Adventures in Writing a book and then Publishing to Amazon

So I decided last year to write a book on WordPress when I couldn't find one I liked for a class I was asked to teach. And because I am such a fan of Google Docs, which has since become Google Drive, I decided to write the book using Google Docs/Drive. The neat thing about this was I could edit my book on any device that could access Google Drive. For the rest of this post, Google Docs and Google Drive will be interchangeable in case I forget to call it by its proper name. 

I wrote a chapter or five a week and I had the book over half way done when I started the class. When the class started WordPress was in version 3.2. I kept updating the book and it became very screen capture heavy as I find at times pictures tell a story better than words. So I began looking at what I needed to do to format the book for Amazon. First I had done all of my images in PNG, Kindle prefers JPG. Okay, so I fixed this by saving the book at HTML from Google Drive and it saved out my images to a folder called strangely enough, images. So I then loaded up IfranView and converted all of my images from PNG to JPG and left them at 100% quality. Oh, then I bought a book on formatting pictures for Kindle called

Pictures on Kindle: Self Publishing Your Kindle Book with Photos, Drawings, and Other Graphics, or Tips for Formatting Your Images So Your Ebook Doesn't Look Horrible (Like Everyone Else's)

 It is a good book and I learned how to format my cover and that my images aren't supposed to be over 128k, though if you read Amazon's Building your Book for Kindle. It says the images have to be 127k or less.

Building Your Book for Kindle

So I then went back into ifranview and after downloaded the filters file for IrfanView's RIOT plugin to tell it to set all of my images to 128k. It worked.

So next I used Calibre, which totally rocks by the way. I imported the html book and it created an epub of my book. I told it to format my book for Kindle. I edited the metadata in the program before doing the conversion. It created an epub of my book which I then loaded into the Kindle Previewer to see if it would turn out okay. And strangely it did. So I then went to Amazon and uploaded my book and entered my information to start the process. So I published my book on Amazon for Kindle. Once I published the book, Amazon tells you it will be 12 to 24 hours before the book will be available. And then after I published it, I realized I had a typo on the cover page. This happen as I was working on a subtitle and changed my mind on what it should say at the last minute. Luckily I still had the cover open in Photoshop so I fixed it. But my entry was out there with the typo for at least 7 plus hours before they fixed it. This was scary and I didn't want to tell anyone about my book until it was fixed. But now it is resolved and there it is. Here is a link to my book:

WordPress From Setup to Website

To say the least I am very excited and I have already sold some copies. I have some updates coming and everyone who buys the book gets the updates. That is a neat feature that Amazon now has. If you decide to buy my book, contact me via email and I will send you the book in a DRM free PDF. 

Formatting your eBook for Kindle and Kindle Fire

So I spent a great deal of time trying to get my picture heavy book to look good with the original Kindle only to have it look horrible on the Kindle Fire. What? I had originally written the book using Google Docs. That turned out well. But it turns out, first, all of my images needed to be jpg and not png. My screen capture program defaults to png and I just assumed it being an Internet standard it would not be an issue. I was more focused on finishing the book that what the guidelines would be to make my book into an eBook for publishing on different sites. My book looks the best as a good old fashioned PDF, but since Amazon and Barnes and Noble both have their own style guides and their own variations on ePub/mobi, I need to format accordingly. The first time I exported my Google Doc version of my document as zipped (html).

So then I ran IrfranView to convert all of my png files to 80% jpg. I then did a find and replace on my png to jpg and opened the html file in Chrome. It worked. So then I downloaded the Amazon Kindle Preview which you can find here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000234621 On that page you can download Amazon Kindle Preview and their command line eBook generator. You can also download a template for Adobe InDesign. Sadly I am still running CS3 of the Adobe Creative Suite so my version is too old to use it. But with just the Preview program you can generate a mobi file from your html or epub and view it in simulations for the original Kindle, Kindle DX, Kindle White, and Kindle Fire and HD.

When I originally did this I noticed my chapters didn't seem to be breaking like I wanted. Also it was doing a number on tables I had in the document and on some pictures. So I went and added more page breaks before chapters to try and address this. Before I did that, my book looked passable though my cover was not pretty. After reading this guys blog http://www.cjs-easy-as-pie.com/2010/03/kindle-cover-format.html I discovered my cover image needed to be 600x800 and it would go all around the edges of the Kindle screen. So it looks good that way. But it stretched my existing image so I have to go to Gimp and create a new properly sized cover image.

 Another blog that I found some help on what this guy's blog http://www.paulsalvette.com which is really about epublishing and his book, The eBook Design and Development Guide [Kindle Edition] It is a really good book and it shows me I have some work to do in order to make my book look best in all formats. But I can tell you after I added lots and lots of page breaks, my book looks horrible in Kindle Fire formats but looks pretty good in Kindle, DX, and White. So I am going to undo all the work I did and start over on the formatting. #ebooks #kindle Conversely I attempted to publish my book on Leanpub.com. But it wants me to do some much formatting changes that I would rather devote my time to getting the Kindle version right.

Ultimately I want to release my book in a DRM free version. Part of me says, offer the book on Amazon to get sales and then send pdf versions to anyone who proves they bought my book. And perhaps if I can build a following I can get added to O'Reilly Press which sells all of their books DRM free. I want my books to be usable on every device and in ever format. Sure, I don't want people sharing my book with everybody, but to lock a book down to one single device is wrong.

Neglected Blog

I am so embarrassed I have neglected this blog for so long. As with many things we start with such high expectations. I had planned to post and entry every day. I did okay. Then I told myself it was okay to post just once a week. Then I would visit but not post. I was slightly intimidated by the blank page. I am also worried that I will post something trivial. It is important that what I write moves people forward. I strive to write tech articles that explain concepts to help people understand thing they may not. My goal seems to write the technical articles that are part Dummies and part textbook. So many books leave us wanting more and wondering why did we pay for it and get nothing for our experience. I want very much to change that.

Google, the Innovator

Today I was thinking about Google and why I like it so much. I was asked what was so cool about the current doodle on the Google Search home page. The cool thing about it is that it is animated completed in HTML5. They couldn't see the movement. So I explained you have to be using a browser that is HTML5 compliant like Chrome or Firefox or even Opera. IE8 (which is the corporate standard because 1)Programmers keep writing for IE specific browser versions and 2)Because IE9 breakes those corporate things that require IE. So they loaded Chrome and Ah.... There is was, "First HTML5 Google Doodle Honors Alexander Calder, 'Inventor of the Mobile'" moving slowly around the screen. I started to tell them if they blew on the screen it would move, but that seemed cruel.

Google Innovates. How long did browsers stay stagnent until Chrome came along? Yes, it could easily be argued Mozilla caused the current browser wars but Chrome is winning and now Mozzila is promising more frequent updates to their browser after it took years to get out of version 3.x after being influenced by Google's rapid releases. Additionally Google practially make it required to download updates rather than optional. Now this is push behavior but if you asked Microsoft their feelings about this and IE6, they would say that is a neat option. Being that Microsoft has to keep the Enterprise Overlords happy as well, they can't easily play this card. But people let Google get away with this.

Google pushed the HTML5 standards to allow for better video and they and others really pushed AJAX into the forefront and brought us pages that seem to come to life without any plugin software (namely Adobe Flash). So we kind of wound up waiting for everyone to play catch up to Google and now Apple hates Adobe and Joanie Loves Chachi and Microsoft and Oracle and Apple all hate Google...
So Google must be doing some thing right.

I love my Android phone. I thought the iPhone would be the only game in town for so long. Apple deserves its own posting thanking it for making mobile phones useful. The word Smart and phone didn't go together until Apple came alone. I digress.The Android phone has given iPhone a run for the money. It is a great phone and for the most part I enjoy the fact that the Android phones are usually (given what mobile provider you have) open. I could root my Android phone but there isn't much reason to. There isn't really anything I am prevented from doing on my phone that I want to do. The only missing piece I have found is there isn't a Cisco VPN client for my phone. I would be willing to pay Cisco for this option. To be able to connect to work and fix a problem from my phone would be awesome.

Windows Run Line Commando

I have always found it faster to run many commands via commandline or a DOS command window than to do Start, Programs, Accessories, Notepad (for example). Start, Run, Notepad cranks up fast and I don't have to take my fingers from the keyboard. I have also written some batch files that do some amazing things. I need to become a wizard on PowerShell.

Someone asked me about sysedit. Strangely this still exists in Windows XP but I see no trace of it in Windows 7. It isn't on my Mac either, ha ha. So I explain about msconfig and how those config.sys and autoexec.bat files are no more and if they exist at all it is because you may have a 16 bit program that for some reason you have clung to for dear life. And of course, there is dxconfig to tweak Direct X settings as well. So I was Googling around to find other command line options. I was amazed to see a long list for XP (most still work on Windows 7). I have used many of these before but I don't really considered them commandline options. But if you can kick it off via Start, Run, it is pretty cool.

Here are over 100 Windows Run Commands

If you want to control what starts up on boot, then these utilities are a great way to resolve and keep a watchful eye.

Startup Monitor This monitors things that attempt to put themselves in Run Once or HKCU/Run or HKLM/Run. So many things try to run on Start up. Granted this program is really XP-ish and hasn't really been rewritten to be used on Windows Vista or Windows 7. But I am using it and it is working.

Additionally is the Startup Control Panel. This is an easy way to tweak after the fact. Granted in Windows 7 it takes some changing of the view in Control Panel to see it but it still a great program.

When you install this on Windows 7, you will have to right click and choose "Run As Administrator" in order for it to copy its cpl file into the correct Windows directory.

If you really like to tweak things or you really want to find that peskey trojan that is still running after running antispyware software ten times, HijackThis is another way to go.

WARNING: THIS CAN REALLY MESS UP YOUR COMPUTER IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With HijackThis you can tweak what starts and what doesn't every time your computer boots as well as often track down evil things that are starting that should not be.

Off Topic-- Government at its finest

When you have the opportunity to enjoy quantity time with your state and local government offices, take it. It is a level of comedy and irony.

I went to the local department of vital records to request a replacement birth certificate for my daughter. My daughter has four names or I should say a first name, two middle names, and a last name. We had gotten a replacement birth certificate a few years ago so I thought no big deal. After waiting a long time, after being told I would have to wait a long time, the lady looks at my application and tells me she can't give me a birth certificate because her typewriter was recently replaced and the font size on it is too big to print out the 38 characters my daughter's name entails. So I have to request it from the state office near the state capital as they have a typewriter with smaller fonts.

Welcome to the 20th century.

Calibre - an awesome ebook manager regardless of your reader

I was looking for some thing to manage my ebooks. I have several PDFs that I wanted to read on my new Nook (see previous entries about that). Sure, I could open up the microSD card I have placed in my Nook and use the USB cable to upload to it. But I noticed my PDFs did not have pretty covers when I looked at them on my reader. At first I thought this was because they were PDFs instead of ePubs, but in reality, the PDFs just didn't have the appropriate metadata. So at first I was Googling ™ ™
to find a way to turn a PDF into an ePub document. Many of the options cost money and I prefer to find an open source or freeware method that sort of works than to spend money on something I will not use very often. That is when I came across Calibre. It will convert books from PDF to ePub format. But in my experimentation it did a horrendous job with images in PDFs so I gave up. (On a side note, I have Adobe CS3 Design Suite, which includes inDesign. So I looked to see if I could import a PDF into inDesign and create an ePub document. This particular version doesn't give me the option so bummer.) So I gave up on this tangent.
I played around with Calibre more and discovered it was an awesome ebook manager. It can edit metadata on PDFs (though strangely not consistently), import metadata from Barnes and Nobel and Amazon for books it can parse the titles of, and add "covers" to your books so they show the thumb nails on your reader.

Take a look at the interface.

Notice the drop down to allow access to move files to the microSD card in my Nook. It even recognizes my Nook when I plug it up. It has support for Kindle, Nook, Sony's eReader, and others.

(Soapbox) Also notice the book, Head First PMP (Second Edition) from O'Reilly And Associates. I love that O'Reilly doesn't put DRM on their books so when I buy a book from them, I can read it on any device I want. DRM free doesn't mean sharing with others, but supports the fact that once you buy a book, you own it. It is yours to use until you lose it. (/Soapbox).

I am not going into log tutorials about Calibre as the author of the program has gone to great strides to provide great tutorials on his site. The software is available for multiple OSes and even has a portable version you can take anywhere on your Thumb drive.