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 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/.