Publetariat

This is a cross-post from my Kindle Formatting blog.

There have been a couple of really good Kindle 2 reviews in the last day or two, including Alexander Falk’s, which I found to be a good overview of the changes and adjustments in the K2. What I am going to bring you now is a review of the formatting and book display changes that come to us in the new device, some of which are great and some of which are just going to cause frustration. I’m going to list them in no particular order.

Line height: The line height on the K2 has been reduced, allowing more text to show up on the screen. This equates to about 4 more lines of text on the screen at font size 3.

click for full-size

Font clarity and size: The new 16-level grayscale screen, in addition to making images clearer, has made the Kindle font (Caelicia) show up a bit better on the screen. That actually makes the font a little bit lighter, from what I can tell, but it does not make it significantly less readable. It does appear as you compare the two screens that the font on the Kindle 2 is just a tiny bit smaller than the same size font on the Kindle 1. I have compared the font sizes in screen shots, and it does not appear to actually be smaller. However, there are a few places where a size difference definitely does stand out, most noticeably the size of the bullets in unordered lists.

Indentation: On the Kindle 1 the first-line indentation for paragraphs is .25 inches and the left indentation for blockquotes and lists is in .5 inch increments. That allows three full indentation levels and part of a fourth before the text is too scrunched up and the indentation just stops happening. On the Kindle 2 the blockquote and list indentation has been reduced to .25 inches, allowing five full indents and part of a sixth before stopping.

Em units are smaller: On the Kindle 1, em-units (a measurement that equals the height of the font at the current size) are about twice as large as they should be, but on Kindle 2 they have been reduced to the correct size. On both devices the em-unit size does change properly with the user’s font size adjustments.

Justification wrapping: The Kindle automatically fully justifies the text in books unless the creator explictly overwrides that setting. On the Kindle 2 there seems to be a bug that does not spread the text of a line out to the end if there is a certain amount of space already between the words. So, if a larger word wraps to a new line the text before it may not be flush with the right margin. This is apparently only a big issue at the larger font sizes, but it does show up periodically at the sizes 3 and below.

Broken Justification: This next one is a pretty important bug that I hope gets addressed soon. On the Kindle you can override the default first-line indentation on paragraphs by assigning a width="0" to the paragraph or by giving it a text-indent:0 CSS style. You can also use other numbers in those values to precisely manage the first-line indentation in the file.

The problem is that any time you use either of those commands the Kindle 2 will assign a left justification to the paragraph instead of retaining the default full justification. This bug poses a significant problem for formatting since no-indent paragraphs are used on a regular basis in books. For example, in many books the first paragraph under a heading is given a no-indent style. Unless the entire book is formatted in a left-aligned style, those paragraphs will stand out significantly.

It should also be noted that the option to turn on or off justification, which is available in the K1 with a hidden command in the font size menu, is not available in the K2, as far as I can tell.

Image Dimensions: The dimensions of the space available on the Kindle screen for book content (both text and images) has changed a bit with the new device. First, you should be aware that since the release of the Kindle 1 the typical answer on the DTP forums has been to make full-page images 450px by 550px. However, on the K1 the available screen area is actually 524px by 640px. Images smaller than that but larger than 261px by 319px will be upscaled to fill the screen area in width or height. This automatic adjustment can have a negative effect on the quality of the image, so it is best to size images at the actual dimensions of the available screen area.

On the K2, the available screen area is 520px by 622px. This is an odd size difference, but the best approach is to size images with the smaller K2 content area in mind.

HTML Tables: One of the biggest complaints about the K1 has been that it does not support tables. This complaint was made more pointed by the fact that tables are supported in Mobipocket, which is the foundational format of Kindle books. Well, the K2 displays tables, even handling them the same way Mobipocket does, by allowing the user to scroll the table horizontally when it is wider than the screen area.

Strikethrough: The K2 has a small change in the placement of the strikethrough line as seen in the image here.

 

Overall, the changes in the Kindle 2 seem to be aimed at making the text easier to read and easier on the eyes. The line height changes look good, and seem to handle superscripts and subscripts better. The justification issues will be annoying for formatting needs, but should be easy to fix with a firmware update. I really would love to see the Kindle 1 get table support, but unless or until that happens I will continue to use images. The 500,000 or so Kindle 1 users out there will appreciate that, I suspect.

This post, by Alexander Falk, was originally published on his XML Aficionado blog on 2/24/09.

My Kindle 2 arrived from Amazon today!

It appears that I am lucky in this respect, because Amazon had originally announced the ship date as February 25th, and most people are still waiting for their unit to show up. But I had ordered mine literally within 10 minutes of the announcement – so I guess being an early adopter finally got awarded…

As I had promised a few weeks ago, I am providing a review of the new Kindle 2 as a follow-up to my popular original Kindle Review from November 2007. Just like with the previous review, this one is based on unpacking the Kindle 2 and working with the device for about 2-3 hours. I plan to add information about long-term issues such as battery-life in a future blog posting once I have accumulated several days of usage of the Kindle 2.

Unpacking the Kindle 2 is fun. Just like the Kindle 1 the packaging is well-designed and this  resembles a shipping box with a "tear here to open" strip on one side. The package contains the Kindle itself, a thin "Read me" brochure, and the charging cable. The screen of the device shows instructions to plug it in and then push the power switch on top of the unit – for those that hate even the shortest of manuals.

Once you turn the Kindle 2 on, you immediately get to read the User’s Guide on the screen, or you can skip ahead and press the Home button to get to your main library page.

Before I talk about the improvements in the software, let’s take a look at all the improvements in the hardware of the device compared to the Kindle 1:

• The Kindle 2 looks much more polished or refined and gets rid of some of the edginess of the original unit. It feels more "solid" and less flimsy, which may also be due to the fact that it is about 10g heavier (468g with book cover for the Kindle 2 compared to 458g for the Kindle 1). 

• The Kindle 2 now locks into place in the book cover / sleeve that you can order from Amazon. The original Kindle fell out of that cover far too often, so this is a great improvement.

• Another annoying "feature" of the Kindle 1 is now a thing of the past, too: accidental clicks on the Next or Prev buttons. The buttons on the Kindle 2 are still on the very edge of the unit, but the buttons now have their pivot point on the outside edge and need to be clicked inward, which completely prevents accidental clicking. Very clever design change!

• The new Kindle 2 gets rid of the shiny silvery and strange LCD sidebar that the old unit used to provide a selection cursor on the page or within a menu. Since the new display is much faster and more responsive, the selection feedback is now directly shown on the main screen.

• The Kindle 2 has a better position for the power switch (top left of the unit) and gets rid of clumsy wireless on/off hardware switch on back of unit, too.

• It comes with a better power adapter (mini USB plug on Kindle, charger cable can either use desktop USB plug or wall outlet), which is similar to what the iPhone charger from Apple does.

• I’m lucky to be in a Spring 3G network coverage area, and so I found the unit to have much faster downloads using Amazon 3G Whispernet (only in areas where 3G EVDO service is available). This was especially noticeable when I downloaded all my previous purchases to the new device.

• The new 16-grayscale display is great, especially for viewing web content, such as Wikipedia, newspapers, or blogs. It’s probably not the most important feature, but certainly nice to have and much easier on the eyes than the old display when rendering images.

• I never really liked the hardware on/off switch in the back or the sleep mode on the old Kindle, but this is now all much more user friendly and consistent: wake-up from sleep mode is now done using power-button instead of "Alt-AA", and it is much more responsive; pushing the power button briefly puts Kindle in sleep mode (artwork screen saver is shown); and pushing the power button for 4-5 sec turns the Kindle off.

In addition to these hardware changes, the Kindle 2 also apparently offers some improved software that contains several usability enhancements. Some of those are more network features and I assume they will be available as an upgrade on the old units, too, but I haven’t heard any details about such an upgrade yet. Anyway, here are the software enhancements that I found notable:

Read the rest of the review at XML Aficionado.

Now that a couple of weeks have passed since the TOC conference, the main thing that has stuck with me is the fact that many—perhaps most—of the mainstream publishing staffers present at the Tools Of Change conference aren’t truly ready to change.

Even now, with mainstream publishing in crisis and Web 2.0 rapidly becoming a dated term, I met a surprising number of publishing industry professionals who are far more interested in discovering ways to further fortify their strongholds than they are in exploring the opportunities created by branching out into new media and fostering community among their customers.

At lunch one day, a gentleman at the table asserted it’s unreasonable for readers to expect ebooks to cost significantly less than their bound-paper counterparts.  Casting myself in the role of "ignorant consumer," I asked him to explain why ebooks shouldn’t cost less on the basis of savings in paper, printing, hard copy distribution and shipping costs alone.  He explained that those expenses don’t just go away, but are replaced with equal or even greater expenses introduced by the need to preserve "branding" in the ebook through the use of specialized layout, design and typography experts and technologies.

He took as his example the ‘Dummies’ series of books, which utilize proprietary fonts and graphics and are all laid out for print in a manner consistent with one another (i.e., sidebars with tips and gotchas, highlighted through the use of specific graphic icons).  He went on to explain the incredibly difficult and expensive process of trying to faithfully recreate the Dummies ‘experience’ in an ebook, particularly since there are so many different ebook file formats to deal with, each with its own limitations and technological specfications.

When I raised the possibility that it might not be necessary to perfectly reproduce every aspect of the paper book when releasing it in e form, because people who read ebooks don’t necessarily expect electronic books to look identical to their paper counterparts, he flatly disagreed.  Preserving the ‘look and feel’ of the paper book was critical, he felt, not only to meet customer expectations but to keep the sanctity of the ‘Dummies’ brand intact.

Like so many others I met at the conference, this gentleman has not yet altered his definition of the word "book".  Numerous speakers at TOC exhorted attendees to stop thinking of books as those paper things bound between two covers, and recognize that when people buy books, most of them are paying for the content—not the delivery system.  And with some notable exceptions (i.e., books containing physically interactive elements like letters to be pulled out of envelopes bound into the book, pop-ups, etc.) paper bound between covers is nothing more than one of many possible delivery systems for content. 

There was much agreement with this gentleman’s point of view at the table, however.  So when you see an ebook from a mainstream publisher that’s priced at or above the price of the paper version, it’s probably because the publisher is spending lots of money and effort to faithfully recreate the ‘look and feel’ of the paper book for you—something they’re very certain is critical to you, even though they’ve never actually asked your opinion on the matter.  In other words, they’re trying to force new media into an old media mold; they don’t get it.

Community-building is another area where there seems to be a great dearth of insight among mainstream publishing professionals where their customers are concerned.

Many of those to whom I spoke still view online communities they might build primarily as sales channels, failing to take into the account the fact that nobody enjoys a sales pitch, much less is willing to go out of their way to seek one out online. 

Others see market research as the main benefit of community-building: get a captive audience, get them to give you as much information about themselves as possible, and then data-mine to your heart’s content. They plan to keep large chunks of their site’s content and functionality locked up from the general public, forcing visitors to register for an account before spilling the goods.  When someone does elect to sign up, they’ll be presented with an exhaustive registration form in which nearly all fields must be filled out in order to submit the form.

All of this stuff can be boiled down to a single, pervasive problem I observed among most of the mainstream publishing industry pros I met at TOC: they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be an "ordinary" reader, and it’s been so long since they were ordinary readers, they can’t even imagine what it might be like to think like one once again. Their perspective is so mired in publisher-speak and publisher-think that it’s nearly impossible for them to come up with truly groundbreaking ideas, and when truly groundbreaking ideas are put before them, those ideas are either rejected out of hand or forced back into the box of their current ways of thinking and doing.

I’m not saying the situation is hopeless. The fact that so many big publishers sent their staffers to a conference about change is a good sign. Nevertheless, in the coming year we can probably expect to see quite a few ebook and community initiatives come barrelling out of big publishers’ gates, only to falter and fade away once the initial blitzkrieg of publicity is over.  Hopefully, lessons will be learned and improvements will be made, and the next generation of ebooks and publishers’ online communities will be more reader-centric.

This piece, by Yen, was originally posted today on The Book Publicity Blog.  While it’s geared toward mainstream authors and publicists, indies can benefit from this advice as well.

Friday night I was chatting with a novelist friend who said she was a little surprised her publisher wasn’t sending her on a book tour, given that her last four books have sold well (and that she had offered to pay her own way).  Admittedly, bookstore events have seen better days.  Still, it surprised me when my friend mentioned her publicist had refused to schedule a New York event for her.  (She’s a native New Yorker, who — four bestselling books ago — managed to pack The Corner Bookstore to within an inch of the fire marshal being called.)

Very mysterious.  Something wasn’t adding up.  Although we aren’t the same readers who catapulted Jacqueline Susan’s Valley of the Dolls to bestsellerdom as she road tripped across the country 40 years ago, a popular author speaking in her hometown is, well, a pretty safe bet.  (Or at least, as safe as they come.)

 This got me thinking about why bookstore events should and shouldn’t be scheduled.  For the benefit of authors and book publicists, I’m listing some issues to consider while planning an author’s schedule.  (Thanks to the tweeps who already contributed to this post and readers please feel free to add your own ideas in the Comments section — or by emailing me — and I will try to update the post.)  Also, do share the list with all and sundry if you think it will be useful.

 

Why you should not schedule a bookstore event:

– Topic: Some books, often of the self-help variety (finance, parenting, self-help, some cooking and humor) simply don’t lend themselves to bookstore talks.  It doesn’t mean readers won’t buy these books — and it doesn’t mean talks won’t work in other settings — but are 50 people really going to pop into Barnes & Noble to listen to what types of nonallergenic foods they should be feeding their babies?

– Timing: With a handful of exceptions, bookstores like to hold events within about a month of the book’s publication.  Stores typically schedule events between two and six months in advance of the event / publication date in order to have time to adequately promote their events.  This means that suggesting events two weeks before a book’s publication date will not elicit a favorable response.  From anyone. 

– Hidden Costs: As The Bookish Dilettante’s Kat Meyer points out, even if an author pays his / her own way, events take time to set up and money to promote.  Event coordinators often work odd hours and typically aren’t planted in front of their computers when they are in the store.  They’re also juggling dozens of events and publicists and dates.  Case in point — I first got in touch with one events coordinator in December about an April event.  Between my trying to sort out the author’s availability and her trying to sort out the store’s availability, we only just finalized a date — two months and numerous email messages later.  Then, once an event has been scheduled, the store must then invest time and money in promoting the it.  This just isn’t a process that can be ironed out with one phone call.

 

Why you should schedule a bookstore event:

– The author is local.  Many bookstores try their best to support local authors.  Plus, they know they can count on the support of the authors friends and family members.  (Fortunately for authors and bookstores, although these are the people who probably could wrangle free books from authors, they often end up buying books to support the author.)

– The author has a good track record.  Often, the best predictor of how an event will go is how the last (somewhat recent) event turned out.  This is one of those situations in which no track record won’t hurt an author (there are plenty of first-time authors who draw healthy crowds to bookstore events and plenty of stores willing to schedule events with these authors), but a good track can really help. 

– First editions:  Books on the Nightstand’s Ann Kingman reminds us that some stores host first edition book clubs, whose selections can be dependent on an author coming to speak and sign books.   Also, for certain types of (mostly) genre hardcover books — mystery, science fiction, romance, etc. — but some others as well, signed first editions go over really well with readers whether or not the books are selected for book clubs.

– The store requests an event.  For logistical and financial reasons, publishing houses can’t schedule events at every single store that requests an author.  (And certainly, successful events have been held at stores that did not request authors.)  But when a store expresses interest in an author, it can be a sign they’ll try their darnedest to get a crowd and sell that book.  Michele Filgate of Reading is Breathing (and events coordinator at the Portsmouth, NH RiverRun Bookstore) says events are critical for independent bookstores who are trying to be/become community — as well as reader — destinations.  (Not that events aren’t important for the chain stores too.)  Plus, an added benefit, courtesy of Teleread’s David Rothman: hand selling.  Author appearances keep books at the forefront of employees’ minds (and at the top of their recommendation lists).

– An investment in the future: Published & Profitable’s Roger C. Parker notes that events can teach authors what questions readers will ask and what topics they’re most interested in.  For authors who have more than one book in the pipeline, events can be a good way to build a following.

***

What are your pros and cons?  Have you ever scheduled a bookstore event when you didn’t feel it was appropriate?  (Or vice versa?)

You can find many more articles on topics related to book publicity on The Book Publicity Blog.

I came across a website called Smashwords this week (which is actually responsible for leading me here to Publetariat…Thanks, Mark!).  For those who may not know, Smashwords is a new Ebook Estore that was just launched last May.  It’s an excellent opportunity for indie authors to upload their work at no cost and instantly have it available to readers in a multitude of formats.  You also set your own price and get to collect 85% of the royalties.

I uploaded my most recent book, Stealing Wishes, and I have to say I’m well pleased.  I’m selling it there for just $3.99.  That’s almost $1.50 cheaper than buying it for your Kindle direct from Amazon.  My book’s page also allowed me to include tags to help find the book, links to websites where readers can buy hard copies, and my book trailer. 

Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, has a great thing going on and you should definitely check it out!  With the Ebook craze quickly catching on, a site like Smashwords puts indie authors ahead of the game!

Best wishes,

Shannon Yarbrough

www.shannonyarbrough.com

www.smashwords.com/books/view/766

This article, by Michael R. Hicks, originally appeared on his site, KreelanWarrior.com.
 

I apologize for the rather sensational title of this post, but I got to thinking the other day about my own struggles to get where I am now and thought that it might help someone with their own life journey.

 

I’m sure you know that you can drop a fortune at Amazon or anywhere else on books and other stuff to help you learn how to “be successful.” I’m not saying that stuff doesn’t work – it very well may – but I’ve never responded well to that sort of thing. I mean, let’s face it: how many of us confess to ourselves that we’re not successful? On top of that, how many of us really have a clue about what being successful means for us as individuals?

 

The key, my friend, is in goals. Let me give you an example from my efforts as an aspiring (starving) author:

 

Back in 1991, for various reasons best left unsaid, I decided to do something rash: to write a novel. I had set myself an extremely challenging goal – in part, I must confess, because to that point I felt I’d achieved very little in many ways – although I never really considered it as such. I spent the next four years (part-time) writing In Her Name, then probably another six months editing and revising it. I didn’t really praise myself at that point like I should have – hey, you deserve to pat yourself on the back if you do something like that! – but I did manage to finish it. But that’s where my goal-setting – and success – ended: I shopped it around to a number of publishers at that point, and got the customary rejection notices. But there were other things going on in my life at the time, and without a firm goal I just shoved it aside for about a dozen years.

 

Then the Amazon Kindle came out, and I finally decided to give publishing In Her Name another go, this time on my own. But this time, I set a conscious, stated goal. If you don’t have any goals set, you have no way of measuring your success; you have no benchmark. And believe me, I am not a big goal-setter! This was totally alien to my way of thinking. I normally just bumble along in life, but publishing a book – being an author – was a dream I’d had since at least high school. Hell, I’d written the book already – that part was done! All I had to do was get it out there where somebody might trip over it and maybe even buy it.

 

So, with that firm goal in mind, I did all the stuff necessary to put it out in the Amazon Kindle store and Mobipocket (and later into print), and it started pulling in some sales. It was exciting: people were buying my book! But then I started to notice that I was checking the sales figures all the time, and would really get bummed when there were dry spells. When the first reader review was posted on Amazon, it really made the week for me. And then more reviews were posted – all of them four and five stars (so far) – and I got psyched. But I would still get into this funk about where it all was going. Would the book be a success? Would I be a success as an author?

 

That’s when I had a bit of an epiphany: what exactly did it mean – to me – to be a successful author? How was I going to really measure that? What was my goal now that I had published a book?

 

I think all authors have the same dreams: wind up on the NY Times bestseller list, have your book appear on Oprah, have it made into a blockbuster movie, make a bazillion bucks, and so on. I certainly have those dreams, but after I thought about it a while, I came to the startling conclusion that the best indicator of my success as an author was that people enjoyed reading what I’d written. And I don’t mean just members of my family who wanted to humor me, but people I didn’t know, who didn’t know me, but who checked out the blurb on my book and liked it enough to plunk down their money to buy it, then came back and spent their precious time writing a review of it. Will I sell a bazillion copies and chalk up some of those dreams I mentioned to you? The statistics are against me, but I don’t really care now, because in writing that book I’ve actually achieved three major goals – successes – in my life:

 

• Writing In Her Name in the first place. And it’s actually three novels in one, so technically I should give myself triple credit!
• Getting the book published. This was a particular achievement because, taking the self-publishing route, I had to do every bit of it myself, from cover art to promotion.
• Learning that I’d written a story that people enjoyed. This was, by far, the most rewarding of the three things I’d achieved in writing this book. The money from sales is always welcome – and Oprah, I’ll be happy to be on your show, anytime! – but the inner satisfaction I get at hearing what people have to say about In Her Name is a very precious reward.

 

Anyway, while this example was about a guy (me) writing and publishing a book, the underlying key is the same for anything: you have to make goals for yourself, both to help guide your life and give you some feedback on how the heck you’re doing. And then you have to focus on them and follow through. If you find that every day you’re just doing the same old crap and don’t seem to be going anywhere, it’s because you haven’t set any goals! You’re not working toward anything, so your just spinning on the ol’ hamster wheel. Yes, you don’t want to aim the bar too high: just aim for something you think you could do, then work to achieve it!

 

And forget about excuses (particularly that you don’t have time): part of giving yourself the gift of success is prioritizing and making some changes in your life. Just as an example, if you’re really out of shape, set yourself a goal of run/walking a 5K race this year (that was the goal my wife and I set for ourselves fitness-wise last year). That’s three miles, and there are tons of places that hold 5K events. Even if you’re a total couch potato, if you started now you could at least walk three miles by mid spring – think of how good it would feel to cross that finish line, even just walking! So, instead of sitting on your widening rear end and watching TV for that sixth hour of the evening, why don’t you take the first hour of TV time and just go for a walk? Take the entire family!

 

Another example (and this is dedicated to a good friend of mine): if you’re stuck in a job that you hate, look around for other opportunities. Even in this crappy economy right now, opportunites can be found. But only if you look! Maybe you’ll find something soon, maybe it’ll take a while. But if you set that goal you’ll have a benchmark to measure your success. There are times when my own job drives me nuts, but all in all it’s great. And I firmly believe that people shouldn’t have to work at jobs they hate: you spend a third (or more) of your life at work. Even if you don’t really enjoy your job, it shouldn’t totally suck.

 

So, think about that and see if it helps you. Think about some things you’d like to accomplish in your life, then – as Chalene Johnson says – write them down. Tape them up on the refrigerator if you need to, then work toward them. Every day. If I can find success in my life, with as much of a bumble as I normally am, you can, too!

 

Please visit KreelanWarrior.com for many more posts on the subjects of self-publishing and Kindle formatting and conversion.