Free E-book: Raising Atlantis by Thomas Greanias

[columbus]

Thanks for posting this and welcome to Mobilread Ocean It looks an interesting read.

Originally Posted by jgray

Edit: I know the original poster is not the author. My comments are to all authors.

If the point of the author is to have his/her material read by a wider audience, then free or not, providing only a PDF is self defeating. Sure, some will read it on their "big screen" PC and a few will spend hours converting it to something useful on an ebook reader. Not me, and not many others are willing to go through this hassle any more. There is too much other material by too many other authors that we can be reading without dealing with PDF. If you want more readers, make it easier for them to actually read your stuff.

The phrase "Gift horse and mouth" springs to mind.

As it is free, personally I don't mind spending less than 5 minutes of my time converting it to a format I prefer.

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by columbus

The phrase "Gift horse and mouth" springs to mind.

As it is free, personally I don't mind spending less than 5 minutes of my time converting it to a format I prefer.

Agreed!!! I would NEVER buy a PDF formatted book, but I am always willing to do the small amount of work necessary to convert a free PDF to a useable format. In this case, the PDF was not as badly made as many PDFs I have come across, and after converting it to HTML, Sigil made short work of making an EPUB from it. If Sigil had not just made it's debut, I would have used Book Designer to make an FB2 from it.

[Wario]

I love a good freebi

Originally Posted by Ocean

Please recommend to me some more Atlantis fiction.

Here a good noval, a bit like Dan Brown style.
'The Atlantis Code' by Charles Brokaw

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by Ocean

Atlantis...Ocean....very cool for a first post, right?


Please recommend to me some more Atlantis fiction.

This one is interesting, it's a short book, the latest I've read on the subject. Atlantis by Orson Scott Card. His view is highly plausible as archeology is concerned.

[vsalvaggio]

Originally Posted by jgray

If the point of the author is to have his/her material read by a wider audience, then free or not, providing only a PDF is self defeating. Sure, some will read it on their "big screen" PC and a few will spend hours converting it to something useful on an ebook reader. Not me, and not many others are willing to go through this hassle any more. There is too much other material by too many other authors that we can be reading without dealing with PDF. If you want more readers, make it easier for them to actually read your stuff.

I agree with jgray and I also thought he worded his feedback to authors very respectfully.

I saw this book in the store (pback) and considered looking it up as an ebook later so I was at first excited to see it offered for free. Finding out it was a free PDF cooled my ardor quickly. Yes, we can take 2 minutes to convert this *IF IT CONVERTS NICELY*. Conversion in some PDF's make a nightmare of formatting and I don't want to spend the time fooling with it when I have lots else to read. AND since I don't know if a PDF is a "GOOD" PDF or a "BAD" PDF (for converting) I am extremely likely to just skip the whole thing.

Which is jgray's point. If the author/publisher wants to give a book away for free in the hopes we like it and buy more of their stuff, it is in their best interest to make it as easy as possible by offering multiple formats (see Baen.com for the best example of "the first taste is free" marketing).

Hey, free is free and I'll not complain about anything given away...I just might not bother to download it if it even appears to be a hassle.

[Ocean]

Originally Posted by Moe The Cat

Two minutes to run the PDF through Mobipocket Creator. One more minute to change some </br> tags to <p> tags in the resulting HTML file and run it through Mobipocket Creator again. Three minutes total to produce a quite readable Mobipocket, with Antarctic map on two pages.

Thanks for telling me this. It helped make the file even more readable.

I like a good space and a half or two between my paragraphs. That helped.

[tech_au]

Rats I bought the first two on special several months back for $5 each.
I am currently reading Raising Atlantis and it pretty damn good. I must say that the PDF version of Raising Atlantis that I bought from BoB is the best reflowed PDF I have read. Apart from the usual partial pages you wouldn't know you are reading a PDF rather than a LRX or Epub.
Must remember to get the newly released book 3, Atlantis Revelation for $9.99 + $2.50 rewards from BoB(Net cost $7.49) while its on special

[Bajor025]

Thank you for this book... been trying to find this for sometime
Cheers
Bajor025

[yvanleterrible]

Well, I'm now half way in and I can't say I like it that much at this point. The beginning seemed promising, the writing good, interesting characters, good subject buildup. But then when the story gets to the actual fiction, inconsistencies and physical improbabilities set in at every two pages. :rudenoise:

Just imagine this:
There's a pyramid under 1000 feet of ice, they drill a shaft that goes down to it, find an OPEN entrance and there's no ice inside the kilometers of shafts and hallways?

The main character falls down a 100 foot shaft, hooks himself up to a line as he falls, in total darkness mind you, and stops 20 feet short from the ground, without being hurt. (I must be stupid because I broke an arm from a 5 foot fall) Then he cuts his line to jump to the ground, again without being hurt. Oh, the preceding bad guy who fell in the same hole found himself impaled on an obelisk, and our hero manages to miss it?

The hero and heroin find themselves in a control room and start a mechanism that has been unused for TWELVE THOUSAND years, read this THOUSANDS, and it works without a glitch. I just wish GM knew something about this technology.

I could go on and on like this for a long time. There is a far fetched action or improbability every two pages.

That makes it bad fiction to me, because it defies natural and physical laws.

But... I do like the subject of Atlantis and am curious about what he imagines for the rest of the story. So I'll soldier on although I rate this ebook immediately a 2 out of 10 stars.
Sorry Mr. Greanias...

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

The hero and heroin find themselves in a control room

And the hero injects the heroin, which makes him drift off to sleep, during which he dreams that he activates the 12k year old device...

Um. Sorry. I don't normally mind typos, but that's one that really catches my attention. The female variant of hero is heroine. Drop the e, and you've got a white powder drug not much connected with heroism.

[koland]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

And the hero injects the heroin, which makes him drift off to sleep, during which he dreams that he activates the 12k year old device...

Um. Sorry. I don't normally mind typos, but that's one that really catches my attention. The female variant of hero is heroine. Drop the e, and you've got a white powder drug not much connected with heroism.

Then again, perhaps not a typo - as the HEROIN caused the HERO to drop off to sleep (leaving the HEROINE to her own devices, I suppose...).

[AprilHare]

I was going to give ocean karma - but he's managed to get himself banned..
Wherever you are, thanks for finding this for us! Wonder how easy it would be to make a pdf have pdf reflow?

[yvanleterrible]

Sorry, definitely a typo.
In French we say "héroïne" as the feminine of "héro". It is the same word for the drug "héroïne".

[Dahak]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Well, I'm now half way in and I can't say I like it that much at this point. The beginning seemed promising, the writing good, interesting characters, good subject buildup. But then when the story gets to the actual fiction, inconsistencies and physical improbabilities set in at every two pages. :rudenoise:

Thank you!

I thought I was the only one who couldn't finish it.

[AprilHare]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Well, I'm now half way in and I can't say I like it that much at this point. The beginning seemed promising, the writing good, interesting characters, good subject buildup. But then when the story gets to the actual fiction, inconsistencies and physical improbabilities set in at every two pages. :rudenoise:

Just imagine this:
There's a pyramid under 1000 feet of ice, they drill a shaft that goes down to it, find an OPEN entrance and there's no ice inside the kilometers of shafts and hallways?

The main character falls down a 100 foot shaft, hooks himself up to a line as he falls, in total darkness mind you, and stops 20 feet short from the ground, without being hurt. (I must be stupid because I broke an arm from a 5 foot fall) Then he cuts his line to jump to the ground, again without being hurt. Oh, the preceding bad guy who fell in the same hole found himself impaled on an obelisk, and our hero manages to miss it?

The hero and heroin find themselves in a control room and start a mechanism that has been unused for TWELVE THOUSAND years, read this THOUSANDS, and it works without a glitch. I just wish GM knew something about this technology.

I could go on and on like this for a long time. There is a far fetched action or improbability every two pages.

That makes it bad fiction to me, because it defies natural and physical laws.

But... I do like the subject of Atlantis and am curious about what he imagines for the rest of the story. So I'll soldier on although I rate this ebook immediately a 2 out of 10 stars.
Sorry Mr. Greanias...

Damn! Oh well, never look a gift horse in the mouth; I'll try reading it later