Hamish the author tells me from his home in Scotland:
"Danny, I did it! The tools for creating e-books are, I have to say, still pretty poor; they haven't advanced much in the ten years since I was first trying to create e-books. But, not happy with all the difficulties involved in trying to cram PDFs through the current batch of readers, I persisted, and, with some help, have found some apps that made it possible to create a proper ePub version of ''Finitude'', which is attached.
Most conversion software strips out all the styling and formatting of a novel's text. As someone who not only writes these books but also typesets and publishes them, these are far more than cosmetic considerations to me. (For instance, I use italics to show when someone is thinking as opposed to speaking; when that's removed, the passage no longer makes sense.)
By converting the text to HTML, running it through Sigil, then fixing up the metadata in Calibre, I think I've finally managed to create an e-book that preserves my intended formatting but will re-flow on the reader. Unfortunately, Calibre was unable to create e-books in the MOBI and LRF formats, so it looks like I'll just be offering the book in ePub format -- which suits me, since it's a free and open format.
Thanks for all the pictures that Mobile readers you of the book on their e-readers cool, , and I hope this version works better. The file is also available at: Free!
http://www.hamishmacdonald.com/Finitude.epub
...or as an HTML file if anyone wants to try converting it further (with the proviso that I'd really prefer it wasn't rendered down into raw text):
http://www.hamishmacdonald.com/Finitude.html
- Hamish MacDonald