99 cents Sci fi Novel_Rogue Hunter

[KevisHendrickson]

Hi everyone. My name is Kevis Hendrickson. Please allow me to introduce my new science fiction novel Rogue Hunter now available on Kindle for 99 cents.

I hope you decide to check it out. Enjoy!

Link to sales page: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0029ZANKQ

[columbus]

Hi Kevis ,

Sadly, like many others I will not be able to read your novel, as I don't have a kindle.

[KevisHendrickson]

Columbus,

I am very sorry that I am unable to share my work with non-Kindle owners at this time. However, I do intend to have my books published on MobiPocket very soon which will solve that problem. I will make sure to let everyone know when my book is available in the new format. I thank you for your interest and appreciate your support.

[KevisHendrickson]

Amazon is currently offering a 75% discount on my new science fiction adventure novel Rogue Hunter. Now Kindle owners can enjoy this book for the low price of 99 cents. This is a limited-time only offer, so I invite you to get your copy while you can. Please enjoy the book everyone.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0029ZANKQ

[Dr. Drib]

Sadly (to say "Happily" would be a lie), I will not buy your book, due to the fact that it is not available for my Sony.

Happily (to say "Sadly" would be a lie), I thoroughly enjoy my Sony 505.

Unfortunately, I have yet to buy a Kindle. However, I do have plans to buy one, but sadly (I fear) your book will no longer be available for .99 cents.

So, as you can see, I am happy, sad, and unfortunate. Perhaps you should reconsider your marketing plan, or loosen Amazon's noose?


Don

[KevisHendrickson]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Sadly (to say "Happily" would be a lie), I will not buy your book, due to the fact that it is not available for my Sony.

Happily (to say "Sadly" would be a lie), I thoroughly enjoy my Sony 505.

Unfortunately, I have yet to buy a Kindle. However, I do have plans to buy one, but sadly (I fear) your book will no longer be available for .99 cents.

So, as you can see, I am happy, sad, and unfortunate. Perhaps you should reconsider your marketing plan, or loosen Amazon's noose?


Don

Dr. Drib,

I really appreciate the interest in Rogue Hunter. I am aware that most of the readers on this forum are unable to purchase my books because they are currently available only for Amazon's Kindle. However, I have already begun the process of publishing my books on MobiPocket which will resolve this problem. But I am taking every precaution to make certain that my books are formatted properly before publishing them. My belief is whether a book is 99 cents or 99 dollars, it should be of the highest quality.

I am looking forward to sharing my books with everyone who wants to read them, but for the time being I invite all Kindle owners to download their free sample of my books and enjoy the wonders contained within. Thanks!

Link to Amazon sales page:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0029ZANKQ

[jinlo]

Originally Posted by KevisHendrickson

Dr. Drib,

I am aware that most of the readers on this forum are unable to purchase my books because they are currently available only for Amazon's Kindle. However, I have already begun the process of publishing my books on MobiPocket which will resolve this problem. But I am taking every precaution to make certain that my books are formatted properly before publishing them.

I'm interested in exactly what you mean. I would have guessed that the formatting into mobipocket would utilize the same source file as the formatting for the kindle. I remember other posters here with books for the kindle have been able to create other formats fairly quickly, including utilizing the mobipocket service. What process are you using and what troubles are you running into? If there's a problem with the formatting for mobipocket, do those same problems exist on the kindle?

[KevisHendrickson]

Originally Posted by jinlo

I'm interested in exactly what you mean. I would have guessed that the formatting into mobipocket would utilize the same source file as the formatting for the kindle. I remember other posters here with books for the kindle have been able to create other formats fairly quickly, including utilizing the mobipocket service. What process are you using and what troubles are you running into? If there's a problem with the formatting for mobipocket, do those same problems exist on the kindle?

Jinlo,

I am happy to explain the problem. Most readers may be unaware of it, but publishing books on Kindle or MobiPocket is not a smooth or simple process. In fact, there is usually quite a bit of work involved in transferring the printed version of a book into this new digital format. When one creates a digital book using either Amazon's DTP or MobiPocket Creator software, the text is often formatted improperly. Meaning that a host of problems such as font styles (italics, font-size, bold facing, caps), punctuation, paragraph spacing, page breaks, etc. can all be thrown out of whack making a digital book appear sloppily produced or altogether unreadable. Usually when a publisher converts the text of a book into DTP or MobiPocket form, someone has to go back through every line of text and fix all the bad formatting that occurs during the conversion process.

In the case of my books, the conversion process was a total bust (as expected) and I have to go through the entire book one word or line at a time to repair the improperly converted text. This process requires me and other publishers to reformat the ebook using html code. It is a very time-consuming and exacting process, especially for one who is unfamiliar with html. Unfortunately, this process is unavoidable.

In many cases a technician skilled in the use of writing html coding must be hired to fix the formatting errors in order to release a clean and professional looking ebook. However, many authors, such as myself take it upon ourselves to try to do this work on our own if we don't have the budget to hire someone to prepare our books for us.

Let me be clear. My situation is not an isolated case. This is a routine process of publishing ebooks for ereaders, regardless of what device the ebook is intended for.

In my case, I have noticed several conversion errors with my ebook and have begun the slow and tedious process of reformatting my book. Anything less than a clean, professional, and easy-to-read digital book is unacceptable to me. I think I owe it to my readers to produce a professional and well-formatted book. Until I can do that, I must unfortunately refrain from publishing my books for non-Kindle owners.

[Dr. Drib]

Well, and hmmmm:

I used to be the number one producer of ebooks here on MobileRead. It's quite simple to take (for example) a text formatted by Word (again, as an example), run it through BookDesigner or calibre and come out with a very attractive book (in my opinion). I've gotten many compliments and thanks for the books I've made available here on MobileRead, when this website was a year younger and there was a more contemplative nature to the posts.

Of course, I can empathize with you on the desire to produce the very best books possible; but, as I've just pointed out, producing attractive books is a labor of love, dedication, and a desire to not have a life.


Don

[KevisHendrickson]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Well, and hmmmm:

I used to be the number one producer of ebooks here on MobileRead. It's quite simple to take (for example) a text formatted by Word (again, as an example), run it through BookDesigner or calibre and come out with a very attractive book (in my opinion). I've gotten many compliments and thanks for the books I've made available here on MobileRead, when this website was a year younger and there was a more contemplative nature to the posts.

Of course, I can empathize with you on the desire to produce the very best books possible; but, as I've just pointed out, producing attractive books is a labor of love, dedication, and a desire to not have a life.


Don

I'm still trying to learn the ropes of converting my books to digital format. Unfortunately, I don't have the expertise or the knowledge to perform this task without some effort involved. As my books are in Pdf. format, it creates the biggest hurdle for me. Even in the pros over at MobiPocket Creator help forum warns of immense problems converting .pdf files to DRM or AZW. If I had the funds, I'd simply hire a pro such as yourself and be done with it. Alas, I am forced to try to resolve this matter on my own. Hence, the painstakingly slow process of delivering my books to the public.

(And yes, the desire to have a life is apparently incompatible with publishing my books!)

[jinlo]

Originally Posted by KevisHendrickson

I'm still trying to learn the ropes of converting my books to digital format. Unfortunately, I don't have the expertise or the knowledge to perform this task without some effort involved. As my books are in Pdf. format, it creates the biggest hurdle for me. Even in the pros over at MobiPocket Creator help forum warns of immense problems converting .pdf files to DRM or AZW. If I had the funds, I'd simply hire a pro such as yourself and be done with it. Alas, I am forced to try to resolve this matter on my own. Hence, the painstakingly slow process of delivering my books to the public.

I'm a bit confused again. Are you saying that you are starting the conversion process from a pdf file? Does that mean you used Adobe Acrobat to write your book?

I'm not trying to be a pain here. I'm just trying to understand the process. Everything I've come across points toward starting with the source files in the original word processing format. If you used MS Word to write your novel, it seems it would make sense to start from the .doc file. If you didn't use MS Word, then it still might be easier to convert the original source file to a word doc and go from there. Starting the process with a pdf file, to me anyway, seems like a recipe for a disaster in every other ebook format.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by jinlo

I'm a bit confused again. Are you saying that you are starting the conversion process from a pdf file? Does that mean you used Adobe Acrobat to write your book?

No, but the final, ready-for-print version was probably a PDF; any earlier digital editions very likely had changes added to them. Whatever the publisher uses to create the PDF may not be available to or usable by the author.

Authors have their original Word docs, but not the version that came back from the editing & proofing & formatting processes.

[jinlo]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

No, but the final, ready-for-print version was probably a PDF; any earlier digital editions very likely had changes added to them. Whatever the publisher uses to create the PDF may not be available to or usable by the author.

Authors have their original Word docs, but not the version that came back from the editing & proofing & formatting processes.

That would make sense, but I still don't think it's wise to use those pdf files for conversions into other formats. If it were me, I would make alterations to the original word files to make them match the final pdf files to the best of my ability. At that point, I would then have a source file in the original format that matches, or at least closely matches, the ready-for-print version.

Unless I'm missing something here, and that's quite possible, trying to force a pdf file into another format is the most difficult route to take.

[KevisHendrickson]

Originally Posted by jinlo

I'm a bit confused again. Are you saying that you are starting the conversion process from a pdf file? Does that mean you used Adobe Acrobat to write your book?

I'm not trying to be a pain here. I'm just trying to understand the process. Everything I've come across points toward starting with the source files in the original word processing format. If you used MS Word to write your novel, it seems it would make sense to start from the .doc file. If you didn't use MS Word, then it still might be easier to convert the original source file to a word doc and go from there. Starting the process with a pdf file, to me anyway, seems like a recipe for a disaster in every other ebook format.

Jinlo,

In the case of my book The Legend of Witch Bane, my publisher prepared my book for Kindle and released a shoddy version. I complained to them and they told me that they were having much difficulty trying to figure out how to format books for DTP. Up to that point I was ignorant about the process of publishing books for Kindle and found it strange that their team of capable computer techs who performed these conversions for a living had so much trouble preparing my book for Kindle.

In their defense, my book contains tons of illustrations and my publisher used a .pdf copy of my book as the source of the conversion and thus encountered myriad problems. Through persistence, lots of complaining, and a whole lot of patience, I have finally got my publisher to produce a Kindle book that I am proud to say has my name on it.

However, because I side stepped the process of using a publisher for my new book Rogue Hunter, I was forced to undertake publishing it as a digital book on my own. Since this book has no interior illustrations and was not prepared using a .pdf, I used the original MSWord as the source copy for the conversion to DTP.

This was a disastrous conversion that was nearly unfixable. I even took the advice of several authors who had successfully prepared their books for Kindle and reset my MSWord document using the Styles feature which I was told would solve my problem. This too failed to do the job.

It was then that I learned that it is easier to use MobiPocket Creator to create my ebook and then upload it to DTP. I did this and although it was a much cleaner conversion than the previous ones, this version was also plagued with many problems. Through trial and error and much research, I was able to address 99 percent of all the formatting issues with Rogue Hunter. Sad to say, it took me nearly a month and a half to do this.

When I began the process of publishing my book for non-Kindle owners, I assumed that the MobiPocket conversion would not have the problems associated with DTP. However, I was wrong and it too has many formatting problems. This is an ongoing process for me as I try to clean up the formatting for Rogue Hunter. I dare not even attempt to publish The Legend of Witch Bane on MobiPocket. For starters, my book has illustrations and they are only included in the pdf version of my book. Since pdf is going to be a problem, I figure I'll have to hire a content publisher to prepare The Legend of Witch Bane for MobiPocket. Unfortunately, I don't have the funds for this right now.

If all goes well, I'll have Rogue Hunter cleaned up and all ready to go for MobiPocket in another month or so. But if it gives you any clue to what I'm up against with, every formatting error in my book has to be reformatted using html tags. It's not fun or quick. But I'll stick with it until I get my book in shape. Only then will I publish it and make it available for sale.

For now, my books are only available for Kindle owners.

[KevisHendrickson]

It's been a while since I last posted on this thread. So I'm giving it a friendly bump so that everyone will have a chance to check out my book. Rogue Hunter is currently available to Kindle owners for $3.99. Hope you guys decide to give my book a try. Enjoy!