Jo Robinson's Blog, page 33
June 11, 2015
Amazon’s Logical TOC and Author Review Rules
I’ve posted about reviews and inserting a table of contents into your eBooks before, but I wanted to discuss them again, with special emphasis on Amazon KDP rules.
First, just a quick word about the table of contents. I’m editing a non-fiction book that I want a proper NCX table of contents for, that shows up in the little Go To menu itself, so I’ve been exploring Amazon’s guidelines. I wasn’t aware before that fiction had to have a logical table of contents, but it is now actually a requirement, and authors are starting to get notices from them to put them in their eBooks if they haven’t already. The HTML table of contents that we did here previously is Strongly Recommended by Amazon as well, but the Logical one is a requirement. This table of contents according to Amazon “Lets the reader easily find parts, sections, and chapters of…
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June 4, 2015
How to Make an eBook Using Calibre
On the subject of selling eBooks from your website, in addition to offering them in PDF format, it’s nice to be able to offer your readers books in the formats of their choice, including Mobi and ePub. Apart from the sales point of view, you might simply want to put a book together for your own pleasure – to send to your friends and family just for fun. The way to do this quickly is with the free Calibre software, so I want to show you easy it is.
I’ve often mentioned what a great little tool Calibre is for us Indie writers. Together with Amazon’s free Kindle for PC downloadable app, Calibre can be a major help in spotting those typos and grammar gremlins in the editing process. Apart from that though, it’s a library in itself, where you can store any digital books that you like. Like those…
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June 2, 2015
The Sunday Show – A funny thing happened to author D.G. Kaye
What a fantastic interview! I found one of D G Kaye’s books browsing on line a while ago, and laughed so hard I nearly fell off my chair – brilliant author. Now I see she has other books out – one concerning her narcissistic parent – another subject I find absolutely riveting – I’ll be reading all of these. Thanks for sharing another great author Sal!
Originally posted on Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life:
My guest today is Canadian memoir and nonfiction author and blogger D.G. Kaye (D.G.). It is clear that D.G delights both the women she writes for and I suspect the men who sneak a peek with her down to earth and often humorous look at life. There is also a serious side that comes across in D.G’s books and in her blog posts that strips back the layers that are formed in relationships. Those that are good for us and those that are harmful. I will take a closer look at her writing later in the introduction.
D.G was born and raised in Toronto where she still lives and writes about her own life experiences, matters of the heart and women’s issues. She began keeping a journal as she lived through a turbulent childhood which was lacking in emotional support from her narcissistic mother. This challenging start in life was…
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The Afternoon Video… Don’t touch what you can’t afford and no press thank you..
Originally posted on Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life:
This cat has the regality down to a T…. Don’t touch what you can’t afford….
ICHABOD BROOKS & THE CITY OF BEASTS NOW AVAILABLE FOR #99CENTS!!! #fantasy #shortstory
Originally posted on Legends of Windemere:
Today is the day! Grab your dollar & get the first adventure of Ichabod Brooks!
CLICK FOR AMAZON SITE
Cover Art by Nio Mendoza
Book Blurb
In a time of heroes, a man will take any job to provide for his family.
Ichabod Brooks has earned a reputation for taking the jobs most men and women fear to challenge. This reputation has brought him to the charred remains of a small village nestled within the hills and forest of Ralian. The ruins are a source of strange monsters that terrorize the countryside and repeatedly elude the local guards and hunters. The few brave souls who have entered the creatures’ lair have yet to come out alive or dead.
The chances of survival are slim, but that generous payment is too much for Ichabod to resist. After all, a man and his family have to eat.
Amazon Site
Goodreads Site
So…
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Smorgasbord Health – The Blood – Oxygen distribution and waste disposal and Anaemia
Originally posted on Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life:
I have covered in earlier blogs the absolute necessity of oxygen to our survival. It is unlikely that you will survive longer than six minutes without breathing in oxygen, but it is also vitally important for the survival of every cell within the body. If an area of the cardiovascular system is damaged and oxygen is unable to reach the tissues directly affected then that tissue will die and the infection generated will compromise the health of the rest of the body. The most vulnerable parts of the body are the hands and feet where irreparable damage to the tiny network of capillaries could lead to amputation.
The red blood cells are responsible for the transportation of both oxygen and carbon dioxide within the haemoglobin in the blood.
As important as breathing in and utilising oxygen is concerned, getting rid of the carbon dioxide waste, which is produced during this…
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The Bone Wall by D Wallace Peach – Interview with Author @Dwallacepeach
My latest Feed My Reads SA interview with the fabulous author D Wallace Peach.
Originally posted on Feed My Reads South Africa:
I finished my latest read much faster than I usually finish a book, considering my tendency to be the slowest reader on the planet, only because I couldn’t put it down. I had to find out more about the author who wrote the book that now sits way up there in the lofty favourite TWO dystopian fantasy books I’ve ever read. Not only does it speak of humanity, what we’ve become, and where we might go, it’s a fabulously addictive tale, told in that magical way that only the literary masters have, of sucking you right in to their worlds. Many thanks to author D Wallace Peach, for graciously allowing us access into her life and for sharing some of her fascinating thoughts with us here today. I’ll share my review of The Bone Wall first, and my strongest suggestion for you all to head right over to Amazon and…
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May 28, 2015
Driving – My introduction to the Spanish roads in 1999
HA HA HAAAAA! Finally – somewhere to drive that rivals Africa in terror! I can just picture our lovely Sally with her hair all on end. Check out her delightfully funny article on driving in Spain for The Daily Telegraph. :D :D
Originally posted on Smorgasbord - Variety is the spice of life:
Firstly, to my Spanish friends and followers, I love living here and in the last 16 years as with many countries on the continent driving has become a great deal safer and I appreciate that there are wallies in every country on the roads.
However, I made a trip to the airport the other day to pick up my husband and I swear that on the way home in the rush hour we witnessed a number of the following manoeuvres. Including a couple of well executed slingshots.. This prompted me to dig out this article that I wrote for the Daily Telegraph online in 2003 and have updated.. It actually resulted in a flurry of complaints from Spanish drivers at the time about this Irish woman casting aspersions on their motoring skills..
DRIVING IN SPAIN – UNCUT!
We had what some people might regard as the ‘perfect’ marriage. My…
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Can You Give Away Free Digital Copies of your eBook When Enrolled in KDP Select?
No actually, as it turns out. Only via Amazon, and almost never via email attachment. The road to getting most things right as an Indie publisher is a steep learning curve. Knowledge is unlikely to magically appear if you can’t even imagine what questions to ask, and haven’t much of a clue what knowledge is required anyway. Most of us learn from mistakes, both large and small, along the way, and what with the continually changing and growing world of self-publishing, we really are learning all the time.
Having up to now had some of my books published for sale on Apple and Smashwords and all the rest, I wasn’t concerned about Amazon KDP Select rules as they didn’t apply. Now though, after MONTHS of working really hard to get them off Smashwords supplier sites, I’m being as careful as possible not to break any of them. I’ve decided that…
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May 26, 2015
Funny Typos
Not all typos are created equal. I know that some people are infuriated having a single one assault their sensibilities, but I think that some of them are so much more fun than the real word they’re impersonating. The problem is that sometimes after seeing a particularly cool one, they can put the brakes on anything else you’re trying to get done.
I was zooming through a fairly serious book for research purposes, when I was Earth-stoppingly (not a typo) struck by a little typo that now refuses to leave my mind, surfacing all the time and stopping me from doing anything constructive. A couple of typos in the books I read don’t generally bother me, and neither did the fact that this book had a typo in it. It’s the actual typo itself that won’t go away because of my weird and abnormal sense of humour. I know it’s weird and abnormal, because every time it strikes, and I’m laughing so hard that I cry, people always look at me in confusion when I try and share the funny – which is probably what you’re about to be doing right now. In this case it was –
Wonton Destruction
Images of wontons being destroyed keep pushing my own sentences right out of my head. Destruction of wontons by flood, fire, and terrible cruelty. Even if I could eat gluten without fear of much pain and illness, I don’t think I could ever eat a wonton again. Crunching the poor little guys up – wanton wonton destruction. Perhaps there’s a whole world out there somewhere in the multiverse, where wontons exist peacefully, trotting about on their little legs and reciting beautiful wonton prose, but unbeknown to them, a fleet of spacecraft is preparing to enter their atmosphere carrying thousands of alien wanton wonton destroyers. Good! I think I’ve got it out of my system now by sharing it with you. Thank you.
I think that in a couple of years Indie books are going to be much less likely to have editing issues than traditionally published books, because of the need to prove ourselves up to the actual work of publishing. Gordon Ramsay with his name spelled wrong in the front matter of his memoir is alright for him, but as an Indie you would get properly pummelled for getting your own name wrong in your book. Even Stephen King had a problem in one of his short stories – Autopsy Room Four – which I absolutely LOVED until I got to the bit about an American golfer being bitten by a Peruvian Boomslang. My beloved Stephen actually mentions how much he enjoyed putting that imaginary snake in the story, because he loved the name Boomslang. Most people probably won’t see a research problem there unless you’re a South African King fan (and we are LEGION by the way), and know that Boomslang is an Afrikaans language word meaning tree snake, so any Peruvian snake is highly unlikely to be called by that particular moniker. You’d think that a top editor for one of the most legendary authors on the planet would have picked that up, but still not a big deal for him. The new breed of Indie would have researched a little more, I like to think, and not made that mistake.
So. After sharing all of these highly intellectual things with you, thereby proving that I really am a very, very serious author type person, back to work for me. Before the lights go out again.
