11 Feb 2012, Posted by caburkes in Amazon, Horror, KindleGen, Scratch, 0 Comments Tagged DOCTYPE, HTML, Microsoft Word, TRY
Publishing to Amazon: Scratch
For February, it will be Scratch. Even as I write this journal entry, Scratch is in ‘publishing’ status. This after being ‘in review’ which I swore I was going to get rejected. Let me tell you something … I do have to thank SMASHWORDS for their initial manual on how to develop the layout of an EBook. Not that this process went by easier, but it’s through them that I learned that Microsoft Word is my best friend in this process.
I tore up Google for everything else. There are so many intricate little things you have to do in order to make a Kindle .mobi file work and you have to be considerate of the latest versions of Kindles PLUS the older versions. Some details I glossed over since my Smashwords tutorials so I knew I would be accepted. But Amazon has guidelines for their latest generation of Kindle that are HTML compliant as well and it was a hard road to walk.
I won’t even TRY to embarrass myself in giving you my version of a ‘How To Make a Kindle’ EBook so I’ll drop the links of sites I visited (lived at) in order to get the job done. These sites are valuable resources, at this time since things always change, that helped me get Scratch online. I mean, really … I might see glaring errors and watch Scratch be brought down by the problems, not errors because of these websites … but lets hope for the best:
http://www.helenhanson.com … Author Helen Hanson gives the most comprehensive break down of the basic files needed to make your own EBook for Kindle. She has a few errors but she catches most of them. Some are because of changes in Kindle’s requirements and not her’s.
http://www.cjs-easy-as-pie.com/ … Straight up information on getting your EBook Kindle-ized with no chasers. I used this site to translate the crap I didn’t understand in Amazon’s 67 page Kindle Publishing Guidelines pdf.
http://www.w3schools.com/ … For understanding specific codes for HTML 5. For instance, Amazon’s adding of audio and video use HTML 5 coding in the HTML which don’t work in regular Html … So Amazon instructs that you use <audio> and <video> enclosures … but doesn’t tell you to start your HTML with <!DOCTYPE html> which I read is required for those codes to be read. Or maybe it doesnt matter … we shall see. In my HTML I started with that and just crossed my fingers.
Essential downloads will be the latest version of Amazon’s Kindle Guidelines: A MUST. I won’t post it here because it’s always evolving, I’m sure: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin
From there you can get the KindleGen and all the nifty info and downloads they offer to help you get to their standards. (For me, in the end, KindleGen and the Previewer just FAILED. I was so pissed.)
http://www.mobipocket.com/dev/default.asp …. MobiPocket creator and viewer cause everyone you look up will be spouting about Mobicreator as if it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread and when you get it it’s going to do some things that need and FAIL on everything else. Get it because it’s the only thing in your arsenal that will create a real PRC file
http://calibre-ebook.com/ …. I think it’s essential because it converts your book into multiple formats. While the above sites dont talk about it much, you’ll find Calibre does the work very few things … including Kindle’s own previewer … can’t.
http://mobiforge.com/ … good site that talks about Mobi crap. Remember: Kindle’s are Mobi compliant. However, their new KD8 or something like that is stepping away from .mobi so that may be a problem (more changes…grrrrr).
http://www.mobileread.com/ … good forum on .mobi people
That’s about it. During my hunt for Ebook publishing, I came across two interesting things:
http://anthologize.org/ …. A way to make an EBook out of your WordPress blog.
http://www.sophieproject.org/ … a way of making an interactive EBook similar to IBooks. The only issue is the end results need ‘Sophie’ viewers and what not. When they export to mobi or Epub, they’ll be the place to chill at.
Everyone is moving toward interactive multi-media Ebooks (at least the big guys) and the little guys are trying to swim through the confusion. We’ve come a long way with much more to go. We all want to do IBooks, but you have to own a Mac. Well, I’m currently trying to work out this Mac Emulator that allows me to run IOS LION on my system … I’ll let you know how thats working. So far … promising.
Until then, we try to survive the Amazon war against the publishing industry and tell a few good stories along the way.
Scratch is still in publishing mode. This oughta be good. Can’t wait to see how it turns out.
Meanwhile …. Preview the credits video and a clip of audio from the eBook:
Corey A. Burkes Author/CEO
DesktopEpics Entertainment
Stories You Can Feel! Continue Reading...