The my poetry chapbook's first birthday is coming up!

[capri0mni]

The Monsters' Rhapsody: Disability, Culture, & Identity entered the world as an ink-and-paper bundle of joy on August 4, 2016.

In that time, 17 copies have sold: 3 to me (for technical reasons) and 14 to other people.

Somewhere on YouTube, I watched a vid of a panel of authors talking about self publishing, and one of them said that even when you get published via the traditional route (unless you're a Big Name Author that the publishing house is actively promoting), selling 200 copies a year is par for the course.

Considering that she was talking about prose books, and (if I recall correctly) her own work was of a traditional fiction sub-genre, and my book is poetry and it has an esoteric focus (unlike, say love poetry, or straight-up autobiography/confessional/abuse survival), I'm rather pleased to be within sight of 10% of that.*

Anyway, yesterday, I got it into head to try and convert my book from ink-and-paper to pixel-and-silicon by August 4, this year. ...

And this was after the computer I composed the book on died, so I had to re-download the PDF Lulu.com has on file, and go through the whole thing and rework the format to make it ebook compatible. ... My Inner Critic is fretting and chewing her fingernails, 'cause whoever first composed ebook algorithms didn't take the requirements of poetry into account at all (like allowing extra lines between stanzas).

So wish me luck.

---

*(shameless plug) If you'd like to help me get to a full 10% of Par For the Course, you can buy the book either at Lulu.com (where there's a 20% discount, and I earn $1.69):



or on Amazon (where there is no discount, and I earn $0.03 from the U.S., and $0.33 from the UK [no, I have no idea why I get more money from a foreign-to-me seller])
(/shameless plug)

Comments

[quarryquest]

Having written a book myself, and then been let down badly by a proof reader, I'll in limbo waiting for another proof reader to finish the job. After an informative time with no help from publishers (most of whom are vanity publishers in one form or another) I put it on Amazon as an ebook. I can easily unload the changed version as 2nd ed (I may add some pictures as well). The whole process rather frustrated me but it did keep me busy during a very dry and boring tie a time work before my redundancy. I must be thankful for that.

[capri0mni]

Congratulations!

What's the title of your book?

As for myself, I had a great experience with jesse_the_k, who volunteered her services as a proofreader, and I'm actually happy with Lulu publishing. But more people want to buy e-books than print book, these days, and a DRM-free ebook would actually be accessible to someone with a text-to-voice screen reader -- which, considering my subject matter is rather important.

[quarryquest]

My book is The Big Scary book of Fandom. I think I set it up as DRM free but if I haven't next time I go in there to edit it I will do my best.

I'm a big fan of Calibre (open source ebook maanagement sofware) which has DRM stripping tools galore. I don't strip to pirate, I do it so I can put it on the reader I prefer. Kindles annoy me and I wish I still had a Sony Reader as that was even able to play mp3s.

[capri0mni]

*Nod*

Lulu recommends Calibre -- and I had it on my machine before it died, but I didn't have it long enough to figure out the learning curve of how to tweak ebook formatting.

I want my final product to be DRM free for the same reason -- specifically for accessibility/disability reasons.

I don't have either a kindle or a kobo reader, but I do have both apps on my desktop.

[quarryquest]

I like the Kindle cloud app for reading books on a computer screen. Amazon does play a little dirty on this though as you can't copy and paste text. It's not much good if you are trying to quote something in an article / book chapter. Kindles are better as if you highlight they keep a text file you can download (and so do Kobo for that matter actually). The really sneaky thing about Kindles is the way the books download onto your desktop - they have changed the file so it's not readable by Calibre and therefore not convertable (or movable). That can be fixed (for now) but backtracking on the software but it's all not about the user, more about the big corporate giants who want to lock you into their product and make it difficult to use any other.

[capri0mni]

Yeah.

And I have a feeling that they're actually making it worse for themselves, even though they think they're "winning."

That's one reason why I don't think print books will ever go completely extinct. For one thing, you can lend them to friends (a thing often forbidden with ebooks). And for another, you can give them as presents (always my favorite ones, as a kid).

[quarryquest]

That's the only other reason I will de-DRM a book - to lend it to someone on the understanding that they delete it on finishing it. Or buy their own copy of the want to keep it.

[jesse_the_k]

Speaking of which, I have backups of your OO docs if that's any use?

[capri0mni]

*Head slap!*

That's right! I forgot!

Yes, I think they would be of use (though I've now switched over to LibreOffice, which is the spin-off company -- but it uses the same code).

Thank you!

Offsite backups for the win!

[jesse_the_k]

Put a combo zip on my Dropbox and sent you the link

Re: Offsite backups for the win!

[capri0mni]

...I have no idea how to use Dropbox ... I do not use the cloud...

Put the what in your what?

(that sounds suspiciously risque)

Re: Offsite backups for the win!

[jesse_the_k]

You'll get an email with a link.

Open the link to go to Dropbox web site.

Right-click on the link and choose "Download link to" and choose a place.

That's all -- you don't need an account or anything.

Otherwise the file is 36 mb -- can you handle that? I'll mail it to you and we'll see :,)

Re: Offsite backups for the win!

[capri0mni]

okay... I figured it out.

I think the pdf file you sent is the same one I retrieved from Lulu. But I'll go through and refresh my memory on your styles tutorial (ebooks require particular Headings styles that print books do not, and their contents system works in a different way, so I'm having to redo all of that. Also, Lulu's ebook wizard does not support Palatino Linotype, so I have to go convert the PDF back to a word document, and fiddle with each poem one by one, and then, put it back together).

*Cue the Beatles' "All Together Now!" earworm*

Thanks again for your help
!

Re: Offsite backups for the win!

[jesse_the_k]

I also mailed you the same stuff in three ZIPs, because I'm obsessive like that.

These do contain the TXT files, so if you need to do a lot of formatting, it might be easier to start with them rather than pasting from PDF, where you'll have to confirm every line break.

Happy to confuse you more in email :,)

Re: Offsite backups for the win!

[capri0mni]

Heh.

A little confusion is good for the soul.

[meridian_rose]

Yay! *cheers*

[capri0mni]

Thanks! :-)