Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
Yes, "really," William. You have NO idea how many times per week, we get someone washing up on the shore of my firm, because, sure enough, they have a KC folder and they need their "Word file." And here's the thing--it doesn't matter why they need it. It doesn't matter what YOU THINK. What matters is, they need their source file, to do X, Y or Z.
This attitude that they should take what they get, with KC, and be happy and shut up is really intolerable. Why should they shut up and be happy with it? What happens if they want to do something 2, 3 years down the line? What if they want to send it to--OMG!--an EDITOR? What if they (gasp!) want an ePUB?
They do not understand, upfront, that having committed edits to KC, they're then bloody stuck with it. Anyone who actually works with authors, on a larger-scale basis knows damned well that the concept of a "finished manuscript" is a bloody oxymoron. I've had customers that have ended up with more than 5500 edits. Yes, that's not a typo--Fifty-Five Hundred edits.
I've had a shocking number of clients decide to hire an editor, AFTER we've done their layout, either in INDD or in HTML/ePUB/MOBI. After, not before. With professionals (or Word) they can do that without considerable brain-damage, but not with KC. Is it an ideal scenario, for someone that far into production to then decide that they want an editor? No--but it happens a lot more than you think.
And people are entitled to want more than KC gives. It's ridiculous to assert that somehow, KC is going to meet everyone's needs. It's not.
And in those circumstances where it's not, the user has to go through all sorts of gyrations to do nothing more than get his or her current "final" manuscript in a working document form."Oh, it's easy, just download Calibre, take this file and convert it to this other format and then convert it to this third format to get a DOCX file..." I mean, come ON. The people that are going to use KC, by and large--because it's EASY--are going to be intimidated by all that.
KC is nothing more than a piece of software that holds somebody's hand, whilst walking through assigning styles. Yes, it does one-two more things, but...it's not all that. And while I'm sure that Amazon would LOVE to go to a locked-in scenario, where everybody has to use KC, and end up with a format that is useful only for Amazon (similar to using iAuthor, which I see that Apple is abandoning, mind you), I feel that having all the options open to you--and NOT being locked-in to using KC--gives people the most options.
If you want to keep pitching KC, that's your prerogative, but don't tell people not to worry about edits that they make in it. That is disingenuous and assumes that everything that they want to do, is doable from KC and we all know it's not. It's not harmful to tell them to make sure that they're using a final file, or as final as possible, before they put it in KC. Sure, the KC output can look nice, or nicer than possibly the user could do themselves, but it's a pretty limited set of options.
Hitch
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I think that we're talking at cross-purposes. We're not talking about the same thing. I was specifically referencing the incorrect common belief that many people still have(especially on KCF) when using KC that there is absolutely no way at all that you can edit and update your already-published reflowable ebook or print book using Kindle Create because the Word doc does not contain ALL edits -- ie people still wrongly believe that you always need to go back to the original Word doc to make an update to your already-published reflowable ebook or book on Amazon. That's what I've been talking about. And that's what I thought you were talking about in your original post.
I've since realized that you've been talking about suddenly discovering that you cannot publish on other ebook/book retailer platforms or whatever using KC and you want your Word doc + ALL KC edits to publish somewhere else. So you need to somehow extract the original Word doc with ALL KC edits intact. My view on that is that indie authors should always learn a new app's capabilities -- be fully informed about the pros an cons of that app -- BEFORE using it. And, yes, you're absolutely right using KC does lock you into Amazon which is not a good thing. But if you're just a know-nothing newbie author who only wants to publish his/her book/ebook as fast as possible on Amazon then what are you gonna do? Your gonna use the easiest application that gets you published as quickly as possible on Amazon. And it's almost guaranteed that the newbie author will also be clueless using MS Word as well as clueless using Kindle Create. We see problems like that every day on the KCF.
Just to clarify, you and I know that Amazon is after your dosh and just wants to lock you into their apps like KC. That's a given that will
never change, right? We know that but does that newbie author over there know that? And if he doesn't know that and still uses KC(while also intending to publish elsewhere) then whose fault is that?
"If you want to keep pitching KC, that's your prerogative, but don't tell people not to worry about edits that they make in it. That is disingenuous and assumes that everything that they want to do, is doable from KC and we all know it's not"
I'm certainly not "pitching KC". Kindle Create also has plenty of problems, particularly their fixed format which is awful as you know. No, I've been pitching "informed free choice"(in case you missed it). That means, for instance, that if you already know all about the Amazon lock-in with Kindle Create and you don't intend to publish your book or reflowable ebook anywhere else but Amazon(plenty of indie authors do that) then using Kindle Create is probably the most ideal choice.