Hey Folks,
Well, the curator giveth and the curator taketh away. One of the bundles my work was going to be in was deleted by the curator. I think maybe he scheduled it too soon (August 15). Anyway…
Topic: Creating .epub and .mobi Files… Uh, No
In “Of Interest” today, Nate Hoffelder (The Digital Reader) mentions that Amazon has released a Kindle Create file creation tool as an add-in for Microsoft Word.
He goes on awhile too about creating .epub files, for which there are various programs.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t understand why this would matter, ever, to a writer. Even when I was eformatting for other folks, I did all the formatting in Microsoft Word. I’ve never created a .mobi (Kindle) or .epub (everything else) file.
When I upload my MS Word document to Draft2Digital, D2D automatically generates a clean, validated .epub file and a clean .mobi (Kindle) file that I can use any way I like. In fact, that .epub file is the one I upload to BundleRabbit.
The fact that you can upload your .doc or .docx file to D2D is exactly why I wonder why ANYbody in this day and age would opt NOT to publish to ebooks as well as paper.
Yes, I DO understand that if you create your own .epub and .mobi files manually, you can control more of the formatting, etc. Like adding drop caps, etc.
But I also know that on most e-readers, final formatting is up to the reader. So all the hours the “writer” (turned “formatter”) spent formatting his .epub or .mobi file can be negated in half a heartbeat. Dropcaps gone. Orientation changed. Font faces and sizes changed.
Besides, I’d rather spend those hours writing. Or, you know, rolling a sheet of paper into a cone and poking myself in the eye.
If anyone out there knows what I’m missing (i.e., a good reason to spend time creating .epub and/or .mobi files), please let me know.
Today, and Writing
Rolled out a little early this morning. Even after doing the email and Facebook thing (and writing the above), I turned to the novel for the first session at 3:30 a.m.
Well, this is gonna be one of those books. I wrote most of a new chapter, then just stopped. There were a few interruptions, but I’m used to those. I can be interrupted, take a few minutes to an hour or longer off, and come right back to the novel and pick up as if I’d never left.
But not this morning. What I wrote this morning wasn’t right. Now, this isn’t me reading it and being critical. This is my subconscious, as I’m writing, saying I’m not getting the right words on the page. Or maybe not in the right order.
So I’ll move what I wrote this morning to the end, put it in the “Cuts” section, and make another run at it in a little while.
Nope. The whole time I’ve had in the back of my mind that this would be a novel. It isn’t. It’s about one event. It’s a short story.
Oh well.
Back tomorrow.
Of Interest
See “The joys of volunteering for Distributed Proofreaders” at https://teleread.org/2017/08/02/the-joys-of-volunteering-for-distributed-proofreaders/. Just in case it’s your cuppa tea.
Via The Digital Reader, “Kindle Create Add-in for Microsoft Word Released” at https://the-digital-reader.com/2017/08/02/kindle-create-add-microsoft-word-released/. Note that both tools are currently in Beta (testing) phase.
Fiction Words: 2389
Nonfiction Words: 580 (Journal)
So total words for the day: 2969
Writing of “Pancho & Lefty: An Alternate Ending” (short story)
Day 1…… 2738 words. Total words to date…… 2738
Day 2…… 1975 words. Total words to date…… 4713
Day 3…… 2389 words. Total words to date…… 7102 (done)
Total fiction words for the month……… 8220
Total fiction words for the year………… 371198
Total nonfiction words for the month… 1590
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 120700
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 491898
The Daily Journal blog streak……………………………………… 616 days
Calendar Year 2017 Novel Goal (15 novels or novellas)………………… 8 novels or novellas
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………………………………………… 26
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………………………………… 4
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……………………………… 179