Book Creation Tutorials

[JohnP]

Fortunately I had a boot drive for Win XP still and BD 4.0 worked flawlesly. Windows Vista? The SONY Reader button just plain does not work. Going to edit the books in Vista and then boot into WinXP to finish.

Originally Posted by JohnP

When I click on the SONY Reader tab in Make EBooks or try the SONY reader button, NOTHING HAPPENS. All the other tabs work fine and a dialog box appears. The SONY Reader button does not give me a dialog box. I have tried installing BD 4, Installing the updates one by one or the full 7.0 update, uninstalling, deleting the folder, reinstalling, again and again. I cannot get the SONY Reader tab to show anything. I am using Vista and MS Word 2007. I tried unistalling the SONY library software (just in case)! Rebooted. And then I did it all over again. The sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over with the expectation of something different will happen. Any ideas?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by JohnP

Fortunately I had a boot drive for Win XP still and BD 4.0 worked flawlesly. Windows Vista? The SONY Reader button just plain does not work. Going to edit the books in Vista and then boot into WinXP to finish.

Did you read the message I liked in reply to your Vista problem and do what it says? If not, then you cannot say it's not Vista compatible. Others have gotten BD to work by following those directions.

[JohnP]

Can be used with Vista? yes. Compatible with Vista? no. Besides the only thing that DOES NOT work is the SONY Reader tab. Everything else does. If someone is not using the SONY Reader, it works fine. I tried all of the kludges, workarounds, and "This worked for me" to get the SONY Reader tab to work. None of them worked for ME. Until there is a set and easy to follow way of getting the SONY reader to run, I am using XP.
Update: Heh! Just as I gave up AndyAfro came up with the solution for the Sony Reader issue. My instuctions follow.

[jwhayn]

I finally got mine working using the following instructions. I have forgotten who published them in which thread but the instructions indeed worked. I left UAC enabled, logged in a real/full administrator account -- had to look up how to do that as not all admin accounts are full admins in Vista, performed the instructions below, and BD now works completely.
++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++
"quoted procedure"
In theory, yes, as long as you install it in "My Documents" rather than "Program Files", and download and installed the "DHTML Editor" control from microsoft.com that's a standard part of XP, but not supplied as standard with Vista.
A working vista version will appear when I will get a new pc (I think by the end of this year). But right now you can try to do as follows (suggested by users, I did not check it).

1. Install BookDesigner.msi to C:\Users\Goodbar\Book Designer 4.0\ (instead of C:\Program Files\Book Designer 4.0\).
2. Unpack the update (BookDesignerExe.zip) to Book Designer 4.0 directory.
3. Get "DHTML Editing Control for Applications" from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...&displaylang=en
and install it.
4. Go to BD directory, find GflAx.dll and register it (as admin)

[JohnP]

[

Originally Posted by andyafro

1 - MAKE SURE your Book Designer Folder is not in C:\program files put it somewhere else (on another drive if possible).
2 - This is a Sony Reader UpDate Only.
3 - Download and Unzip BD Sony Reader Update into a Folder on your desktop.
4 - Goto your Main BD Directory.
5 - Drag whole contents of BD Sony Reader Update over BD Main Directory (same as you would do with a normal update).
This update should sort all errors and it should run smoothly and also allow you too use the Book Cover Option.
Hope This Helps

That got it! Started from scratch to make sure that it worked for me every time. Did not have to move the BookDesigner 4.0 directory.
1. Uninstalled the previous copy of Book Designer 4.0 and cleaned the registry with RegSupremePro (tho I do not think that BD uses the registry).
2. Installed DhtmlEd.msi from Microsoft at (do not know if this still needs to be done but I had already done it)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en
3. Installed JUST the BookDesigner40.msi to the default Programs directory. Comes from the BookDesigner40.zip file.
4. Unzipped the BD%20-%20SONY%20READER%20UPDATE%2031-10-2007.rar file (winzip 11 does rar files, otherwise you need to use WinRAR)
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/att...4&d=1193803411
5. Copied the unzipped files and pasted them over the original files, making sure to replace all.
6. Under the tools directory in BD, I created a Sony Reader folder.
6. The SONY Reader tab now works. Make sure to set the default output to the Sony Reader folder. (Can set it to whatever, but nice to know where you sent it!)
8. When you are working on a book, use the save as under File and KNOW WHERE YOU ARE SAVING IT TO! Lost a book that way.
9. Note that I did not have to change any permissions or to fool with the .dll properties. I do have User Account Control turned off.

[JohnP]

Is there a way to get rid of the carriage returns in a lit formatted book in bd? When doing a conversion of a Lit formatted book, sometimes the text has hard Carriage returns smack in the middle of the sentence like the example below:

Eric turned to Corporal Leone. "Want him? Or can I have
him?" He adjusted the view sight
so the Russian's
features squarely filled the glass, the lines cutting across his hard,
sombre features:
I moved the text over to MS Word and it looks fine but when copied back to BD goes to a shortened right indent, kinda like verse:
Eric turned to Corporal Leone. "Want him?
Or can I havehim?" He adjusted the view
sight so the Russian's features squarely
filled the glass, the lines cutting across
his hard, sombre features:

Needless to say, this looks really bad in an lrf converted book.

[RWood]

I have had the same problems. It is often just a group of 10 - 20 lines in a cluster that seems to have the problem and seldom more than a few times per file. I just manually edit them in BD.

If the entire file came out that way I would go back and convert the LIT file to RTF and edit it in MSWord with Stingo's Word Macro.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by JohnP

Is there a way to get rid of the carriage returns in a lit formatted book in bd? When doing a conversion of a Lit formatted book, sometimes the text has hard Carriage returns smack in the middle of the sentence like the example below:

Eric turned to Corporal Leone. "Want him? Or can I have
him?" He adjusted the view sight
so the Russian's
features squarely filled the glass, the lines cutting across his hard,
sombre features:
I moved the text over to MS Word and it looks fine but when copied back to BD goes to a shortened right indent, kinda like verse:
Eric turned to Corporal Leone. "Want him?
Or can I havehim?" He adjusted the view
sight so the Russian's features squarely
filled the glass, the lines cutting across
his hard, sombre features:

Needless to say, this looks really bad in an lrf converted book.

What I see is that is one of those downloaded LIT files made from a poorly formatted text file tossed into Word and just output as it.

Most legit payed for LIT ebooks will come out quite nice. And lit2lrf does a heck of a nice job converting and it's so eay to use too.

[JohnP]

In the SONY Reader options tab in the make book window, there is a box under MISC that says TOC short, full, and all. MAKE IT FULL!
What I was getting was a beautiful list in the element browser but with an abbreviated Table of Contents or none at all in the finished book. The FULL option solved that.

[JohnP]

So I find a SONY Reader book that I would love to read but is a sloppy, quickly made mess. What is the best format that ABC Amber SONY Converter that BD can most easily work with? Seems like BD cannot edit a created lrf file

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by JohnP

So I find a SONY Reader book that I would love to read but is a sloppy, quickly made mess. What is the best format that ABC Amber SONY Converter that BD can most easily work with? Seems like BD cannot edit acreated lrf file

ABC Amber converters output some of the crappiest files ever made. That said, if you have Word or Open Office, output to RTF. DO NOT USE THAT RTF WITH YOUR SONY! Take that RTF and load it into your word processor and resvae it to a different filename. Then you can load that into BD and format it.

[JohnP]

After doing about 25 E-Book conversions to the SONY Reader lrf format, I have found that there are some REALLY BAD conversions out there! Here are things that I expect in a decent conversion:
1. The title should be the last name, first name dash and then the title.
2. Example: Verne, Jules – From the Earth to the Moon.lrf
3. Try to find the BEST copy of the book for conversion. A really good LIT or PDF file can make the conversion happen in less than 10 minutes. A really bad copy can take 4-5 hours.
4. All empty paragraphs (blank lines) that are not needed may be removed (my personal preference is not to have them there). This is easily done in BD by the element browser under blank paragraphs ( group delete). Nice to have a blank line under titles tho.
5. The table of contents should WORK in the finished book. There should also be no erroneous titles due to something being in all caps. Those “bonus” titles should be selected at then Alt-P to make them into a paragraph. The same with sub title. Element tab is your friend! Use it!
6. Italics should be done as there are in the book! BD sometimes will convert the italics into regular print. The worse case is to have to pull up the original copy of the book and FIND the italics and convert them over in the BD file. Can be very time consuming but once it’s done, it’s done!
7. Authors usually include a space between scenes in the book. These should be included in the book! BD can end up removing them. Sometimes Capital letters give them away. Otherwise, you again need to go to the original text and see if you can find them. The edit-find/replace can get you there pretty quickly. Elements show broken sentences which can also point them out.
8. There can be a LOT of garbage at the beginning of the book. Either delete it or put it at the end of the book. I don’t think the entire Gutenberg spiel needs to be in the front.
9. The absolutely hardest part of finishing a book is when there is spelling and grammatical errors in the book. Copying the text to MS Word and doing a spell check can be the easiest way to eliminate most of the obvious ones, but BD can really put in some zingers. The only true way is to proof read the entire book. The absolute WORST part of finishing a book. A GOOD copy of a .lit file or PDF file will eliminate almost all of these errors.
10. Pictures are optional! Only there for a second. If it works, then fine, otherwise don’t sweat it. Plenty of info on the web if you are thinking of reading the book.
11. The last step is page through the book in the SONY e-book library. Look at the table of contents. Page through the book to see if there are any obvoius errors. Fix them up and try again.
When all done, your book will be worthy of publication and a source of pride. My biggest concerns: How well will the SONY reader sell? Will it ever have a .lit option? and how do I get my masterpieces into others hands? (like with AndyAfro’s torrent for example).
Totally my two cents worth! I just hate to struggle through a slap dash conversion on such a terrific reader. I simply cannot read the small print in a paperback or hold a hard cover book any more.

[JohnP]

So I create my masterpiece. Before converting it over, I save the file using the save as command in BD. I close everything up. Later on tho, I decide to change this or that and pull up my saved copy. What a mess! The picture is gone, the title is usually screwed up, my CAPITAL LETTERS text are now back to titles, and the entire text comes out as one big paragraph!
The only workaround I have found is to use Word to back it up. Copy and Paste the picture, then ALL of the text. Save this file. When I want to restore it, I open a blank copy of BD, type one letter then paste the whole word file back into BD. Still needs some work, but WAY better than anything else I have found.
Am I saving it wrong or something? What I am really looking for is to get the file back in JUST AS I HAD LEFT IT! No way, no how so far. Using Vista...

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by JohnP

Am I saving it wrong or something? What I am really looking for is to get the file back in JUST AS I HAD LEFT IT! No way, no how so far. Using Vista...

Same thing happens to me. I haven't done much with BD since it seems like every time I try to format a book how I want it, the lit just comes out wrong somewhere, but the few I've gotten OK results with do just what you said if I go back to work on them.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JohnP

So I create my masterpiece. Before converting it over, I save the file using the save as command in BD. I close everything up. Later on tho, I decide to change this or that and pull up my saved copy. What a mess! The picture is gone, the title is usually screwed up, my CAPITAL LETTERS text are now back to titles, and the entire text comes out as one big paragraph!
The only workaround I have found is to use Word to back it up. Copy and Paste the picture, then ALL of the text. Save this file. When I want to restore it, I open a blank copy of BD, type one letter then paste the whole word file back into BD. Still needs some work, but WAY better than anything else I have found.
Am I saving it wrong or something? What I am really looking for is to get the file back in JUST AS I HAD LEFT IT! No way, no how so far. Using Vista...

Exit BD, then copy the entire "LastFile" folder within the BookDesigner folder to somewhere safe (eg the folder containing your original book). Next time you want to edit the book, simply open that folder (the copied one) and double click the ".html0" file to open it in BD.