Category: e-books

I have had a breakthrough in getting the WORD doc file into a proper Kindle format! It requires a manual adjustment to the WORD-produced html file. Here is a procedure for fixing the WORD output:

1. I can write in WORD…carefully avoiding extra fonts and setting all styles to Times New Roman.
2. When I’m really, really done, I have WORD save as filtered html
3. I open the html file in Wordpad…NEVER go back to WORD from here or it will put all the deleted stuff back! 
4. I cut out all the font definitions except Times New Roman…this deletes a huge part of the file since I have hundreds of fonts installed on my computer.
5. I go through the style definitions and delete all my unused ones…again I have a lot of styles that are not in use in the document in question.
6. The remaining…hopefully only a few…styles I edit so wherever there is a reference to a point size I replace it with an em size…the conversion is 12pt=1em. I may investigate the % operator in the future.
7. I save the file from Wordpad (just use ctrl S so it saves by the same name as it came in…with an html extension).(Someone told me before to do this but the inability to save a new file from Wordpad with an html extension stopped me)
8. Have Kindle previewer/kindlegen convert the html file and view the book. NOW the paperwhite preview allows changes to font sizes.

(It still doesn’t change fonts like it should, but I assume there are some other changes to the html that will fix that…the amazing thing is that a number of the warnings in the compile process are now gone and the result works while keeping the footnote links.)

I managed to waste a good half-day yesterday fighting the point-size references in WORD-created “filtered html”. Here are a few things that apparently do not work:

1. Processing the WORD doc file via KDP’s online upload-to-publish process (instead of the WORD-produced html file) produces a result that works on the previewer in the Paperwhite setting, but deletes all the footnotes and footnote references. There is the text… stripped of all footnotes. It behaves perfectly…changes size and font face in the previewer as is supposed to happen. Unfortunately saving the result…even as a draft…erases the active, approved version, so even with quickly re-uploading the original version, the title is down for 12 hours while they re-check it.

2. Converting the doc file with a program I found on line,Word Reader, produces an html  file stripped of the footnotes, just the same as uploading the doc file to Kindle. Continue reading “Paperwhite font struggle continues”

I have officially published my first E-book on Kindle at Amazon (click here). BUT, while the pretest was passed, I have no confidence it will work well on the new Kindle Paperwhite. The newest Previewer seems to say my file is fine for the other devices but on Paperwhite setting it refuses to change font size or font face. I will not know if it works on the actual device until I get one just after Christmas.

I have tried everything I can find. the free Word Reader (6.24) will also create html files from doc files, so I tried it and it does work on Paperwhite, but it has taken out all the footnote references!

The only option I have left to try is to see if I upload the doc file to Kindle, it will come out better…rather than having WORD create an html.

I have just turned loose my first E-book…the first installment of my Revisiting Scripture material. I focus on the content at the Revisiting Scripture site, but here I want to share a few of the unexpected challenges.

Formatting in WORD: here my several-decade infatuation with styles has paid off, since I automatically used the hierarchy of HEADINGS and a consistent style for body text and for Scripture quotations. I was pleased to discover that at least as early as 2003 WORD included features to save as files in html format and to create a table of contents with links instead of page numbers.

Editing: WORD was very useful for the spelling and grammar checks. Just for this final edit I turned on the passive voice and gender detection. I am usually driven crazy by the first one, but I decided my prose should be more dynamic even if it meant re-phrasing in 100 places! The latter is not a burning issue for me but it did encourage me to replace “mankind” with “humanity”—a reasonable change. The biggest help was the meticulous editing of my wife who inserted a few commas, added a few, “I don’t understand” notes in places where I could easily expand and clarify, and encouraged me to cut out a few specific references where I had been especially cutting…my goal is not to attack but rather encourage folks of all sorts to revisit both Scripture and their beliefs in a non-threatening setting.  Continue reading “Hot off the (electronic) press!”

Well, I’m coming down the home stretch on the first of my Revisiting Scripture series. I’ve edited through it about three times now and my wife is going to go through it…in a printed form…once. I seldom have a big project  that isn’t in a hurry, so it was fun to apply some of the editing advice. I have The 28 Biggest Writing Blunders (And How to Avoid Them) by William Noble, and found his selection on eliminating ‘smoky words’ especially useful…very, just,rather,really…words that try to make a verb or noun stronger when they are stronger by themselves.

Then he is the first author to encourage extensive use of ellipsis (…) and dashes (–). They seem to make the compound sentences…and inserted thoughts…much easier to read.

Finally I turned ON the passive-voice detector in WORD…usually it is OFF due to being so annoying when first writing a draft…it slows me down to have to fix a sentence right in the middle of the original writing.

And then I went into the Kindle Direct Publishing pages and did the actual information entry. Everything is free and the royalty is 70% if you give them the exclusive–at least for 90 days.I debated using other platforms with multiple file formats but I’ll try this first. Since I prepared the book in WORD using their heading styles, the table of contents is easy to make and the book converts easily from .doc to .html to .mobi. I expect to offer it for $2.99…over 50,000 words. The cover is uploaded, but the editing has to finish before the first release. One feature…it seems very easy to upload a revision at any time…no cost at all and no one suggesting you shouldn’t do it. People who have already bought ‘edition 1″ can upload “edition 2” for free, so I don’t leave a customer stuck with the old version.

So it is getting closer!