books

Conversion Experience

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So Quest for Employment is being put into iBookstore form.  By hand.  So far I’m going to say I’m finding iBook Author friendly in all the wrong ways, and not exactly helpful.  There’s some slick elements to it, but the hand-holding functions really don’t help.

It’s very odd, but I I suddenly realized just how many formats I have to work with – not on an intellectual level, but a visceral one.

  • First there’s the main doc, which I just do In Libre Office.  I do a few formatting tricks (avoiding bullet points) to make sure it’s very cross-compatible.
  • I bring it over into Jutoh.
  • In Jutoh I configure it for ePub (for Nook) and Mobipocket (for Kindle).
  • I view it in Calibre to make sure it looks OK, and maybe other devices.
  • Since formatting the book often reveals things to fix, once I’ve done these conversions, I get the spacing and organization right for exporting to PDF from Libre office.
  • Now, if I want a print book, then I also have to take a file and format it to have proper page locations, spacing, etc. for a print format.  This is exported as PDF Inevitably I’m going to blow tens of dollars running prints to get that right, or burn my printer out.  Or both.

It’s educational, but it teaches me one thing – I bloody well love being an author.  Otherwise I wouldn’t do this stuff.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

 

 

Documentation And Fear

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When I started my last job search, I was surprised at how many job interviewed involved me managing documentation.  Surprised not in that a Project Manager needed documentation skills or would oversee documentation projects, but in that someone actually cared.  IT is infamous for poor documentation, so it was nice to see a focus on good documentation.

I’ve wondered if the lack of documentation, record-keeping, and code commenting actually holds back development and innovation.  It’s hard to innovate when you aren’t quite sure what you’re doing at the moment or what people did in the past.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

How We Might Turn Unoriginality To Our Advantage

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Nearly two years ago I noted that every other book cover I saw looked like Twilight and wondered about an originality/unoriginality arms race.

Reporting from the front lines in pop culture, I’d like to report that now a lot of book covers look like “50 Shades of Gray,” so I think unoriginality is winning.

When you think about it, there is doubtlessly a lot of 50-Shades derived books out there.  50 Shades is hot and hip right now, so there’s going to be attempts to jump into the market.  Sure all the covers look alike, but some of this is probably selling anyway.  Even though I am thrilled to see fanfic become fic , the story itself disturbs me.

Kind of makes me wonder how many stories wouldn’t be noticed, got made just for this, or were revived to take advantage of the new 50 Shades related craze.

So this got me thinking for all my writing and media friends.

We know that there’s plenty of problems with media originality.  It gets talked about a lot here at Fan To Pro.  Well, ranted about, as we do since many of us are authors.

We know that media goes in cycles, ones that are often big, obvious, and kind of blatant.  Twilight created one, 50 Shades another, but we know this goes back to the days of Star Wars and all it’s obvious ripoffs.

So instead of giving up on your great idea, or avoiding trends, why not embrace it and see what works you have work with current trends?

Any good author or artist has all sorts of ideas, potential projects, half-finished works, and more.  You could try and time their release or development of one of your works to jump on the existing trends.

Yes, there’s the danger of looking derivative, or unoriginal, or getting ignored.  But if you’re going to go with some of the big publishers, you’re facing enough challenges as it is.  Being seen as unoriginal by some, getting a smaller part of a larger market share, etc. aren’t the worst risks you can face.

So, if we’re gonna be in this cycle of unoriginality for awhile, maybe we media procures can take advantage of it.

Worse things could happen.  If nothing else maybe the book covers will all look the same differently . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.