I'm very gratified by all the interest in the book so far. Thanks to everyone who downloaded! Quite a few people have been asking about a print version, which surprised me. I knew I would do this eventually, but I'm stepping up the pace to have trade paperbacks available ASAP.
Amazon prints these on demand, and frankly I'm amazed at how cheap they are. Not as cheap as an eBook, of course, but still very cheap considering they are printing as little as ONE copy at a time.
I don't have the exact number, but I see others that appear to be in a similar situation as mine are priced right around $13. Compared to $3 for the eBook on your Kindle or Nook, that's a lot of money. Compared to what you would've paid to have, say, a copy or two of your dissertation typeset, printed, and bound even just a few years ago, it is downright amazing. As this technology gets cheaper and easier, I'm assuming we'll see kiosks with hundreds of thousands of books available to print, much like we have kiosks where you can get professional grade photographs from your camera's digital memory cards.
These exist already! In fact, in a poetically satisfying full-circle of old-world meets new-world, the legendary Library of Alexandria (well, it's descendant, but still) has a print-on-demand machine. One fascinating fact: your book is ready in TEN MINUTES!
That bodes well for me having a print version available soon. But first I have to stop googling about the Library of Alexandria and get to work.
IT'S HERE! (The Big Announcement)
World, meet Comet Jack. Now available for Kindle and Nook. (If you have neither of these, both have free apps for your various phones, pads, pods, and computers.) You can download a free sample to your Kindle, Nook, or app at the links!
Needless to say, I am very excited.
A note on timing: I set a deadline to have this book out by the time my son started fifth grade. Jack, the hero of the story, is starting fifth grade at the beginning. My son starts tomorrow.
Let me know what you think! Also, please let others know. You can add a review of the book at the same links: Comet Jack for Kindle, Comet Jack for Nook.
Needless to say, I am very excited.
A note on timing: I set a deadline to have this book out by the time my son started fifth grade. Jack, the hero of the story, is starting fifth grade at the beginning. My son starts tomorrow.
Let me know what you think! Also, please let others know. You can add a review of the book at the same links: Comet Jack for Kindle, Comet Jack for Nook.
Indents and Peppermints
I think I have solved my Kindle indentation problem. And, yes, I did just eat a peppermint.
I'm compiling Comet Jack in Scrivener, which is pretty much a fantastic program for writers. BUT I ran across some issues trying to get it right for Kindle. Scrivener will export directly to .mobi, which is the format Kindle prefers, and allows me to skip some steps publishing at Amazon (as opposed to messing around with Word and HTML and who knows what else). Most of the export seemed just fine--nice table of contents with links, for instance--but when I looked at the final product in the Kindle Previewer, all my paragraph indents had been stripped out! All these long hours of trying to get this book as good as I can make it, and suddenly it looked like I didn't even know what a paragraph was.
Google research turned up lots of similar issues, but no solutions for my exact problem. So I started changing indent-related things, one at a time, then exporting the book again. By version 13, I had, through trial and error, figured out how to fix my problem. (For Scrivener-ites: in Compile, under Formatting, check "Override text and notes formatting," then adjust the indent for Text in the box below for the appropriate Levels. And, yes, I do realize this sounds like a foreign language.)
For the record, instead of any fault of the program, this is definitely based more on my refusal to crack a manual until I run into a problem. (And I bet this would've been a non-issue if I had just taken the Scrivener tutorial, which I will be doing REAL SOON).
I double-checked my results with my Kindle-owning fellow writer, Marko Kloos, and he confirmed my indents were in place.
Woo hoo! My reward? A peppermint.
Also a book that is GOOD TO GO. The next post you see will be The Big Announcement.
I'm compiling Comet Jack in Scrivener, which is pretty much a fantastic program for writers. BUT I ran across some issues trying to get it right for Kindle. Scrivener will export directly to .mobi, which is the format Kindle prefers, and allows me to skip some steps publishing at Amazon (as opposed to messing around with Word and HTML and who knows what else). Most of the export seemed just fine--nice table of contents with links, for instance--but when I looked at the final product in the Kindle Previewer, all my paragraph indents had been stripped out! All these long hours of trying to get this book as good as I can make it, and suddenly it looked like I didn't even know what a paragraph was.
Google research turned up lots of similar issues, but no solutions for my exact problem. So I started changing indent-related things, one at a time, then exporting the book again. By version 13, I had, through trial and error, figured out how to fix my problem. (For Scrivener-ites: in Compile, under Formatting, check "Override text and notes formatting," then adjust the indent for Text in the box below for the appropriate Levels. And, yes, I do realize this sounds like a foreign language.)
For the record, instead of any fault of the program, this is definitely based more on my refusal to crack a manual until I run into a problem. (And I bet this would've been a non-issue if I had just taken the Scrivener tutorial, which I will be doing REAL SOON).
I double-checked my results with my Kindle-owning fellow writer, Marko Kloos, and he confirmed my indents were in place.
Woo hoo! My reward? A peppermint.
Also a book that is GOOD TO GO. The next post you see will be The Big Announcement.
Countdown
T-minus... well, a few days. I promised I'd have the book up by the time my son hits fifth grade. He starts next week.
The good news, though, is the book is almost ready to go. I have a list of minor repairs my gracious beta-readers found--mostly relics from previous edits like words I forgot to delete when I changed phrasing. These should be taken care of today or tomorrow. (But if you find more, lay them on me at oops _at_ cometjack.com! It's really never too late to correct mistakes. ...Life lesson there somewhere, but I digress.)
I'm good to go at Amazon and at Barnes & Noble, but awaiting word on iTunes. Also, I've discovered iTunes requires an ISBN, so I'm getting a crash course in exactly how to obtain that (which is clear and expensive) and why you need one (less clear this is true at all). I may wait to add iTunes availability because of this.
BUT the book will be available somewhere very soon. The countdown is on. T-minus somewhere between two and six days. Give or take.
The good news, though, is the book is almost ready to go. I have a list of minor repairs my gracious beta-readers found--mostly relics from previous edits like words I forgot to delete when I changed phrasing. These should be taken care of today or tomorrow. (But if you find more, lay them on me at oops _at_ cometjack.com! It's really never too late to correct mistakes. ...Life lesson there somewhere, but I digress.)
I'm good to go at Amazon and at Barnes & Noble, but awaiting word on iTunes. Also, I've discovered iTunes requires an ISBN, so I'm getting a crash course in exactly how to obtain that (which is clear and expensive) and why you need one (less clear this is true at all). I may wait to add iTunes availability because of this.
BUT the book will be available somewhere very soon. The countdown is on. T-minus somewhere between two and six days. Give or take.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)