Historical Fiction Crane, Stephen: The Red Badge of Courage. V1. 02-Oct-11

[weatherwax]

Stephen Crane (November 1, 1871 – June 5, 1900) was an American novelist, short story writer, poet and journalist. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation.

The 1895 novel is subtitled "An Episode of the American Civil War". The story is told from the point of view of a young private who is at first filled with boyish dreams of the glory of war and then quickly becomes disillusioned by war's reality.

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[Jamestoo]

I'm just beginning to learn about making an ebook and downloaded your Red Badge of Courage as an example of what can be done. I think it is very nicely done!

I intend to base my book on my site, www.consider-the-lilies.org, with the text rewritten and formatted and some of the images dropped to transition from Web site to ebook layout.

Can you recommend a source for ebook formatting written for someone like myself at the newbie level?

Thanks

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by Jamestoo

Can you recommend a source for ebook formatting written for someone like myself at the newbie level?

Thanks

Having been a newbie myself I'd like to be able to recommend something for you. But there are so many ways of producing ePub ebooks and so many people have so many different background skills and interests that it's difficult to know where to start.

I suggest, if I may, that you ask this question in the ePub forum. There are several stickies or threads that can give you pointers and many expert users who are happy to share their experience.

For what it is worth I used to dabble in web design, so am comfortable working with XHTML. the process I use is to
- get clean text - usually a Word or text document
- divide the text into front matter, chapters and endmatter sections
- add valid XHTM 1.1 tags to each section and validate the files to W3C standards
- copy the XHTML files into an ePub template, and edit the conten.opf and toc.ncx files to match
- validate the ePub package with ePubCheck and with FlightCrew.

Elizabeth Castro has written two very helpful books that I use frequently: HTML, XHTML & CSS, and ePub Straight to the Point

I hope this helps.