SEEING E-BOOK OUT THERE

Since next week is going to be short and busy what with the big conference at Oklahoma City, I’m going to update what’s going on with publishing my e-book short stories today.

First I’m going to answer a few of the problems I’ve been having. Smashwords doesn’t want writers to opt out of Kindle or UPub, two of the most popular of their readers. So I didn’t. Open Office will work well for formatting after you’ve cleansed your work, but you will have to save to Word 2003 prior to uploading to Smashwords.

Here’s the answer to the biggest problem I had after my first story was uploaded, accepted and put “out there.” I was told to click on my book in Smashwords to locate the way to download a copy to Kindle for PC and Adobe Digital Editions. This is not quite how it works and was why I couldn’t accomplish it. Double click on your book in MY Smashwords, then when your book comes up larger on the screen, click on the title and that will take you to the download site where you can read online in html or download a copy to read on your PC. Note: You do have to have downloaded the programs Kindle for PC and Adobe Digital Editions to do this. They are both free.

Also, let your readers know that they don’t have to have an E-reader to read your book. All they have to do is download Kindle for PC and they can then buy and read your book on their PC. Cool, huh? Typically, your book will be published at all the sites in about two weeks after it’s posted for sale at Smashwords.

After discovering all this, I uploaded my second book – two short stories about women dealing with the struggles of life in the Ozarks in the past. It’s title is Going to Freedom. I designed simple book covers for both — out of necessity since I haven’t learned much about Photoshop yet — with the same color and design. They have a different photo in the center. This way my readers can easily spot the new short stories from my other books on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

I have now checked out both e-books for formatting problems and am very happy with their look. Sometimes we can make it much too hard when it’s not. Just follow directions from Smashwords in their free guide. I made that simpler by cutting and pasting each direction into a document for my own use, leaving out all the asides included in the book. Then I printed it out and put it in a looseleaf notebook where I could follow step by step what to do. After doing it twice, I’m still going to be careful to follow those because if I don’t I’ll probably forget a step and mess things up.

I don’t like running my file through notepad, I prefer to use another text file. My Word Perfect offers several text files that will cleanse the formatting, but Word does not, so do what you have to do. Since I still create my original file in WP I make sure to cleanse it of unnecessary hidden format code before putting it into Word. Besides, WP won’t save directly into Word for some unknown reason known only to Bill Gates. At least, I haven’t been able to get it to.

Enough rambling. I’m off to see if I can make heads or tails of Photoshop. I get so far, then can’t add anything to my original illustration or photo. It just refuses to go there after I cut and copy it. There must be a step I’m missing. I’m using a lot of my own photos to avoid copyright issues and getting permission or worse, paying for the right to use someone else’s work. If I need a photo, I take it with my digital camera and drop it right into my computer.

Think of things like close-ups of spring flowers or other subjects, scenic shots that you can cut something from. Most of my short stories take place in the Ozarks so I have plenty of lovely photos to choose from. If I could only learn how to layer in additional items. More in a few.