The actual launch of Closed Circle is getting close enough I’m going to spend time this evening actually assembling several e-books, notably Faery in Shadow and The Writing Life: A Writer’s Journal vol 1-3. Those will be the first out. Rusalka is ready, but Jane is not ready to do the cover yet. She’s prepping her own books and doing her own covers. I’ll let her tell you about those.
What I have to do is: 1. assemble the book in mobi format. 2. assemble the book in its entirity except the cover and get it into Calibre (ePub). 3…and here’s where inventiveness fails me: you guys that want rtf, how do I get the cover and internal artwork, maps, whatever, into that format? I don’t see it.
Then 4) I have to copyright all of them, a little adventure with the US Copyright office involving fees and applications and the transfer of files.
Hmmn. Maybe instead of trying to do this in the evening when I’m already tired, Jane and I need to go through this process while I have a brain, in the daytime.
At any rate, we are getting that close. There’s a whole lot left to do: I have to compose the text on the site. I have to upload all the downloads and be sure they work with the payment mechanism. So does Jane. So does Lynn. Lynn’s got more than we do that she has to do, because she’s running the technical end, plus she’s doing a new feature of her own, on which she will raise the curtain at the appropriate time. I left all my files in pieces, because I still have to insert the copyright info and other things and knit everything together. Mobi wants it in pieces, Calibre wants it in two pieces only, and who knows what I’ll need to do with the rtf. Ideas are welcome. We hope to have it glitch-free by the time we fling the doors open.
Personally, I want to thank all three of you ladies. I know this started because you were annoyed with the circumstances of an uncaring publishing world — which you need to get your creations out there to your voracious fans. I certainly appreciate that you care about your works enough and your fans enough to go to these lengths; i’ve grapped everything when it first came out, starting with Ivrel in 1976 — youngsters don’t have that option I know. But it’s been said before — we will gladly wait for whatever you give us. If it’s tomorrow, fabulous — if it’s three weeks from now, fabulous! Take all the time you need, there’s other things that are important to you three too, and we can wait if we need to. But thank you!
Oh, excitement. I’m buying a new Mac that runs Snow Leopard so I can use Calibre to read on my laptop. That Should come in September or October. Then I can try to decide which ebook reader will work best for me. I’ve been dilly-dallying about getting a more up-to-date computer and getting an ebook reader. You three have pushed me into getting decisions made and new equipment bought so I can read your books. As usual, I failed to keep equipment current, but books I want will make me do many things. Thanks for the push, and I’m looking forward to Faery in Shadow, and everything else.
Great!
Right now I’m having a little tussle with Calibre: its latest upgrade will not believe I am not running Calibre concurrent with attempting to install. I’m sure this will get solved. Sigh. Nothing is ever simple, is it? But I’ll get it. Right now the phone is malfunctioning. re-Sigh. I’ve had two calls dropped on the house line.
Well, well. I know where my pocket money is going for a while. And here it is the beginning of the school year. Technical problems will be par for the course. I echo ryanrick, take your time. We would rather that you don’t hit a major technical snag early on that sends you running for the kill switch.
As a last resort you could back up your Calibre database (twice — multiple redundancy is good), uninstall your current version of Calibre, reboot, reinstall, restore database, restart Calibre. If you’ve changed the default database location you’ll have to tell the new Calibre about that too.
One of Calibre’s quirks is that when you exit it, it doesn’t really go away but remains dormant in your systray, and then you have to dismiss it from there. Needless, pointless behaviour. Bits of it may also reside in your system memory after “final” dismissal, which would explain the concurrency issue. In such case, a reboot will suffice to clear the problem — don’t get Calibre started until you’ve upgraded/reinstalled.
HA! Thank you, haplochlaena! (You don’t happen to keep one of those fellows, do you?)
If only one could edit one’s comments after clicking “submit”! I’d invert the paragraphs and change “In such case” to “In such a case”. :p
If you’ve got the cover and illustrations in any word processing format, the easiest thing will probably be to import it into MS Word, then tell Word to save as RTF, then double check with WordPad. (Right click on the file, pick “Open with…”, pick WordPad.
If you have everything disassembled, then collect the pieces by cutting and pasting into Word or WordPad. WordPad might be simpler, but it also might stumble on some graphics Word would work with. I don’t thing WordPad (or RTF even) will flow text around graphics, but you can put the graphics between paragraphs.
An article on the Google suit from the SF Chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/18/BUQH199RJU.DTL
Ooo! I forgot — one more thing before I shut up: Calibre can convert your ebook to RTF and a number of other formats previously unsupported. (I don’t know what the results look like because I’ve never tried it.)
Alas, no. I love marine tanks but don’t have the space or confidence to start and maintain one.
I generally prefer mammalian pets that can be caged and aren’t noisy; hence I have four rabbits and supplement their diet with home-grown vegetables, clover and ryegrass.
Rabbits are warm fuzzies, and easier to cuddle than Mr. blue octopus… 😉
Very true. You just have to careful not to prompt them to teach you the Dangling Bunny Trick, which is a sure thing if you get in the way of a rabbit fight. 😉
I suggest that you create a pdf (Adobe Acrobat) version instead of an rtf. With the Acrobat format, you can integrate images with the text, and the file displays with actual pages, and other formatting features which make the material more readable. More importantly, Acrobat has some security features, which easily can prevent a user from editing, or printing, or copying the text, depending on your wishes; the text, note, not the file itself. Unfortunately rtf files have no security features at all, that prevent the text being altered. Plenty of programs exist to create pdf files, including the later versions of Word (you don’t need to buy the expensive Acrobat suite to do so), and some are free. While the text-editing security features in Acrobat can be defeated, most users will respect the author’s wishes, and leave the original text alone, if you indicate this is your wish, by disallowing editing, or copying, and perhaps printing, when you create the file.
However, editing is exactly what some of us want to do. Not for any nefarious end, but just to maximize readability based on our personal needs. If I read PDF black on white very long, my eyes get tired. A comfortable “green-screen” set up lets me read as long as I want–but it’s not a PDF option. I also prefer Garamond to other fonts for a lot of reading, but this isn’t a standard Windows font–I have no clue where I got it, but CJ couldn’t distribute in Garamond without licensing the font (and why should everyone be forced into my favorite font?) If I wanted to read on a portable device, I might want to re-stream the text into a very narrow column. And so forth….
Page-formatted files such as Acrobat are practically useless on the smaller readers like Kindle, my Cybook, or a Palm or iPhone. Scrolling around on a page image with a tiny window is pretty annoying, whereas just pushing the page button more often is no hassle.
And isn’t part of the whole idea that if you offer your public authorized versions at a fair price, without presuming that they are criminals, most people will be happy to legally buy the books? Moreover, if a broke teenager borrows files from a friend, if he likes the books he’ll probably be a happy customer for more, down the line when he has a job and money.
To get a book cover linked to a book in Calibre you need to select the book and hit Edit Meta Information. From there you can load an image file from your hard drive into the book and it will be marked in the ebook as the cover.
RTF files, however, don’t have support for embedded images. You can link images, if your RTF application supports it, but the images need to hang out separately from the actual RTF file. If you’re going to do that you might as well just do the books in HTML so people can read them in their browsers.
Kakaze, Baen uses RTF extensively. All the books have covers and many have maps or diagrams. As easily accessed examples, all of http://www.baen.com/library/titles.htm
Check again. I just went through several of the books there with RTF files for download and there are no images to be seen. The proper ebook formats, however, have them.
Ok, checked again. Opened Weber’s The Honor of the Queen which has a cover and a map:
http://www.webscription.net/SendZip.aspx?SKU=0743435729&ProductID=211&format=D
Word: Check: both there.
WordPad: Check: both there.
I can only suggest that whatever program you’re using to open RTFs by default isn’t handling them well. In order to use a program other than the default, you have to extract the RTF from the zip file, then use the “Open With” right-click option.
I opened that file with Word, Pages, Text Edit, Stanza, and Calibre.
The *only* programme that showed the images was Word.
From everything I’ve read the RTF specification does NOT support embedded images and support for linked images is sketchy at best. It appears that, while Microsoft created the RTF format, Microsoft does not follow the specifications they’ve laid down in their own applications. Word and Word Pad, and MS Works from what I’ve read as well, can all do things with RTF files that are not in the official specifications for the format.
That being the case, RTF files with embedded images are useless for anyone not using a Microsoft product to view them.
(Excuse me if this threads improperly: no Reply on Kakaze’s last post.)
As I recall the list, Calibre doesn’t claim to support RTF; I can’t authoritatively comment on any of the text processors you mention. Yes, it’s true that RTF is something of a standard-wannabe; but with one of the supporting programs, WordPad, free with every copy of Windows, it’s a worthwhile format to support.
The purpose of supporting multiple formats is, after all, to support different needs. If every format worked well with all readers, multiple formats would be unneeded. I doubt the lowest common denominator of 7 bit US ASCII is the way we want things to go.
Second the motion against RTF… My Rocket eBook is unable to display that stuff, and I really hate the hassle to extract text data from an PDF, just so I can use my (admittedly ancient, but I love it) device to read a book.
There are a lot of possibilities to create an RTF – even my obscure wordprocessor can export it. It does not do the cleanest of codes, but it works.
(Preloading the “credit” card just now 😉 )
–Thea
Herzogenaurach, Germany
For stupid typers: I want a RTF, and hate PDF…
Seems like a real ebook format should be the priority. PDF has some issues (as pointed out above), and RTF may not have sufficient capability for font display on multiple devices (not sure but I don’t think it embeds fonts).
It’s early days, so I’m looking forward to how the experiment unfolds, technically and, more importantly, in terms of the business. Eventually, optimized support for multiple platforms (eg Kindle, Sony, etc) might make sense, but for now, a more ubiquitous single version seems like a practical start. Getting more works out is more important IMO than 3 or 4 format variants of each work.
Perhaps a supporting project using short works with many formats that we can test drive and provide feedback — 500 users is a pretty good sample size !
Test drive is not a bad idea.
This I do know: ePub runs on computers, on Kindle, and on Sony plus many other devices including models common in Europe. It is bucking to be the new eBook standard.
Mobi runs on computers, on Kindle, and maybe more. I’m going to have to look it up.
Both of these have adjusting font, meaning you can adjust the font size for your device, down to cell phones. Plain Mobi is the drm-free version of Kindle’s format.
Right now the files are in clean html, which is the only way I know to create scalable type for these devices.
I’m going to try to gather more information for you.
My Kindle doesn’t do ePub.
No, it won’t, I’m pretty sure: ePub is the rival format to mobi, which is its native type; but ePub will definitely convert over to mobi, via Calibre, which will run with no trouble.
I’m definitely doing both ePub and mobi formats, and looking into rtf. But if I miss your favorite format, a pass of your download through Calibre should render it into whatever format you like.
The big glitch is going to be artwork and maps, which I can get into e-book format, but it’s not guaranteed you’ll be able to display them in other formats. Which is a shame, because we’re doing the covers we always wanted the books to have, plus, in some cases, internal pieces.
What Calibre supports:
Input Formats: CBZ, CBR, CBC, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC**, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, TXT : these are the ones it will convert.
This is what it will convert those to: Output Formats: EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, TXT
What Mobi supports: Input formats: html, Word, text.
Output format: mobi
Your best massage-a-file-into-your-format operator is Calibre, that I have thus far found.
It is free, but asks a donation.
[And thank you, hapalochlaena, for telling me that Calibre stays in systray. The installation went like a charm.]
The path I’m taking:
the first pass renders the book into HTML, which I then clean up and patch as needed.
Then it acquires its cover, illos, appendices and front matter, and I upload all those into mobi.
Then (theoretically) I run the mobi file through Calibre and it comes out ePub with its artwork intact (we have yet to see this proven).
Then (theoretically) I take the html version into Word and see if it will process an RTF that isn’t screwed.
Ironically, the best html conversion is not Word, but Word Perfect, which is my preferred processor. And I am using code to restore the curly quotes, etc, as I prefer them to be. So it will be CSS, but a pretty CSS. I hope.
This may be of interest:
Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo have all joined the legal fight against Google Books. If they put their massive legal departments and financial resources into this, hopefully it will prevent Google having it all their own way.
Tech giants unite against Google
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8200624.stm
Google Rivals Will Oppose Book Settlement
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/technology/internet/21google.html
You can find plenty more articles… on Google News…
Yep, and so have various writers’ groups.
The difference is that, when it comes to legal firepower, Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo are like three jump carriers, and the various writers’ groups are like family merchanters.
If three carriers have just dropped into the system, and will be fighting on your side in this battle it must be good news.
🙂
IT is. The writers’ groups form more or less the moral contingent of the abused peasants, while the others have the firepower.
Anent the discussion above, since between mobi and ePub, a computer can run the files and display the art, I’ll do those; and I’ll do an rtf (as best I can) for the people wanting that, and those will be our 3 formats. With Calibre, which I think Macs can run, too, you should be able to use it to convert to anything else you want, and everybody will be happy.
ANENT! Cool. New word. Well, slightly used. Thank you!
If I still worked at a Japanese company, I’d try to introduce it. It’s so much more concise than, “With regard to…”, though it doesn’t quite equal the Japanese “-wa”.
🙂 It’s a very old word, I think. Not even sure of the derivation.
My 1973 vintage Concise Oxford says it is archaic Scots probably from Old English “on efen” “on a level with”. That’s what I love about the Oxford; all the derivations are there.
I knew one of you would get it!