Download Hal Spacejock - Free!

[Spacejock]

Hi Stormchild,

I've not heard anything from the publisher so either they're too busy emailing ebooks to contact me or they don't want to shatter my hopes for the electronic format ;-)

Glad you like the books - I'm writing #5 now but it's not due for another 12 months yet. Sorry! (As mentioned earlier in the thread, I put an awful lot of effort into each one. Sometimes up to 20 drafts & rewrites.)

[redbaron101]

great books spacejock, I just bought the rest. Just an update, your publishers are using more than one copy of the zip files as one of the previous posters surmised, I bought book2 and then book 3 & 4 separately. In the end Cathy emailed me zips of all the books to google gmail just fine (initially had problems with the book2 zip being rejected by google) - I then tried to forward the book 2 zip sent to an alternate email address (from my work email address to google) and guess what it bounced!

I didn't actually bother opening the book2.zip sent to my alternate email address in the end as I was already reading an rtf of book 2 from another source (I just wanted to make sure the zips were working to google before ordering books 3 and 4).

Just to let everyone know there is zips of the books that are corrupt/suspect and get bounced by google gmail, just persevere and ask them to email it again, as they do have copies that do email just fine to google gmail.

[Spacejock]

I emailed a working copy of book 2 and gmail rejected it. I know the zip is fine, so I suspect it may be a problem with one or more of google's servers. (They must have a huge bank of them checking attachments, given the volumes they handle. Maybe one has a missing or mismatched zip library?)

[Jill75]

Thanks for the link. Spacejock, keep on writing such awesome books. Check the size of the file that you are loading on gmail as it can only upload a certain file size. You can use an external storage link to which people can access and send the file to gmail through that link. One is like yousendit and a lot others.

Keep it coming!

[bbusybookworm]

Gmail also tends to be a bit fussy about Css file in archives, so if the ZIp archive has one it it, gmail may end up rejecting it.

I've often had to go through every single file in an archive to check wether or nota problamatic file has slipped through.

[pdurrant]

Google Mail has been silently dropping email from the webscription.net domain. It's not just attachments that are the problem. Google Mail is becoming too unreliable through excessive spam filtering.

Originally Posted by Spacejock

I emailed a working copy of book 2 and gmail rejected it. I know the zip is fine, so I suspect it may be a problem with one or more of google's servers. (They must have a huge bank of them checking attachments, given the volumes they handle. Maybe one has a missing or mismatched zip library?)

[Xenophon]

Spacejock:

I just had a look at the HTML of Hal2Ebook.html. It's chock full of the icky disgusting non-standard CR*P that Microsoft Word puts into its output when you do a simple Save-As HTML. Conversions to LRF would work much better if you (or your publisher) produced cleaner HTML. I think that MsWord has a save-as option for "simple html" or "standard-html" or something like that. Any chance of getting html that has been saved cleanly???

Xenophon

[snipenekkid]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Spacejock:

I just had a look at the HTML of Hal2Ebook.html. It's chock full of the icky disgusting non-standard CR*P that Microsoft Word puts into its output when you do a simple Save-As HTML. Conversions to LRF would work much better if you (or your publisher) produced cleaner HTML. I think that MsWord has a save-as option for "simple html" or "standard-html" or something like that. Any chance of getting html that has been saved cleanly???

Xenophon

I didn't want to be the one to bring that up so thanks. But I found the last three books to be a tad frustrating to convert so I ended up just reading them as HTML. In fact opening the RTF versions croaked my Word XP (2002). I am not sure it was any of the RTF files fault but they are the only ones with the problem. I never use RTF ever so it might have been a problem for a while. So it could be Office setup might is screwed up and needs a repair.

[pdurrant]

I cleaned up the HTML versions, and I've passed them on to Simon. I don't know when or if the publishers will use them.

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Spacejock:

I just had a look at the HTML of Hal2Ebook.html. It's chock full of the icky disgusting non-standard CR*P that Microsoft Word puts into its output when you do a simple Save-As HTML. Conversions to LRF would work much better if you (or your publisher) produced cleaner HTML. I think that MsWord has a save-as option for "simple html" or "standard-html" or something like that. Any chance of getting html that has been saved cleanly???

Xenophon

[shighfield]

I found the RTF versions to convert very easily to IMP with no surprises. Haven't tried to convert to epub as I read them on my ebookwise.

I used openoffice not microsoft work though if that is any help...

[snipenekkid]

Originally Posted by shighfield

I found the RTF versions to convert very easily to IMP with no surprises. Haven't tried to convert to epub as I read them on my ebookwise.

I used openoffice not microsoft work though if that is any help...

hey, I did not think of using OpenOffice. Excellent suggestion. I'll install it again. That is easier than hunting down my Office DVD and doing a repair install then re-installing all the patches and fixes for Office. I really suspect it is my Office install that is the issue.

[jgray]

Yes, MS Word has an option to save as HTML that is cleaner than the default, but it still is a mess. HTML Tidy has an option to clean up MS Word created HTML files. There may be some other method of automatically getting decent HTML from Word besides HTML Tidy, but I haven't found it yet. Given the choice, it is best not to use Word to create HTML at all.

[Spacejock]

I've just sent my publisher new HTML-tidied versions of the ebooks. I was going to use pdurrant's versions, but I needed a way of incorporating any changes to the originals so I sat down and wrote a conversion file for each book.

The idea with the html format was to give people a version to read in their browsers which looked as close as possible to a printed book. Icky MS-office control codes were of secondary importance, although html-tidy has done a good job of removing about half of them.

RTF is there for conversion to other formats, and plain text is included as a fallback.

I appreciate all the help and feedback, and hopefully the 'ebook experience' will continue to improve.

[redbaron101]

good work spacejock, cant wait for the next one. do you have a mailing list I can join? (for when the next book comes out, not for any other marketing purpose)

[Spacejock]

Originally Posted by redbaron101

good work spacejock, cant wait for the next one. do you have a mailing list I can join? (for when the next book comes out, not for any other marketing purpose)

I do run a mailing list for the books: http://www.spacejock.iinet.net.au/ma...o/halspacejock

I just checked the archives and I usually make one post a month on average. E.g. three posts this year were 'ebooks coming soon', 'ebooks available' and notification of a short story I had published in a bush fire relief (charity) collection.

So, it's not really for marketing. If you're not sure you can sign up, check the recent archives and if you don't like what you see you're welcome to unsubscribe.

I hate announcement lists which devolve into little more than author spam, so I think very carefully before posting anything to the Spacejock list.