Books Versus Tech

The horrors of Kindle Format X

The problem with Amazon’s Kindle platform has always been that it has been designed and maintained by people who, quite evidently, do not understand books. The device and its firmware has been designed by Lab126, a company that specializes in handheld devices, and the name, Lab126, could not be more fitting, because everything about the Kindle has felt like something put together by lab rats, from day one; people with no sense of the real-world application of their devices. I would not be surprised to hear that the engineers at Lab123 have never really read a book on a Kindle or tried to format one, for that matter.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

What’s even worse: Most readers don’t understand books.

They might notice it doesn’t look exactly like a “real” book and that some weird things happen with sub- or super- scripts or fractions, but otherwise they live with it for the sake of both convenience and because they’ve already sunk money into a damn device (be it a Kindle or iPad or anything else that will run the Kindle app).

I still think Microsoft’s LIT format was beautiful.

Although, these days, eBooks look best from the iBookstore on an iPad. Although that contains horrors of its own too.

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Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation.

This is just nuts. Amazon loves books? Do they know how to read any?

Graeme Reynolds's Blog

This is a really strange blog post to have to write, simply because the situation is absurd. It would be comedic, really, if the situation was not costing me money and resulted in one of my best-selling books being unavailable in the run up to the busiest time of the year.

Let me tell you a little story.

I was sitting in front of my computer on Friday night, as is often the case, talking to friends on Facebook, randomly browsing things that seemed interesting and, in this particular case, attending the launch party for Chantal Noordeloos’s latest Coyote book, when I had an email notification arrive in my inbox from Kindle Direct Publishing.

The email was titled rather ominously as
Kindle Quality Notice: High Moor 2: Moonstruck – B00BVC7MKW

Now – Moonstruck has been out for around 18 months now. It’s done well for itself and, at the time…

View original post 877 more words

Kickstarter 1770-Style

Once upon a time, an author had to directly solicit pre-sales for his own book. Those who bought in were subscribing to the book.

From the 1770 book, Antiquity [Google Books link], we see how this worked out in the finished product.

eBook Glue Could Be Something

Convert Blogs to eBooks Instantly

I tested eBook Glue, which will turn a blog’s feed into an ePub or Mobi eBook file.

It didn’t seem to handle Blockquote correctly.

But I was impressed that it could do this entire post as part of the file. dotEpub couldn’t do that for me (too many images).

If they would let people use it to turn individual posts into an eBook file, I think they’d be on their way to success. I’d use it to turn posts like that into eBooks to offer here.

Export An ePub eBook From Wikipedia

Wikimedia enables ebook export feature on Wikipedia for your offline reading pleasure

I gave this a try and I have put together a screensnap guide (click on any to enlarge).

The UI is not exactly straightforward.

Update dotEPUB!

If you haven't updated the dotEPUB bookmarklet for a while and it freezes on "Working…", please LET US KNOW. & then update the bookmarklet

— dotepub.com (@dotepub) April 21, 2012

I got caught out this week, with my Bookmarklet no longer working. It turns out there was an update and I didn’t know it.

See how to update it as an Extension for Firefox in this video.

Other people use things that will save a webpage to read later. I like dumping those pages into an ePub file to eventually read later on an eInk or tablet screen.

And oh, if you have a Kindle, it will save in Kindle (MOBI) format too. Now you have no excuse not to get it.

iBooks Author: Creating A Children’s Book

Shoo Rayner is a professional who does children’s books.

This is his website (warning: autoplay music; click Stop button when there!)

He found out about iBooks Author by accident and has done two videos about it.

Now All eBook Eyes Turn To Kobo

Children of @elandes reading on Kobo eReaders

https://twitter.com/#!/mikecane/status/160410153454288897

https://twitter.com/#!/mikecane/status/160410422879584256

The Missing iBooks 2 Post

I made a special trip into Manhattan today to go to the Apple Store to try out iBooks 2.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t yet loaded onto any iDevices.

Apple Corporate has to give the word. There are things to consider when it comes to Sample books shown, apparently. Some might be Copyright-related, but I’m not sure.

As it stands, it will be perhaps a few days before I can try the new iBooks 2 and the new interactive iBooks Author-created books for myself.

Until then, I won’t have anything to say about all of what’s been happening Apple-wise in this area.

You Need This: GrabMyBooks

Liz Castro — who is an ePub expert — tweeted about something she was looking at called GrabMyBooks.

I went to the site and then downloaded the Firefox extension.

This thing kicks ass!