Neptune Crossing - Jeffrey A. Carver

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

if you do decide to make only one format available as a free download, might i suggest you make it epub ? this can read natively by some devices (more and more) and also can be easily converted to other formats like mobipocket. it would be brilliant to see more authors supporting the new standard format.

it will mean less work for you, and once the standard becomes more widespread less work for all publishers offering ebooks, which is a good thing, and also more compatible ebooks and no worries about conversion, which is a good thing for readers of all flavors. i am quite certain that there are plenty of willing volunteers around here to help you with that, if you've never tried it before, and there are tools available like the feedbooks.com interface (soon (or possibly now ?) with a wysiwyg interface !!).

I hope that we'll release the WYSIWYG interface tomorrow and then keep on working on UI improvements.
Feedbooks is also a pretty good distribution channel for such content: users can directly download every book on their iPhone or Kindle, and very soon from FBReader too.

[JSWolf]

How does everyone (who has a Sony Reader) like this LRF edition of Neptune Crossing?

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Gibbo

Jeff did you manage to have a look at the file I send you?

I'm afraid my head is spinning from the number of files coming in. Having trouble remembering who sent what. That was Seas of Ernathe, right? You and someone else offered me SOE in html at the same time. I know I got one, and it looks--as far as I can tell from a casual page-through--completely clean. Needs some formatting, but basically it's a good source file for an ebook when I can get to it. I was amazed. And grateful.

I just looked at my email files, and I think the one I saw was from Petro Aarts. I don't seem to have received your file. Odd. (Though his took two tries to reach me, which was also odd.)

I'm guessing the source was the same, though, if it came from one of the pirate dens.

Jeff

[starrigger]

Re: the epub format, the sum total of my experience with it is the not-quite-finished markup that Marshall has done for NC. It looks fabulous, because he actually replicated the print book design. But I only viewed it on the Sony desktop viewer, which then crashed. I did notice that the file size was more like a pdf file than like the other ebook formats.

[induna]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How does everyone (who has a Sony Reader) like this LRF edition of Neptune Crossing?

It looks great. Thanks for the conversion.

[starrigger]

Neptune's up in epub format now. Kudos to Marshall!

[mazzeltjes]

I've just started Strange Attractions
can't wait for the rest
the tip is in the jar

[JRM34857]

Mr. Carver.... I am really enjoying Neptune Crossing.. Thanks....
Tip coming your way...

Rob

[llasram]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Re: the epub format, the sum total of my experience with it is the not-quite-finished markup that Marshall has done for NC. It looks fabulous, because he actually replicated the print book design. But I only viewed it on the Sony desktop viewer, which then crashed. I did notice that the file size was more like a pdf file than like the other ebook formats.

Well, I *still* don't have Internet access at home (my ISP says maybe another week (!!!)) and I have to something with my time... Having already defined the markup and most of the stylesheet for the book design made doing Strange Attractors much easier though.

The size is actually the same reason even well-made all-text PDFs will be a bit hefty -- embedded fonts. Although I agree with Hadrian that users should be able to select fonts (ideally through a generic user stylesheet mechanism), there are two issues: (1) perhaps an oversight, but the OPS spec doesn't promise that the system will have any fonts available or be able to display any particular range of Unicode characters. (2) I, er, really don't like the look of the default typeface provided by DE, especially it's italics. I actually think this is a "conspiracy" on the part of Adobe to convince people to buy attractive typefaces from them in order to embed .

[mazzeltjes]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How does everyone (who has a Sony Reader) like this LRF edition of Neptune Crossing?

It looks and reads great
thanks for the effort

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There is a really really good chance there are errors there. And unless you do a compare of the result to the PDF to find them, they'll remain. You can get split sentences, split paragraphs, & run on paragraphs. Oh and then there are the fi & fl errors that cause you to lose fi and fl depending on what software is used with the resulting file. It's a lot more work to make sure the PDF conversion is correct then just running it through Mobipocket Creator.

(That's in response to the advice to back-convert a PDF in Mobipocket Creator.)

Okay, I now see what you mean. I just got Sunborn in PDF from my Tor editor, and I ran it through Creator. Not nearly the seamless translation that Seas of Ernathe appeared to be. Everything that you mentioned above was true in the resulting file. It's a mess.

I fiddled with it some--a lot of the errors can be removed with global replace--but a lot can't. I may be going back to the manuscript file after all.

That's not today's problem, but I'll have to deal with it soon enough.

[JSWolf]

I've found a few formatting errors in the LRF edition of Neptune's Crossing and have emailed a new copy to Jeffrey. So hopefully it'll be up on his site soon.

[Megatron-UK]

The new epub versions of the first two books look great. I'll have to add these to my 'next to read' list!

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've found a few formatting errors in the LRF edition of Neptune's Crossing and have emailed a new copy to Jeffrey. So hopefully it'll be up on his site soon.

It's up as of five minutes ago. Thanks, Jon.

[Robotech_Master]

I'm going to be doing another revision on the Neptune Crossing and Strange Attractors eReader files, later today I expect. Nothing major, just a quick search and replace in the source and a recompile as I lately realized I'd been handling apostrophes incorrectly.