Star Trek E-Books

[KindleKid]

Hey all,

I've really been trying to figure out where to stick this topic. This seems as good a place as any.

I'm creating a fan made Star Trek book series called, Star Trek: The Forge. I'd love it if any Trek fans here would be interested in trying out my series and I'm curious to know, for those who are interested, what kind of device you use? When the site launches on Nov. 28th I'm going to have the first book available for download in PDF, but I'm converting it to PRC for the Kindle. I'm using PDFRead for the first time around, because I don't really have the time to compose a proper ebook with changeable font size, search able text, table of contents etc. If the series is fan approved I will definitely make that effort however. So for those of you who are interested, what device would you like me to convert it for? Of course making sure it's only the devices that can be converted with PDFRead.

Here's an announcement I made on another site:

This will be a series of short stories that will be an ENT spin off, containing the events that lead to the forging of the Federation. As you can imagine, much of this series will deal will take place between 2156 and 2160 commonly referred to as the Earth-Romulan wars. It will, however, continue right up till 2161 and the signing the charter that leads to the formation of the Federation. This includes a new and original incident just prior to the charter signing, completely disregarding the canonical series finale of ENT, "These are the Voyages" (TATV). I've never ben a fan of this episode and I did not appreciate it's outcome. I like tragedy, but was not pleased in the composition of this one. But please if you want to argue about this decision, start a separate thread on it. I'll share my thoughts there. But before all that here are some details on the first release:

Star Trek: The Forge
Book I: The Five Omens
Due Out: Nov. 28th 2008

Description:

This first book will deal with the outbreak of what is typically known as the Earth-Romulan War. There will appearances from the Enterprise crew, Admirals Gardner and Leonard, Minister Samuels, T'Pau, Shran, V'Las, Talok, the Tandarans, the Suliban as well as many others from both the ENT series as well as TOS. This war however, will not be the same one as described by Spock those many years later. This will not be a war exclusive to Humans and Romulans, but it will be an all out interstellar war affecting countless systems and species spread across two quadrants. And it all begins with five deadly and tragic omens.

Like I said, if you want to argue about TATV, then place it in it's proper forum. If you want to ask questions about the project itself, then please ask away!

If you're curious about more project details, you can find them here:

http://www.trekunited.com/community/...howtopic=17843

[JSWolf]

The problem is that PDF is not such a good reading experience on most devices. You really will need to make the effort to make proper reflowable editions.

The idea sounds good. And I do like Star Trek novels. But if all we get is a PDF or a PDFRead copy of the PDF, then your idea will tank faster then the a warp core breach.

What is the source of your book? If it is in Word, then It's really not difficult to make a proper reflowing eBook. And to do it so you have the needed formats supported, you'll need to have LRF (BBeB) & PRC (Mobipocket). You can also have LIT (MS Reader), ePub, & PDB (eReader) if you want as well.

If you need some help, let me know and we can see what can be done to get some of the versions you'll need out there.

[KindleKid]

It is written in word and I'd love the help. I'm making the illustrated cover in photoshop because it doesn't go to the edge when you insert an image in word. Can I send you a PM when it has reached the point of composing an ebook? I'm still writing it right now OR I can make a sample version and if you could walk me through that, then I can know what to do when I need to make the actual product.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by KindleKid

It is written in word and I'd love the help. I'm making the illustrated cover in photoshop because it doesn't go to the edge when you insert an image in word. Can I send you a PM when it has reached the point of composing an ebook? I'm still writing it right now OR I can make a sample version and if you could walk me through that, then I can know what to do when I need to make the actual product.

Sure, you can PM me when you are ready and we'll see what we can do. It probably won't be all that difficult to sort out to be honest. I'm happy to help.

[=X=]

Originally Posted by KindleKid

It is written in word and I'd love the help. I'm making the illustrated cover in photoshop because it doesn't go to the edge when you insert an image in word. Can I send you a PM when it has reached the point of composing an ebook? I'm still writing it right now OR I can make a sample version and if you could walk me through that, then I can know what to do when I need to make the actual product.

If you're using Word to create the eBook you might want to try out BookCreator (link)

The tool is a plugin/template for Word that optimizes the layout for eBook editing.

You can also create eBooks such as LRF, ePUB, IMP, LIT from within the tool though eBook creation has a 3rd party dependency. See the link for details.

NOTE: Setting the coverpage when creating an eBook will result in the first page being the coverpage without any margins. There is no need to embed the image in Word.

=X=

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by KindleKid

Hey all,

I've really been trying to figure out where to stick this topic. This seems as good a place as any.

I'm creating a fan made Star Trek book series called, Star Trek: The Forge. I'd love it if any Trek fans here would be interested in trying out my series and I'm curious to know, for those who are interested, what kind of device you use? When the site launches on Nov. 28th I'm going to have the first book available for download in PDF, but I'm converting it to PRC for the Kindle. I'm using PDFRead for the first time around, because I don't really have the time to compose a proper ebook with changeable font size, search able text, table of contents etc. If the series is fan approved I will definitely make that effort however. So for those of you who are interested, what device would you like me to convert it for? Of course making sure it's only the devices that can be converted with PDFRead.

My general thoughts are that you should try to offer an html version of the story; html can almost always be converted into a format that is compatible with any of the readers.

The other thought is that if you do want to make PDF versions, you should probably make several different versions... ones formatted for 5", 6", 8.9" and 10" screens would cover most of the major sizes of ebooks.

--
Bill