{"id":1545,"date":"2011-12-02T16:58:45","date_gmt":"2011-12-03T00:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orcutt.net\/weblog\/?p=1545"},"modified":"2025-03-02T19:03:41","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T19:03:41","slug":"what-i-learned-while-publishing-the-dakota-stevens-series-on-kindle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/what-i-learned-while-publishing-the-dakota-stevens-series-on-kindle\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Learned While Publishing the Dakota Stevens Series on Kindle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What did I learn from pub\u00adlish\u00ading <a title=\"A Real Piece of Work at Amazon.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B006FYKUMS\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=chrisorcutweb-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B006FYKUMS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the first nov\u00adel in my new detec\u00adtive series<\/a> on Kin\u00addle?<\/p>\n<p>A lot of dis\u00adjoint\u00aded things that would take too much time and brain\u00adpow\u00ader to con\u00adstruct into a nar\u00adra\u00adtive (I want to get back to, you know,&nbsp;<em>writ\u00ading<\/em>), so I\u2019m going to present them to you as bul\u00adlet points:<\/p>\n<p>(NOTE: If you don\u2019t care about this sub\u00adject and would just like to see a guy\u2014me\u2014pontificate in HD about type\u00adwrit\u00aders for 30 sec\u00adonds, jump to the end of this post and click the link.)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Kin\u00addle Direct Pub\u00adlish\u00ading (KDP) help page is help\u00adful and clear, but it can only help you with those aspects of the project that are intrin\u00adsi\u00adcal\u00adly clear and sim\u00adple them\u00adselves, like enter\u00ading your bank account infor\u00adma\u00adtion.<\/li>\n<li>As for the sub\u00adstan\u00adtive part of the Kin\u00addle pub\u00adlish\u00ading process\u2014the <em>for\u00admat\u00adting<\/em>\u2014sor\u00adry, suck\u00adah, you\u2019re on your own. Here the help page can\u2019t help you.<\/li>\n<li>You have to build your own still to make the moon\u00adshine that is your book. With its end\u00adless stops and starts and workarounds, the process remind\u00aded me of the crazy moon\u00adshine still that Hawk\u00adeye and B.J. have in their tent on the old TV show <em>M.A.S.H. <\/em>At its best, what\u00adev\u00ader device you come up with is just a patch\u00adwork of four or five pro\u00adgrams, and end\u00adless tips, tricks and home\u00adspun advice from those who have gone before you.<\/li>\n<li>In my case, I found myself export\u00ading the orig\u00adi\u00adnal book from Apple\u2019s Pages pro\u00adgram as an ePub doc\u00adu\u00adment, then load\u00ading it into an invalu\u00adable ePub edi\u00adtor called Sig\u00adil, then tin\u00adker\u00ading with the XHTML code, then sav\u00ading it and load\u00ading it and test\u00ading it in Kindle\u2019s Pre\u00adview\u00ader (which also com\u00adpiles the code into a .mobi file), then test\u00ading it on a real Kin\u00addle, then going back to Sig\u00adil to fix the mis\u00adtakes, and at the end using anoth\u00ader pro\u00adgram, Cal\u00adi\u00adbre, to recon\u00advert the code into a read\u00adable RTF (for your own ref\u00ader\u00adence), then upload\u00ading the final .mobi file to Ama\u00adzon, test\u00ading it on their online \u201ctester\u201d (which in NO way resem\u00adbles the action of a real Kin\u00addle), and pray\u00ading as I pressed the \u201cPub\u00adlish\u201d but\u00adton.<\/li>\n<li>The biggest pain in the ass, with\u00adout ques\u00adtion, is con\u00adstruct\u00ading the Table of Con\u00adtents and mak\u00ading it link up seam\u00adless\u00adly with every chap\u00adter and sec\u00adtion of your book. Your ref\u00ader\u00adences to files have to be P\u2011E-R-F-E-C\u2011T; oth\u00ader\u00adwise you\u2019ll get error mes\u00adsages you don\u2019t under\u00adstand.<\/li>\n<li>I was glad I took an XML\/XHTML course about 10 years ago, even though I had no idea at the time why I was tak\u00ading it. With\u00adout a rudi\u00admen\u00adta\u00adry knowl\u00adedge of HTML and XHTML, a would-be pub\u00adlish\u00ader is lost, forced to deter\u00admine pure\u00adly by tri\u00adal and error what cer\u00adtain tags mean and how they affect your doc\u00adu\u00adment.<\/li>\n<li>Maybe this is a trick that pro\u00adgram\u00admers nat\u00adu\u00adral\u00adly use, but I learned to keep sep\u00ada\u00adrate \u201crevs\u201d of every major change. When I got some\u00adthing to work right, I saved a new rev: \u201cWorking_ePub_document_Rev_A\u201d\u2014which in my case went all the way through Z and up to AG before I fin\u00adished. I did it this way so that I would\u00adn\u2019t screw up each incre\u00admen\u00adtal\u00adly bet\u00adter ver\u00adsion of the file.<\/li>\n<li>I learned that, when in doubt, you should proof your man\u00adu\u00adscript ONE MORE TIME while it\u2019s still in man\u00adu\u00adscript form (e.g., in Word or Pages). It\u2019s 10x more dif\u00adfi\u00adcult to make the changes to text when it\u2019s in code for\u00admat.<\/li>\n<li>Final\u00adly, the award for the Great\u00adest Life\u00adsav\u00ading Tip for When You Think You\u2019re Done and the For\u00admat\u00adting STILL Isn\u2019t Per\u00adfect goes to a very smart guy named David Gaugh\u00adran. In a mas\u00adter\u00adful lit\u00adtle entry on the Absolute Write Water Cool\u00ader page, he explains how to fix an issue with indent\u00ading that comes up when you think you\u2019re fin\u00adished: a doc\u00adu\u00adment looks great on a Kin\u00addle, but there\u2019s no indent (or a min\u00adi\u00admal one) on an iPad. <a href=\"http:\/\/absolutewrite.com\/forums\/showpost.php?s=fd33a40684c57f7a261d7efb8adadd95&amp;p=6289069&amp;postcount=4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Here is his bril\u00adliant\u00adly sim\u00adple, ele\u00adgant fix<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now, if you\u2019ll excuse me, I want to get back to writing\u2014on my type\u00adwrit\u00aders. And with that in mind, yes\u00adter\u00adday my best friend, doc\u00adu\u00admen\u00adtar\u00adi\u00adan <a href=\"http:\/\/ascii.textfiles.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jason Scott<\/a>, test\u00aded out his new cam\u00adera equip\u00adment with me as the sub\u00adject.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Testing out filmmaker Jason Scott's new equipment\" href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4pdTz6OPURU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">So, if you\u2019d like to lis\u00adten to me pon\u00adtif\u00adi\u00adcate about type\u00adwrit\u00aders, you\u2019re in luck<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What did I learn from pub\u00adlish\u00ading the first nov\u00adel in my new detec\u00adtive series on Kin\u00addle? A lot of dis\u00adjoint\u00aded things that would take too\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,17,21,8,10,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chris-orcutt-books","category-computersandsoftware","category-kindlestuff","category-publishingandthemarket","category-technologyandinternet","category-writingtools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9180,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions\/9180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}