The e-Book Chronicles, Part V

Well, creating my Epub file using the converter at Lulu.com proved to be a bit of an adventure ... of the trial-and-error type. Fortunately, they provide a fairly thorough guide (click on the "download the guide" button) that does a decent job of walking you through the process.

The first thing you have to know about is using Microsoft Word styles, because that's how Lulu's conversion software knows where your book title, chapter titles, and any subheadings are. It uses them to build the .ncx file, which is the digital table of contents for your Epub file. Your book won't be accepted by any of the online retailers if it doesn't have a properly working .ncx file, so this is important information to have. Here again, the Lulu guide explains this pretty well, and even includes screen shots from your desktop--well, if you're using  a Windows machine, that is--to ease you through the process.

So far, so good. The next thing you've got to do is to take out all the extra hard returns that you probably put into your document in order to get the various title elements to show up on the page looking cute. Unfortunately, these elements are going to display differently to readers, depending on which device they're using to read your book. So, in the name of functionality, you may very well lose some of the "pretty" you worked so hard to put into your document. In the case of my novel, it wasn't too big an issue, since it's all text with very few overt design elements. I had to tinker with this a bit, taking Lulu's suggestion of using

line breaks (shift + enter) instead of hard returns to situate title elements on the page. Once I got the hang of that, I was able to mostly get things to show up where I intended.

Then, the cover art ... Fortunately, I was able to take advantage of the previous publisher's cool cover art and adapt it for my new e-book. I downloaded a nifty free graphic design program called Gimp and, after ascending partway on the learning curve, was able to pull elements from the original cover, add some new touches, and come up with something that is both functional and attractive, I think. It worked well enough that I was inspired to make a small donation to Gimp.

I do have to say that I found certain aspects of Lulu's conversion and publishing wizard to be non-intuitive. The hardest thing for me, for example, was convincing the wizard that I really and truly didn't want to use any of Lulu's prefab cover art, and that I really and truly did want to upload the cover image that I'd created myself, thankyouverymuch. But after some tinkering and a few imprecations muttered under my breath,
I was able to get the image uploaded successfully. Important note: If you generate your own cover art for an ebook, it needs to be at a 72 ppi (pixels per inch) resolution in order to display optimally on digital devices.

So ... there you have it! I've taken you through the process, pretty much start to finish. Except ...

... Oh yeah ... selling the thing. In other words, we're just now getting to the whole reason I did this in the first place. One of the things I like about Lulu is that they submit properly formatted titles to major online retailers. At this moment, they're in the process of submitting Jeremiah: He Who Wept to the iBookstore (Apple) and Nook (Barnes & Noble). Also, since I assigned my own ISBN to the book (see "The e-Book Chronicles, Part IV"), I'm planning to download my fully functional Epub file and submit it to the Kindle Store and Google Play Books.

But that is slightly in the future. For now, I'm pleased to have gotten this far and to actually have a working product for sale. Now, all I've got to do is persuade a few people to drop $2.99 for the download... Say ... could I interest you in a really cool new e-book?

Thomsblog (a weblog) by Thom Lemmons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

The e-Book Chronicles, Part III

Success! I found a copy of He Who Wept with the newer cover!




Of course, I realize that just having this image is a long way from having a professional-looking cover for the e-book, but at least I now have this as a design option. Editing and OCR-correcting the main text proceeds, amid the many distractions of life and work (see "The e-Book Chronicles, Part II").



One thing I've learned: If I intend to do many more e-book conversions from scanned hard copy, I'm going to need a much better and faster scanner, and possibly some OCR software. But for now, it amuses me (in a slightly sick way) to do the hand-work of reading, correcting, and formatting. Sort of an artisan thing, I guess. Is there such a thing as an artisan e-book?











I've also been collecting information about pricing and design strategies. While the jury is still out on where e-book pricing is going to finally settle, things seem to be moving in the direction of generally lower pricing for e-books than their print editions--see, for example, http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/ebook-price-roller-coaster-ride-over/. So, for now at least, I think my intention to price He Who Wept at something like 2.99 or less is a good one.







Well, that's about all the news for now. Guess I'll edit, format, and correct another chapter of He Who Wept, and then maybe do some recreational reading ... imagine that!

Ghostwriting, Publishing, and the Monastic Tradition

I have a friend who's a university professor who just doesn't get the concept of ghostwriting. Every time I tell him about a book I'm working on as a ghostwriter, he shakes his head and mumbles something about intellectual prostitution. I think what sticks in his craw is the notion that someone else is getting credit (albeit, paying for the privilege) for something I'm writing. As a prof who came up the hard way in the academic trenches, scratching and clawing for every publication credit and scrupulously updating his curriculum vitae each time another journal published his work, my friend can't get his mind around the idea that I would gladly exchange payment for public recognition of work I've done.

It's a fair criticism. Frankly, there are other writers in my circle--especially novelists--who aren't too keen on the whole ghostwriting thing. Their notion runs something like, "Why should some big-name evangelist get to have the cover credit for 'his' novel all to himself, when all he did was maybe toss out a couple of plot points and write a check?"

I have a different view of what I do. I don't know if it's the right one for everybody, but I think it works for me. When I'm working on a book or article that's going to be published under someone else's name, I conceive of my task as similar to something a medieval monk might have done, meticulously crafting an illuminated manuscript. He wasn't going to sign his work; within a hundred years, it's unlikely that anyone would even remember his contribution to the book on which he spent so many hours. He would labor in faithful obscurity, for no other reason than that he had the necessary skill to perform the work that would make the book take on an extra measure of life and beauty.

When I'm creating a story, whether it's a novel, a memoir, or even something as mundane as a financial self-help book, I like to think that I'm kind of like that monk: I'm employing a skill that has been entrusted to me mostly as a gift, and I'm using it to do the best work I can on an artifact that has the potential to help someone else. I hope I'm getting paid a little better than the monk, since I don't think my wife and kids would much favor moving into a monastery. But the principle of focusing more on the work to be done and less on the public credit to be had is kind of the same... in my mind, at least.

In fact, every book contains elements of this principle. Unlike movies--where everyone who carried a cable, catered a meal, or cued up a soundtrack gets his or her name listed in the credits--books don't identify anywhere near all the people involved in their creation. Oh, sure, the author will usually acknowledge his or her agent, probably the editor at the publisher who bought the book, and maybe a few family members and friends who offered (or sometimes withheld) critiques. Academic books come a little closer, since scholarly authors (especially early in their careers) try to be pretty careful about acknowledging everyone--from their graduate research assistants to the chairs of their dissertation committees--who aided or abetted the publication effort. But nowhere in any book will you find a word of thanks for the typesetter, or the pressman who ran the signatures through the offset printer, or the imaging proofer who color-matched the illustrations, or the administrative assistant who mailed the publishing contract, or... All of these people, from the copyeditor to the warehouse guy who packs the book for shipping to the bookstore, had a hand in the author's success, but very few of them ever get thanked... or even noticed. But each of them--at least, the ones worth their salt--is proud of the contribution made, whether anyone remembers who did it or not.


So, I take a craftsman's pride in what I do. Sometimes, I'd like to think it approaches art. But even when it doesn't, I still feel good about putting the best words possible out there, in between the covers of books, for people to find in their time of need. I try not to worry so much about who gets the credit for it. In my best moments, like the monk in his, I believe that doing your best at what you do is reason enough.