E-book conversion process = Tartarus
A number of folks have asked us over the last few weeks when we will have an ‘e-book’ edition of “SCARECROWS: A DANDY World” available. I can tell you now that we should have it up within the next few days. I wanted to explain why there was such a delay in getting our e-book edition out.
We put in for a ‘Kindle’ conversion soon after we published on 21 May 2012. When we got the draft back we found a number of errors. So, Jonathan carefully compared [three times] the hard copy edition with the Kindle draft, noted every error in a separate document, and sent the list back to our ‘Kindle Conversion Team’. The Team was very responsive, and apologetic, regarding the errors and got immediately to work on fixing the draft. We are very happy with the responsiveness and professionalism of the CreateSpace Kindle Conversion Team. There was a learning curve, as well, because we had never dealt with the intricacies of publishing an e-book before.
Now, we could have just run with the flawed edition, and gotten it out there on the market quickly. Many of our friends who voraciously read e-books have told us that they often find many errors in their e-book editions when compared to their hard copy editions of the same books. We are wondering if that is because OCR technology may be used to convert the book to an e-book. Anyway, Jonathan and I made a conscious decision that we did not want to put out something that we would consider grievously flawed. We want to be proud of our product, and make sure that the folks who purchase the e-book edition get one that is comparable to the hard copy edition.
After all, it is all up to us, we are doing all of the work on this end. The ‘buck stops here’ so to speak. Frankly, this portion of it was all up to Jonathan. I was there for moral support, to make phone calls, to bounce questions off of, feed him [literally, spiritually, and emotionally] and to crack the whip when needed. Jonathan is the slightly 'Left Brained' Taurus type, and I am the 'Left and Right Brained' Leoness type -- which part of my brain I am using depends on my mood. Yes, I am a big cat -- I accept this fact and understand it. So, in this instance he is better with confirming the position of a word in a novel, and hanging paintings straight...
We just got the corrected e-book draft back this evening. We will go over it this weekend to make sure all the errors were addressed. If they have been sorted out, we will launch the e-book edition shortly thereafter.
Such are the joys of self-publishing, but with great power comes great responsibility – and work ;)
We put in for a ‘Kindle’ conversion soon after we published on 21 May 2012. When we got the draft back we found a number of errors. So, Jonathan carefully compared [three times] the hard copy edition with the Kindle draft, noted every error in a separate document, and sent the list back to our ‘Kindle Conversion Team’. The Team was very responsive, and apologetic, regarding the errors and got immediately to work on fixing the draft. We are very happy with the responsiveness and professionalism of the CreateSpace Kindle Conversion Team. There was a learning curve, as well, because we had never dealt with the intricacies of publishing an e-book before.
Now, we could have just run with the flawed edition, and gotten it out there on the market quickly. Many of our friends who voraciously read e-books have told us that they often find many errors in their e-book editions when compared to their hard copy editions of the same books. We are wondering if that is because OCR technology may be used to convert the book to an e-book. Anyway, Jonathan and I made a conscious decision that we did not want to put out something that we would consider grievously flawed. We want to be proud of our product, and make sure that the folks who purchase the e-book edition get one that is comparable to the hard copy edition.
After all, it is all up to us, we are doing all of the work on this end. The ‘buck stops here’ so to speak. Frankly, this portion of it was all up to Jonathan. I was there for moral support, to make phone calls, to bounce questions off of, feed him [literally, spiritually, and emotionally] and to crack the whip when needed. Jonathan is the slightly 'Left Brained' Taurus type, and I am the 'Left and Right Brained' Leoness type -- which part of my brain I am using depends on my mood. Yes, I am a big cat -- I accept this fact and understand it. So, in this instance he is better with confirming the position of a word in a novel, and hanging paintings straight...
We just got the corrected e-book draft back this evening. We will go over it this weekend to make sure all the errors were addressed. If they have been sorted out, we will launch the e-book edition shortly thereafter.
Such are the joys of self-publishing, but with great power comes great responsibility – and work ;)
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Wendilyn
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Aug 23, 2012 04:46PM
Done and done, now waiting for it to go live... supposedly was to be 12 hours, but now says it can take up to 24...
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