Rick Cook's Blog, page 2
July 20, 2011
Still the scanning saga continues. . .
Now I'm looking into scanning service for Obsidian Harvest. And boy, what a long strange trip that is.
So far I haven't found anyone who will scan my document (pages cut from a magazine) and give me a .txt or .doc file of the results. My last hope is Office Max. They won't give me a text file but they will provide a .pdf of the pages. I'm pretty sure I can use Omnipage to OCR the file.
The first problem I ran into is that scanning services either weren't interested or couldn't do it. My lousy 28 pages is just too small for them to mess with. As one of them put it: "Now if you had 2800 pages. . ." The mind boggles. It's not just that my job is small, the pages are physically small -- digest size, which is about half a regular sheet of typing paper. Scanning services are mostly set up to scan letter or legal size pages and running a small page through the scanner runs the risk of jamming the document feeder.
Finally, after several turn downs, I thought of OfficeMax. They could do it for 25 cents a page, which is quite reasonable, and would give me a .pdf of the scanned file for further work.
So in theory this new approach should work. But in theory scanning the story in with the OCR software on my HP printer should have worked as well.
Oh well, at least I'm accumulating a lot of information for my next book.
So far I haven't found anyone who will scan my document (pages cut from a magazine) and give me a .txt or .doc file of the results. My last hope is Office Max. They won't give me a text file but they will provide a .pdf of the pages. I'm pretty sure I can use Omnipage to OCR the file.
The first problem I ran into is that scanning services either weren't interested or couldn't do it. My lousy 28 pages is just too small for them to mess with. As one of them put it: "Now if you had 2800 pages. . ." The mind boggles. It's not just that my job is small, the pages are physically small -- digest size, which is about half a regular sheet of typing paper. Scanning services are mostly set up to scan letter or legal size pages and running a small page through the scanner runs the risk of jamming the document feeder.
Finally, after several turn downs, I thought of OfficeMax. They could do it for 25 cents a page, which is quite reasonable, and would give me a .pdf of the scanned file for further work.
So in theory this new approach should work. But in theory scanning the story in with the OCR software on my HP printer should have worked as well.
Oh well, at least I'm accumulating a lot of information for my next book.
July 19, 2011
Experimenting with press releases
I'm trying the tack of promoting my ebook "Shift Happens" by using press releases. So far I've sent out three and we'll have to see what kind of response I get.
Press releases to promote book is tricky. Generally it doesn't work for fiction, but in theory a well prepared press release should help sales of non-fiction books. We'll see.
Besides, it gives me an opportunity to use a skill from my time in PR.
Press releases to promote book is tricky. Generally it doesn't work for fiction, but in theory a well prepared press release should help sales of non-fiction books. We'll see.
Besides, it gives me an opportunity to use a skill from my time in PR.
July 16, 2011
SHIFT HAPPENS IS OUT!
"Shift Happens: The New E-Publishing Paradigm And What It Means For Writers" has been published and is now available as a Kindle ebook on Amazon.
In the book I outline the earthquake changes to publishing in the wake of the growing popularity of ebooks and ebook readers. Perhaps most significantly for authors, ebooks turn the dynamics of publishing upside down by putting the author in the drivers seat rather than the publishers. Now authors can choose what and when to publish without having to get a publisher's approval.
The result is a new freedom for writers as well as the opportunity to make significant amounts of money from epublishing.
To see how this can work for you, order "Shift Happens"
In the book I outline the earthquake changes to publishing in the wake of the growing popularity of ebooks and ebook readers. Perhaps most significantly for authors, ebooks turn the dynamics of publishing upside down by putting the author in the drivers seat rather than the publishers. Now authors can choose what and when to publish without having to get a publisher's approval.
The result is a new freedom for writers as well as the opportunity to make significant amounts of money from epublishing.
To see how this can work for you, order "Shift Happens"
July 15, 2011
Scanners Live Not So Vainly
Well, I finally got Omnipage installed.
Nuance customer support still sucks, but after messing around the web site for a half hour I called the main number at Nuance and finally got transferred to tech support.
The tech support call was a story in itself. The line was bad and the guy on the other end was in India. Cultural differences reared their head in that I had trouble figuring out the question he was really asking. But we got it to work.
Why do these companies think that just because someone is fluent in English they're equipped to handle tech support? The guy was fluent, fortunately, but we kept missing each other's cues and the result was a "Who's On First" scenario.
Oh well, at least I get to check out how well Omnipage works.
--RC
Nuance customer support still sucks, but after messing around the web site for a half hour I called the main number at Nuance and finally got transferred to tech support.
The tech support call was a story in itself. The line was bad and the guy on the other end was in India. Cultural differences reared their head in that I had trouble figuring out the question he was really asking. But we got it to work.
Why do these companies think that just because someone is fluent in English they're equipped to handle tech support? The guy was fluent, fortunately, but we kept missing each other's cues and the result was a "Who's On First" scenario.
Oh well, at least I get to check out how well Omnipage works.
--RC
Scanners Live In Vain
For the latest chapter in my scanning saga, I purchased Nuance Omnipage 18, a highly recommended OCR product.
So far this has worked about as well as everything else I've done to try to scan in documents. That is to say, not at all.
Here my problems are simpler, and seemingly insoluble.
First problem: I can't install the software. It goes through the involved installation procedure, tells me it has installed successfully, then nothing. No icon on the desktop, no entry on the list of installed programs, zero.
There's more to the story, of course, including a blown install, a messed up email address (mine, mea culpa) and much fooling with the stuff. All to no avail.
Okay, time to call tech support == and that leads me to the next problem. After playing ring-around-the-rosy on the web site several times, I still can't find the tech support number. Everything seems to indicate there is one, but I can find no trace of it on Nuance's pretty but seemingly useless web site.
As I say Nuance comes highly recommended, but if you can't install the program it's useless.
Now all I've got to do is figure out how to send the damn thing back for a refund. And I'm still without OCR software.
--RC
So far this has worked about as well as everything else I've done to try to scan in documents. That is to say, not at all.
Here my problems are simpler, and seemingly insoluble.
First problem: I can't install the software. It goes through the involved installation procedure, tells me it has installed successfully, then nothing. No icon on the desktop, no entry on the list of installed programs, zero.
There's more to the story, of course, including a blown install, a messed up email address (mine, mea culpa) and much fooling with the stuff. All to no avail.
Okay, time to call tech support == and that leads me to the next problem. After playing ring-around-the-rosy on the web site several times, I still can't find the tech support number. Everything seems to indicate there is one, but I can find no trace of it on Nuance's pretty but seemingly useless web site.
As I say Nuance comes highly recommended, but if you can't install the program it's useless.
Now all I've got to do is figure out how to send the damn thing back for a refund. And I'm still without OCR software.
--RC
July 14, 2011
First Web Page Up
The first in my new series of web pages is submitted and should be up by Friday (July 15) It's for rickcook.biz (which also happens to be the URL) and just now it is a single, extremely basic page for displaying my work.
This will be expanded over the next couple of weeks as I get around to adding more content.
This will be expanded over the next couple of weeks as I get around to adding more content.
July 13, 2011
Help In Publishing For The Kindle
The final stage in publishing an ebook is formatting it. This used to be a pretty simple deal. Essentially you converted your file to HTML added a couple of tweaks and the cover art, all zipped into a single file.
Amazon's Kindle is no longer that simple. Amazon now insists that book submitters use the .ncx file format to submit the table of contents. Ncx is an XHTML format for tables of contents, so it's sorta HTML, but not quite.
This has the advantage that it allows things like a hyperlinked table of contents for the talking book version. It has the disadvantage of being so arcane there's little information on how to do it available.
Fortunately someone stepped up to the challenge. April K. Hamilton, author of "The Indie Author Guide to Publishing" (good book) has come out with "The Indie Author Guide For Publishing For The Kindle With Amazon's Digital Text Platform, Mobipocket Creator And MS Word 2003 Or Higher." In it she walks you through the steps involved in taking your book from a text file to a ready-to-submit zip file.
Hamilton is owed a vote of thanks by everyone in the e-authoring community for untangling this tangled tale. Be warned: The process still isn't easy, but at least you can more-or-less understand it.
Amazon's Kindle is no longer that simple. Amazon now insists that book submitters use the .ncx file format to submit the table of contents. Ncx is an XHTML format for tables of contents, so it's sorta HTML, but not quite.
This has the advantage that it allows things like a hyperlinked table of contents for the talking book version. It has the disadvantage of being so arcane there's little information on how to do it available.
Fortunately someone stepped up to the challenge. April K. Hamilton, author of "The Indie Author Guide to Publishing" (good book) has come out with "The Indie Author Guide For Publishing For The Kindle With Amazon's Digital Text Platform, Mobipocket Creator And MS Word 2003 Or Higher." In it she walks you through the steps involved in taking your book from a text file to a ready-to-submit zip file.
Hamilton is owed a vote of thanks by everyone in the e-authoring community for untangling this tangled tale. Be warned: The process still isn't easy, but at least you can more-or-less understand it.
Help In Publishing For The Kindlehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
The final stage in publishing an ebook is formatting it. This used to be a pretty simple deal. Essentially you converted your file to HTML added a couple of tweaks and the cover art, all zipped into a single file.
Amazon's Kindle is no longer that simple. Amazon now insists that book submitters use the .ncx file format to submit the table of contents. Ncx is an XHTML format for tables of contents, so it's sorta HTML, but not quite.
This has the advantage that it allows things like a hyperlinked table of contents for the talking book version. It has the disadvantage of being so arcane there's little information on how to do it available.
Fortunately someone stepped up to the challenge. April K. Hamilton, author of "The Indie Author Guide to Publishing" (good book) has come out with "The Indie Author Guide For Publishing For The Kindle With Amazon's Digital Text Platform, Mobipocket Creator And MS Word 2003 Or Higher." In it she walks you through the steps involved in taking your book from a text file to a ready-to-submit zip file.
Hamilton is owed a vote of thanks by everyone in the e-authoring community for untangling this tangled tale. Be warned: The process still isn't easy, but at least you can more-or-less understand it.
Amazon's Kindle is no longer that simple. Amazon now insists that book submitters use the .ncx file format to submit the table of contents. Ncx is an XHTML format for tables of contents, so it's sorta HTML, but not quite.
This has the advantage that it allows things like a hyperlinked table of contents for the talking book version. It has the disadvantage of being so arcane there's little information on how to do it available.
Fortunately someone stepped up to the challenge. April K. Hamilton, author of "The Indie Author Guide to Publishing" (good book) has come out with "The Indie Author Guide For Publishing For The Kindle With Amazon's Digital Text Platform, Mobipocket Creator And MS Word 2003 Or Higher." In it she walks you through the steps involved in taking your book from a text file to a ready-to-submit zip file.
Hamilton is owed a vote of thanks by everyone in the e-authoring community for untangling this tangled tale. Be warned: The process still isn't easy, but at least you can more-or-less understand it.
July 12, 2011
"Shift Happens" is almost out
"Shift Happens" my new ebook on the revolution in publishing is at the formatter and should be published in two or three days.
Another long slog done.
I will say the process of publishing an e-book is a lot easier, and a lot faster, than a conventional paper book. Now that royalties on ebooks are hitting 70 percent from Amazon I have to wonder how much longer paper books will remain the preferred way to publish popular fiction. The advantages for both author and reader just keep piling up.
--RC
Another long slog done.
I will say the process of publishing an e-book is a lot easier, and a lot faster, than a conventional paper book. Now that royalties on ebooks are hitting 70 percent from Amazon I have to wonder how much longer paper books will remain the preferred way to publish popular fiction. The advantages for both author and reader just keep piling up.
--RC
July 10, 2011
Scanning -- again
Still the scanning saga continues.
I finally got the document scanned and OCRed and started on the corrections. I quickly discovered I'd been two optimistic when I said that one error in 200 was acceptable. It's not really.
In an 18,000 word story that amounts to several thousand errors and some of them are things like substituting an "l" for an "I" which are hard to spot.
What's worse, several sections of the story didn't scan so I've got holes I've got to refill by retyping several pages at a stretch.
Now I am not a proofreader, I'm a writer. I don't have the kind of detail-oriented mind it takes to ferret errors like this and fix them.
And then there's the other problem.
This one I can't blame on the OCR software. It seems that the magazine ended each line with a hard line break. Ducky, except that the story was set two columns to a page so to get the copy prepared I've got to go through and take out all those hard line breaks.
I won't bore you with a long, technical explanation of why that's a problem, except to say that very few word processors allow you to find and replace hard line breaks the way you can other characters. To do it you need to delve into regular expressions -- which are their own brand of magic -- and the regular expressions in LibreOffice are unusually arcane.
What it comes down to is I've got to go through the story and reinsert the paragraph breaks that were left after I got rid of the hard line breaks. By hand.
As a result I've got a headache and I'm still not done with this.
I've come to several conclusions here. The first is that I need better OCR software. FreeOCR just isn't accurate enough for long documents. So I'm getting Omnipage from Nuance, which is $150 but comes highly recommended. The second conclusion is I may need more than that if I'm going to scan in all my stories for my collection "Cooks Book".
I'll try OCRing with Omnipage, but if that doesn't work I'll either have to get a better scanner or farm the job out to a service bureau.
Which reminds me of something John W. Campbell told me once: "Always use the right tool for the job. The right tool to fix a television set is a television repairman."
I finally got the document scanned and OCRed and started on the corrections. I quickly discovered I'd been two optimistic when I said that one error in 200 was acceptable. It's not really.
In an 18,000 word story that amounts to several thousand errors and some of them are things like substituting an "l" for an "I" which are hard to spot.
What's worse, several sections of the story didn't scan so I've got holes I've got to refill by retyping several pages at a stretch.
Now I am not a proofreader, I'm a writer. I don't have the kind of detail-oriented mind it takes to ferret errors like this and fix them.
And then there's the other problem.
This one I can't blame on the OCR software. It seems that the magazine ended each line with a hard line break. Ducky, except that the story was set two columns to a page so to get the copy prepared I've got to go through and take out all those hard line breaks.
I won't bore you with a long, technical explanation of why that's a problem, except to say that very few word processors allow you to find and replace hard line breaks the way you can other characters. To do it you need to delve into regular expressions -- which are their own brand of magic -- and the regular expressions in LibreOffice are unusually arcane.
What it comes down to is I've got to go through the story and reinsert the paragraph breaks that were left after I got rid of the hard line breaks. By hand.
As a result I've got a headache and I'm still not done with this.
I've come to several conclusions here. The first is that I need better OCR software. FreeOCR just isn't accurate enough for long documents. So I'm getting Omnipage from Nuance, which is $150 but comes highly recommended. The second conclusion is I may need more than that if I'm going to scan in all my stories for my collection "Cooks Book".
I'll try OCRing with Omnipage, but if that doesn't work I'll either have to get a better scanner or farm the job out to a service bureau.
Which reminds me of something John W. Campbell told me once: "Always use the right tool for the job. The right tool to fix a television set is a television repairman."
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