Drudgery

It was a whole lot more fun writing this book than doing the grunt work of getting it formatted and ready to be published as an ebook. What I'm finding is that there are several standards for ebooks which I kinda knew but didn't pay much attention too. The other problem is that the technology is a moving target and information as little as six months ago no longer applies. But you have to slog through all of that before you're up to date.

I used Apple's Pages program to write it because it has an ePub output option. I figured no sweat and just went blindly ahead. It turns out you have to do certain things before you start writing, setting up the proper styles etc. I didn't check into that until after I did all the writing. Grunt work, just grunt work. However, I'm still on target to upload it by next Friday and I'll make that deadline.

My next fun project is using a graphics program to create a cover page. Interesting conditions. It has to be readable as a small icon. Look at Amazon's website for ebooks and you'll see what I mean. They display two sizes, one in list view and a larger one for the page view. Some of the book covers are unreadable in those small sizes. I bet they look good on a paper book but not on Amazon. And they don't look good in your ebook reader either. In hindsight it might have been a better idea to come up with a shorter title for my book. Live and learn.

The next one will be much easier.