Writers in the Storm

Laura Drake

Yes, we’re writers, but we’re readers first.  Part of the reason I wanted to write was to give others the transporting experience I’ve had, reading a wonderful book, and ‘waking up’ hours later, unaware of my surroundings.  Or consciously slowing down, toward the end of a book, just so I won’t be done.  Yes, I can reread it, but I’ll never again experience it for the first time.

So I started thinking . . . If I were stuck on a deserted island, all alone, what books would I want with me?

I don’t mean survivalist literature – I’m talking, ‘keep me sane while I’m waiting for the cavalry to show up’ books.   I chose an arbitrary limit of 10, then tried to decide.  The first couple were easy – they popped right into my head.

• Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
• The Stand – Stephen King
• A Gift Upon the Shore – M.K. Wren   (if you’re a writer, you should read this dystopian novel-what would happen to the books if the world crumbled?)
• Malevil – Robert Merle     Okay, shoot me, I love end of the world scenarios.

But after that it got tougher.

• Timeline – Michael Crichton
• King’s Oak – Ann Rivers Siddons
• Any of the Outlander books by Diana Gabaldon
• Most anything by Barbara Samuels / Barbara O’Neal
• Violin – Ann Rice  Or The Feast of All Saints -  I can’t decide
• South of Broad – or anything by Pat Conroy.  Maybe if I were lucky, he’d have a new one out I hadn’t yet read….

See how I got flaky at the end?  Too many good books!!!

What are your Deserted Island Books?  I’d love to hear about them.

By Lyn Horner

In my last blog I said I would next talk about book covers, but I’ve changed my mind. It occurred to me that I first need to explain the uses of Kindlegen and the Kindle Previewer, because I will employ these tools to embed and view my book cover. Both are free programs provided by Amazon. Their purpose is to view a book as it would appear on the Kindle reader and/or other devices. By doing so we can spot glitches and correct them before uploading to the Kindle Digital Text Platform.

Quoting from Amazon’s Guidelines for Publishers, “Kindlegen is the only tool officially supported by Amazon to convert files to the Kindle format. Only Kindle files created using Kindlegen are guaranteed to be compatible with the current and future Kindle devices & applications. Files created with 3^rd party software may not work properly on current or future Kindle devices & readers.”

Again quoting from Amazon, “Kindle Previewer is [a] graphical interface tool that emulates how books display on Kindle devices and applications. Kindle Previewer makes it easy to preview the layout of a book and make sure its text displays properly for any orientation or font size. This tool is recommended for publishers, eBook conversion companies, and individual authors in combination with Kindlegen to produce the highest quality Kindle books.”

Those are pretty strong reasons for using the Kindlegen and Kindle Previewer apps. Since I don’t want my uploaded book to turn out looking like it was created by an amateur, I’m taking Amazon’s advice. If you want to learn more about these two applications go to: http://s3.amazonaws.com/kindlegen/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf . I suggest you download this file for future reference. You can also download both apps at http://www.amazon.com/kindlepublishing .

One thing you should keep in mind is that Kindlegen is a command line tool, meaning you can’t just open it and automatically connect it to your book file. You will need to open it from the Start menu, which brings up a black command prompt window. Once there, you will follow specific steps to find your book and run it through Kindlegen. Further instructions are laid out in Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines (above). If you are more knowledgeable about computers than I am, or if you happen to have a friend or relative who is, it’s possible to create a shortcut linking Kindlegen to your book file. My son did this for me. If I can get him to write down the steps involved, I will forward that info to y’all later.

NOTE: If you choose, you have the option to skip using Kindlegen and the Kindle Previewer, and simply upload your html book file to the DPT without previewing it offline. Amazon provides an online previewer as an alternative. The problem is, if you discover formatting errors, or your book cover looks terrible, you will need to remove your book, make the necessary changes, upload it again and hope everything works right. If not, you’ll have to repeat the whole cumbersome process again. Amazon has provided Kindlegen and the Kindle Previewer so we can avoid those headaches.

Okay, I hope all this is a little clearer than mud, and you will know what I’m referring to when I mention Kindlegen and the Previewer in future blogs. This weekend “Dan the Computer Man” has kindly consented to meet with his tech-retarded old mom and help me figure out how to embed my book cover in my html book file. If he succeeds, and I have no doubt he will, I’ll report the results to you, my patient friends. Bye!

By Laura Drake

I saw a blog that interviewed, among others, the agent, Pam Strickler.  She had this to say about the current storm in publishing:  “There’s good and bad news. It’s kind of like the paperback revolution.”

It hit a synapse in my brain, and several others down the road fired (for a change), and led me to the following epiphany. 

If we step back and take the long view, the equivalent of the tsunami that we’re experiencing in publishing has happened a million times before.  The train was heralded as the end of the country’s overland routes.  The automobile was seen as the extinction of the horse.  Heck, I’ll bet that the invention of the chariot was gossiped to be the end of the cart, back in Roman days! 

I remember, as a kid, going to the Matinee at the Civic theatre in my home town on a Saturday.  There was a poster warning of the dangers of movies being televised; it showed a television (they were large back then, only the screens were small!) with a coin box on top, insinuating that you’d be inserting coins in an appliance YOU owned!  OMG! 

As we all know, most of the above dire portents didn't come to pass – we do pay for TV now, just not through a coin machine. But for the most part, we’ve slipped almost seamlessly from one advanced technology to the next.  The ebook, and how books will be sold in the future, will be the same, I’m sure.

We need to sit back, take a deep breath, and realize that although books may morph to the next iteration, stories will not go away, because people need and want them.  As long as there are stories, they’ll need someone to tell them, and that’s where we come in.

Don’t you think that the clan was aghast, watching the first person draw a stick horse on the wall of a cave?   “There goes all the story telling!  Who will need them, when you have a picture?”