E-pub, e-books, e-readers . . .

Over the last year, I’ve been one of those who said ‘I shall never read e-books; I am a paper, bindings, smell and sound type of girl,’ and as for publishing an e-book: ‘My God!  Are you kidding?’ I’d read all the industry blogs on the increasing popularity or the e-book, I’d watched sales of e-readers climb and still I was unaffected.

And then . . .

A reader of a fan-fiction I was writing suggested I upload to something called Wattpad. That was, effectively, the breach in the dyke.  I now had experience of downloadable literature. What it did was introduce me to whole raft of readers I wouldn’t have been able to direct my product at otherwise.

Following that, a writer I admire, Ann Swinfen, uploaded an edition of a previous novel (initially published by Random House) to Kindle and I was privileged to follow her efforts as she did so. Then another writer who belongs to the same peer-review site as myself, Lexi Revellian, put her title on Kindle and within weeks she was being mentioned by The Times no less. Lexi is a real success story, taking her manuscript and publishing it without going down the mainstream path!

And when Ann went to Kindle, my husband bought a Kindle e-reader. It’s sitting in a post-office waiting for me to collect it as we are far from PO’s at the moment and I confess it’s tantalising.  All this brings me to the fact that I appear to be a convert!  Who would’ve thought?

I’m in the process of editing (re-writing) previous editions of print novels for upload to Kindle. Why re-write? Well, it appears I’ve deleted the word doc’s of my novels and only have the pdf’s now. (you have to understand I am the ungeekiest person alive!) And that’s made the workload that much harder.

1. Had to convert pdf back to word.

2. Had to remove all embedded codes by creating a ‘nuclear’ file.

3. Had to re-format, re-edit . . .

And so I thought I’d re-write. Not the plot but just refine it. Any writer will tell you that each year they mature that much more with their writing, so why not? But the whole thing is taking AAAAAGES!!!!!!!!!  And apparently, because I work on a MAC, there is no guarantee that the upload will proceed smoothly, according to much blog comment out there. When I get to Kindle Preview, it seems to be anyone’s experience that one has to go back and edit again, and yet again!  So there may be a need to buy something called Scrivener, or Calibre or failing that, go to an e-pub specialist. All this so that it can be read on a mobile screen.

But I do want to accomplish this. Preferably on my own as it’s a learning curve that will stand me in good stead for the digital future.

I can remember last summer was the summer of the booktrailer. Well, this summer is the summer of the Kindle. Wish me luck as I sit swearing!