Kindle edition of Heres and Nows ready!

Finally, after a steep learning curve, I have David Henschel's Heres and Nows in a format suitable for the Kindle Wireless Reading Device
and other e-readers using the Mobipocket format.

The reason it has taken as long as it has is that I wanted the look and feel to be as pleasant as possible, while at the same time using the features that make using an e-reader a different experience from reading a book. For example, there are no page numbers and instead there is a linked table of contents.

Because there are no physical pages, I wanted to make it clear where the end of a poem is, rather than have to turn the page to find out if that was the end or not. To this purpose I have put small printer's leaf ornaments at the foot of each poem.

The link above is still to the paperback version, but the Kindle version should be available by 1st March, and when it is I shall change the link if necessary.

I also have a version ready for the Sony Reader and iPad, iPhone and iPod, so my next thing to learn is how to make it available on those machines.

One publisher's struggle with Amazon 'Search Inside'

At last! The Search Inside feature on Amazon.co.uk for David Henschel's Heres and Nows actually works! (Click the link to go to the Amazon page, then click on the picture on that page to see inside the book.)

This means that you can go and browse the book on-line just as you would in a bookshop.

I believe that people want to see what they are buying, especially if it's a poet they've never heard of. You have to give something away so that people see the quality, then they'll want more and buy.

I originally asked Amazon to activate Search Inside back in August 2010. The whole process was immensely complicated. The link provided was simply wrong. Then they didn't tell me that my Amazon.co.uk password wouldn't work on Amazon.com. I had to set up a new account.

I finally uploaded the book's pdf file at the end of September.

By early December the Search Inside function worked on Amazon.com but still not on Amazon.co.uk, so again I clicked the link inviting publishers to activate this feature. Once again I was invited to sign up to Amazon.com. I emailed back explaining that I had done all this already and nothing had happened to the book's listing on Amazon.co.uk.

Amazon replied as follows:
We can use the same files on Amazon.com for Amazon.co.uk so you don’t need to resubmit. In future, just contact us if you wish your titles to be active in other Amazon territories.

to which I replied:

Yes please, please do this.

To which they replied:

Your title will be live on Amazon.co.uk within 24 hours.

My advice to other print-on-demand publishers: as soon as you hear from Amazon Search Inside, set up an account with Amazon Seller Central at once and upload the pdf file without delay. Then expect to wait two months before anything happens on Amazon.com. When it does, email them again and ask them to activate the feature on Amazon.co.uk as well.

Kindle edition coming soon!

It's been a struggle but I think I'm there. Watch this blog!

Converting the book for Kindle

My main aim in publishing Heres and Nows is that David Henschel's poetry should persist in the world.

What is good should live on, and this theme recurs a number of times in the poems themselves.

To this end, I am working on making Heres and Nows available in an inexpensive edition for e-readers like Kindle, Sony Reader and iPad.

I have to start somewhere, so I am starting with the Amazon Kindle machine.

On uploading the electronic pdf file via the Amazon web site I found that all my beautiful formatting had gone and the poems were jammed together with their lines concatenated. The thing was an unreadable mess.

What I thought would be the work of a few minutes is going to take me many weeks of work, tinkering about with html tags, replacing accented characters with their ASCII-codes, and creating links (because Kindle books don't have page numbers). It's lucky I have some web knowledge or this would be a non-starter!

When it's ready, you'll read about it first here.

A new frontier

On Friday I shall be going to Henley to look at the venue for the launch of Heres and Nows. I feel sure it will be excellent.

Meanwhile I am still struggling to get the Search Inside function on Amazon to work. It seems I have to set up a new account with Amazon.com, as my Amazon.co.uk password does not work. Nevertheless by following this blog you can get a good idea of the 111 pages of thought-provoking poetry you can buy for a mere £6.50.

Here is another fragment. Why panic and pain? Only, in my interpretation, because to accept the wonder of an opening reality we have to give up so much that is old.

From

Panic and pain

Of course lifelong I had been finding
thoughts, or they found me.
But suddenly
it seemed I crossed a frontier to a land
as rich as spring with newnesses and
no more frontiers.

Becoming a publisher

Title page

There are probably many people who have a book inside them, and a few seriously want to publish their work to the world. But if you are not a famous name or remarkably young and good-looking then your chances of getting a publisher are slim. This does not mean that your book is no good - those who read it will be the judge of that.

However, this is the internet age when anyone can publish a video on U-tube or make a blog. Then the public, not the publisher, decides what they want to see and read. With the new technology it can be the same with books, too. You decide what you want to publish, and a print-on-demand (POD) computer will print and bind a book every time someone orders one. No piles of unsold books in the garage (assuming you have a garage).

Books, however, are still a little tricky. You can use Lulu or Amazon Createspace but Lulu and Createspace take a fair slice of whatever revenues you get (albeit less than a traditional publisher). There are also some limitations regarding formats and distribution, which also differ between the these two providers. I wanted complete control of the book creation process.

When I came across David Henschel's poems and formed the idea to publish them, I realised that the only way I would get the book to look the way I wanted and to be distributed as widely as possible was to go direct to Lightning Source, who print for Lulu and many others.

However, Lightning Source does not design the book for you. There are plenty of help files, but all the layout, cover and industry-compatible file creation are the responsibility of the person who submits the book (in this case, me). Thus I embarked on a steep learning curve to becoming a publisher. More on this in future posts.

My grandfather worked in the book design department of Rich and Cowan and (I think) Jonathan Cape, so maybe it's in my blood that I enjoy the whole process of book creation, down to deciding the margins and typeface.

For 'Here's and Nows' I shall be using the 'look inside' facility on Amazon, and you can judge if I have done a good job. Or of course you could just order a copy of Heres and Nows: Poems From A Life..

- Martin

Always check the proofs!

I am very excited because the new proof copy of Heres and Nows has come back from the printer, and the book looks lovely.

For those who are interested in the trials and tribulations of a first-time publisher, it was necessary to get a second proof (at some expense) because of numerous errors in the first proof. Not the least of the errors was the omission of an entire poem, and there were many typographical mistakes (all mine).

If any of my readers is contemplating publishing a book, print out the whole thing from your computer and read it properly, and give it to others to read as well.

Anyway, with the help of two excellent proof readers who gave their time unstintingly, all is now as it should be.

I am especially happy to have got the photograph of David Henschel a little lighter in tone, which is a huge improvement.

Next stop is the Amazon listing. Watch this space.