
Does anyone know anything more about this situation and when it's likely to be resolved?
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boundbooks May. 6th, 2013 10:18 pm)
boundbooks May. 6th, 2013 10:18 pm)Just a heads-up for anyone who hasn't heard the news:
Bookson Board: Limited Access - BooksonBoard
Indie eBookstore BooksOnBoard Shuts Down Amid Cries From Publishers of Non-Payment - The Digital Reader
Indie E-Book Retailer Books On Board Halts E-book Sales - Publisher's Weekly
Books On Board Ceased Operations - mobileread
Bookson Board: Limited Access - BooksonBoard
Indie eBookstore BooksOnBoard Shuts Down Amid Cries From Publishers of Non-Payment - The Digital Reader
Indie E-Book Retailer Books On Board Halts E-book Sales - Publisher's Weekly
Books On Board Ceased Operations - mobileread
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Dare we hope other publishers will willingly stop DRM'ing their ebooks?
Tor Books says cutting DRM hasn't hurt sales.
Tor Books says cutting DRM hasn't hurt sales.
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I've got a book ready to upload to Smashwords, and because its formatting is complicated, I've created an EPUB file with Calibre to upload in addition to the Word file. When I upload the EPUB, I get a warning:
File 'META-INF/calibre_bookmarks.txt' in EPUB not listed in manifest!
Your .epub file is missing one or more elements in its manifest. A complete manifest is required for distribution to Apple. Here's how Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB) defines "Manifest":"The manifest element lists all the files contained in the package. Each file is represented by an item element, and has the attributes id, href, media-type. All XHTML (content documents), stylesheets, images or other media, embedded fonts, and the NCX file should be listed here."
I've unzipped the EPUB file, and there's an XML file called content.opf which contains a "manifest" element. It looks as if I should add something there for calibre_bookmarks.txt, but the elements are interrelated, and it's not obvious just what I should do. calibre_bookmarks.txt just contains a regular expression, and maybe it isn't needed. Just deleting it from the Zip file would be easy. Has anyone dealt with this issue before? If I get a quick response, that could help me to decide. If not, I'll try deleting that file from the ZIP and uploading again to see what happens. My announced publication date is Thursday. I did the first upload today because I figured there would be glitches like this. Thanks for any help.
It's Read an E-Book Week March 3-9. Some authors are giving away free or discounted ebooks (mostly free), and several publishers also have deals.
The site also has links to news articles about ebooks, ebook meta, and promo banners.
Now's a great time to post links to free/bargain ebooks you know about, or promo-discounts, or just recs for ebooks you think more people should be reading.
The site also has links to news articles about ebooks, ebook meta, and promo banners.
Now's a great time to post links to free/bargain ebooks you know about, or promo-discounts, or just recs for ebooks you think more people should be reading.
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Dotdotdot is a "digital reading app." The site says it allows you to read e-books and web texts in one reader. I'm curious about how this would work and was wondering if anyone has tried it yet?
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It is my understanding that the Kindle has a built-in app/feature where you can click on a word in a language (e.g. French) and a translation in, say, English will pop up. This sounds awesome. However, I have a Nook Color, and my googlefu is failing me as to whether there is a similar feature/available app that doesn't require rooting and installing the Kindle app.
Does anyone know of something like this?
Does anyone know of something like this?
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I've been asked to donate a copy of my upcoming e-book to a charity auction. I have strong trust in the auction and the person who asked me, but I'm looking into the best way to do it before saying yes. Does anyone have experience with this, with Smashwords or in general?
One thought is that there might be some equivalent to a musician's download card, though I haven't seen such a thing.
One thought is that there might be some equivalent to a musician's download card, though I haven't seen such a thing.
From ![[tumblr.com profile]](http://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
jennirl: do you read ebooks? i have a few quick questions for you. →
This is one of the better-designed ebook surveys I've seen; it allows multiple answers and doesn't divide the ebook world into "Kindle" and "everything else." My only complaint is with the source-of-ebooks question; none of the stated options are DRM-free stores, although there is an "other" with a text box attached.
i keep fiddling with the questions, but as January is already half over (?!) it is time to go ahead and send this out. reposting/demanding all your friends also take the survey is not only appreciated, but encouraged!Survey over here is short and anonymous, and on finishing, you get the links to the roundups of the data from her last surveys. (I expect they're available elsewhere, but I didn't think to keep the tabs open to link later.)
This is one of the better-designed ebook surveys I've seen; it allows multiple answers and doesn't divide the ebook world into "Kindle" and "everything else." My only complaint is with the source-of-ebooks question; none of the stated options are DRM-free stores, although there is an "other" with a text box attached.
Okay, so I had a fabulous Calibre library set up. It was all perfect--all the cover images I liked best, only about 50 tags so I could find everything I needed really easily, etc. But then I realized it was starting to take over my computer! So I moved it to a flashdrive.
When I installed Calibre Portable onto the flashdrive, I moved my previous Calibre library into the new Calibre Portable library instead of picking "Add Books" in Calibre itself. And then I opened Calibre and realized I would still have to use the "Add Books" feature. So I did that and added all the books in my library.
When my library was finished loading, it was like all the changes I'd made to my library were gone. But not only that, there are double the number of books. Half of them aren't actually books--as far as I can tell, they're just the settings I had previously! Is there a way to merge these together? The idea of fixing/deleting 500 books is making me want to cry, lol.
When I installed Calibre Portable onto the flashdrive, I moved my previous Calibre library into the new Calibre Portable library instead of picking "Add Books" in Calibre itself. And then I opened Calibre and realized I would still have to use the "Add Books" feature. So I did that and added all the books in my library.
When my library was finished loading, it was like all the changes I'd made to my library were gone. But not only that, there are double the number of books. Half of them aren't actually books--as far as I can tell, they're just the settings I had previously! Is there a way to merge these together? The idea of fixing/deleting 500 books is making me want to cry, lol.
Thanks to everyone who responded to my earlier post. I've just discovered one trick that helps with Calibre: Don't use the "Preformatted text" style in OpenOffice. Instead, create a style based on "Default" that's just like it. Calibre apparently special-cases the "Preformatted text" style and adds extra line spacing.
Incidentally, the Kickstarter drive for Files that Last is down to its last few hours and just might make it after all. If anyone feels like helping out with it, I'll be extremely grateful.
Incidentally, the Kickstarter drive for Files that Last is down to its last few hours and just might make it after all. If anyone feels like helping out with it, I'll be extremely grateful.
elf just called this community to my attention today, so hello, everyone.I'm working on a book, with the plan of publishing it on Smashwords, called Files that Last. There's a Kickstarter campaign for it, but with time rapidly running out, its chances don't look good. If you want to throw $700 at it, though, I won't object!
Even without the Kickstarter money. I'll publish the book, though without the level of professional review I'd like. I'll still have a professionally designed cover and get proofreading in exchange for a promise of reciprocity.
But to get to my actual question, I've discovered from a trial run book that putting computer code into a Smashwords book and have it come out of the meatgrinder readable is very difficult. I solved the problem there by linking to code files. Has anyone else had experience with code or other difficult-to-format text in ebooks? Any advice would be appreciated.
I've seen a couple of interesting free ebooks being linked, so I thought I'd relink here.
http://islamscifi.com/a-mosque-among-th
A Mosque Among The Stars was the first anthology that dealt with the subject of Muslim characters and/or Islamic themes and Science Fiction.
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/01/some-o
( story descriptions here )
http://islamscifi.com/a-mosque-among-th
A Mosque Among The Stars was the first anthology that dealt with the subject of Muslim characters and/or Islamic themes and Science Fiction.
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/01/some-o
( story descriptions here )
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I was looking to purchase a book from Barnes & Noble except it only comes in hardcover and Nook Book. I don't want to purchase a hardcover but I've never purchased a Nook Book before. I have a tablet (Sony Xperia) and I'd like to read this book from it instead of at my computer. Would I be able to purchase it from my computer and transfer it to my tablet or would I need to purchase it directly from my tablet? Also, will I be able to read a Nook Book from my non-Nook tablet and how so? Thank you in advance!
http://www.mediabistro.com/appnewser/ca
AppNewser puts together a steady stream of free ebooks from various sources. All styles of books are featured.
AppNewser puts together a steady stream of free ebooks from various sources. All styles of books are featured.
Link - Free ebook: Photographs of Claudia by KG MacGregor (Download Formats: PDF, mobi, and epub.)
Apparently Bella Books, one of the bigger lesbian publishers out there, is giving away this book for free for a limited time.
Notes: Getting it was fairly hassle-less. You can sign in as guest and put anything you wanted in the customer form, and the "santa" code worked by making it free! :)
Apparently Bella Books, one of the bigger lesbian publishers out there, is giving away this book for free for a limited time.
Notes: Getting it was fairly hassle-less. You can sign in as guest and put anything you wanted in the customer form, and the "santa" code worked by making it free! :)
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OK, all. I decided to keep the Kindle Paperwhite and start playing with it. Thanks to all of you lovely people who shared your knowledge with me. I really appreciate it. I'm probably going to have more questions but here's the first one.
I managed to open the browser just fine and log into my google email account. Now I can't figure out how to close the browser. I'd like to be able to open and close the browser at will and only be online when I want to. Is this possible? Thanks.
EDIT: I just answered my own question by doing further research. I see that I have to enable airplane mode to switch off the wifi. But I still would like to know how to close the browser without having to resort to that if there is another way.
I managed to open the browser just fine and log into my google email account. Now I can't figure out how to close the browser. I'd like to be able to open and close the browser at will and only be online when I want to. Is this possible? Thanks.
EDIT: I just answered my own question by doing further research. I see that I have to enable airplane mode to switch off the wifi. But I still would like to know how to close the browser without having to resort to that if there is another way.
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