Support for Indie Authors discussion

Well, it's a big day in the life of my brand new book, "Bullseye Breach." The physical book is off to the printer and now I'm trying to figure out the details around e-publishing it on Amazon Kindle.

I've accumulated a little bit of know-now the past couple days, but I'm stumped by one question. First the know-how:

The actual upload/publish process is straightforward. Just go through a web dialog to set everything up. That part is easy.

Uploading the cover has an undocumented trick. Some super fancy hi-res .jpg files apparently don't work. The Kindle upload wants colors based on RGB, not CMYK. And it apparently also doesn't like images with layers. The workaround - open the cover jpg file with Microsoft Paint, save it as a JPG with a different name and that strips out all the fancy stuff. Then it uploads just fine.

As for uploading the book itself - the KDP documentation says the best way is to use MS Word and save it as a filtered HTML file, then upload the HTML file. But this has problems. I have some logo images in the front matter and an author head-shot. But when uploading that HTML file, those images just show a weird looking graphical place holder in the generated Kindle book. As an experiment, I tried uploading and converting a .DOCX file directly, without saving as HTML. This worked better - the images are right there and in color. So forget HTML uploads.

The online previewer doesn't show the Table of Contents. I tried previewing drafts with the online previewer and it made me crazy because it didn't show my TOC. Yet that TOC was there, each chapter starting with a HEADING 1. I learned by trial and error, the better way to preview the Kindle book is download a copy of the new e-book. It's name is {title}.mobi and you can open it directly with Kindle for (Windows, Mac, pick your platform). The online previewer claims to simulate a bunch of Kindle viewing platforms ranging from cell phones to tablets to full-fledged Mac and Windows computers. But based on what I've found, I like downloading the .mobi file and looking it with my real Kindle e-reader.

Now my question - There are a few sections in my book that work better with a Courier font. But the Kindle upload looks like it wants to use its own font type throughout the book, no matter what fonts I put in the source .DOCX document. Is this just a limitation of Kindle and that .mobi format or am I missing something?

thanks

- Greg

When I uploaded my first novel Chameleon I had used a different font for one section but that font was eliminated and appeared just like the rest of the book on the Kindle version, so yes, I think the mobi files don't support some fonts. Italics are fine, though. I hope that helps. And congrats with your book. I hope it does well.

When I uploaded my first novel Chameleon I had used a different font for one section but that font was eliminated and appeared just like the rest of the book on the Kindle version, so yes, I think the mobi files don't support some fonts. Italics are fine, though. I hope that helps. And congrats with your book. I hope it does well.

I don't know about kindle readers but the kindle app has a feature that lets the readers choose to use their own choice of fonts or they can set it to the author's original fonts. Your ereader, when you test it, might be set on the former.

I don7 think it's a font compability (not supported by ereaders) because then you'd see garbage instead of your text.

The Kindle reader does have a choice of fonts. I tend to read and write in Georgia. I also LIVE in Georgia.

Thanks - Yes, italics work. Bolds work. But from everything I've uncovered so far, it looks like the entire document has to be the same font type. Which is a bummer. And my Kindle for Windows I'm using to proof the .mobi file doesn't show me any ability to change reading fonts.

So then I was thinking - what about trying to do the pieces I want in Courier with images instead of text? But images probably don't scale up and down the same way as text. Or maybe there's another clever way to set off computer output from the text. That's the real goal. In some tech support forums, posters can enclose sections of computer code with a HTML-ish tag and that sets it off from the rest of the text. I wonder if .mobi has a similar capability?

- Greg

No, you cannot dictate the font unless you upload the book as a PDF file, but you do not want to do that. Doing so would give you an unreadable book that cannot be reflowed for the size of the screen it is being read on. Also, not all fonts are free for commercial use, so by having their own licensed fonts available, Amazon is also protecting themselves.

Thanks Christina - that's what I was afraid of. I'll see what else I can come up with.

- Greg

Well this is frustrating. Instead of a fighting a lost battle trying to vary the font, I set the computer chat paragraphs off with italics and white space. Not my first choice but workable. I tried using a screen shot image of one of the computer output sections of the book. But no matter how I set up the image or how I set the text wrapping around the image, the Kindle conversion puts the image wherever it wants and over the top of a bunch of text - even when I tell Word to flow the text over and under the image.

I read story after story about how we can now integrate all these visual elements with e-book technology, but apparently the story writers haven't actually published anything first-hand this way. Or maybe they know something I haven't found out yet.

I realize the challenge of scaling up and down depending on screen sizes - but if I embed an image in a document and set it up as documented between one paragraph ending and another beginning, no matter what display size, that image should be in the same relative spot in the generated .mobi file.

- Greg

Ok - in fairness to Amazon, I found an app called Kindle Textbook Creator. On paper, it looks like it has all the stuff expected to create a book with more sophisticated formatting. It takes a PDF file as input and outputs a book suitable for uploading to KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). But a caveat - the User's Guide says those textbooks aren't readable on Kindle e-ink devices.

So my griping earlier about no ability to put together richer formatted material now seems wrong.

But details still kill you every time. I'm not expert in Kindle devices - but weren't those original e-ink devices the very first Kindle readers that came out a few years ago? They must have been very primitive.

Anyway, after reading through the Textbook Creator User's Guide, I decided not to use it. It has the documented issue around e-ink readers, and no doubt a bunch of undocumented surprises.

I want "Bullseye Breach" readable by the widest possible number of devices. Putting in a more realistic looking image would be nice, but not critical to the overall story. So I took out the screen shot image and replaced it with italics text with a bunch of white space around it.

Hopefully this running commentary will be helpful for others who go through the same experience.

22 tests making this e-book with KDP but I think I have a workable one now.

- Greg

E-ink is still being used for all Kindle devices that are not Fire tablets, so you definitely do not want to limit your market in that way. I know many people who prefer to read on straight e-reader devices because it feels more natural to them.

Imagine being a starving college student. Your Mom saved up and got you an E-ink reader last Christmas to help save you the trouble of carrying around that heavy backpack full of books. You download your textbooks for the upcoming semester, only to find your E-ink reader doesn't deal with them. And now you're out the cost of the downloaded textbooks and you need to cough up another $300 or so for a Fire or other tablet to read them. Not to mention the time and trial and error aggravation to find all this out. Makes you wonder what the developers were thinking? Or am I missing something?

- Greg

You aren't missing anything. They WANT you to have to buy the stuff. It's DESIGNED to fall apart in a year, three at the most. That way you HAVE to replace it.

The limitations are right there on the textbook pages. Not many people are going to try to read a textbook on an e-ink reader because most textbooks with diagrams and illustrations are in full color. A larger tablet would obviously work best for such viewings, but I'm sure a smaller, more cost effective tablet with the Kindle app or a 7" Fire HD, which costs little more than a paperwhite if anything, would work as well. Still, unless *you* are writing a textbook, it would not be practical to use the textbook creator.

Nope, "Bullseye Breach" isn't a textbook. It started out as a textbook with a short story to illustrate the points, but the short story took over and I decided there are plenty of how-to textbooks about IT security that nobody reads anyway. So "Bullseye Breach" doesn't have any charts or graphs or illustrations, just a great story. Which turns out to be a good thing based on my experience so far with E-Book publishing. Maybe I'll put together some discussion questions on the book website after the physical book hits the streets in mid April.

As for E-reader devices - this feels like a variation on the VHS vs. Betamax debate a generation ago, with incompatible E-Readers from different players, each trying to set the standard at the expense of the others, and authors and readers struggling to deal with it all.

Ya know - we need a group of authors and readers to get together and spec a standard, then persuade the vendors to build tools around the standard. Everyone wins that way.

- Greg

Oh yes - key Kathy, I got so wrapped up in troubleshooting I forgot to say thanks for the kind words.

- Greg