Bowerbird, Well, you've given me some things to think about. Actually, I've done books for PG Canada (Benchley Beside Himself and The Big Sleep) that came out beautifully on the Kindle. Most books probably do. Just lately I've been attracted to books where the formatting has been a challenge. In addition to the Kindle Store I've written and published a book on Lulu. If I wanted to I could reissue the Krishna poetry book on Lulu, and for that the original formatting would be worth keeping. There's no money in that, but if the archive.org pages had included the Indian miniature paintings that the original book had it might have been worth making a print-on-demand version. Something nice for the coffee table. I've donated a bunch of stuff to archive.org. They generate a really awful EPUB and MOBI automatically from submitted page images run through OCR, but you have the option of replacing that with your own corrected version, which I've done for a couple of my donations. It would be nice to have the option (not the requirement) to do the same on PG. James Simmons On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 1:29 PM, <Bowerbird@aol.com> wrote:
james said:
On the Kindle I formatted it like this:
_Krishna:_
Some damsel I saw, supremely fair-- A moon unstained, that slowly rose, Or a golden vine.
yes! that's exactly what i woulda suggested you do -- move the name up, to use the horizontal space better.
but i would've done that for the _web_ version as well.
because more and more, the web is being accessed by people with smaller screens -- ipads and iphones, etc.
and -- especially when it comes to _reading_ -- they increasingly use a portrait orientation, not landscape.
so the old assumption of wide-screens is crumbling.
thus, even for the version that's "for the web", it'll be increasingly wise to use that horizontal space wisely.
take it from me, i know the sense of accomplishment and feeling of mastery that a person attains when we are able to "make an e-book look like the print-book", because i have _experienced_ those feelings myself...
so i'm not downgrading them, not in the slightest...
but these days, there's almost no real payoff in that.
if anyone wants to "see what the print-book looks like", the scans are online, just as available as your e-books...
for instance, here's the page with the text you quoted:
http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924011697525#page/n21/mode/2up
(humously, archive.org has the recto/verso mixed up.)
just try to provide such a focused link -- targeting a single poem -- in the versions which you uploaded...
there is no payoff in having you _replicate_ something that's online already, in a more-or-less "original" form.
indeed, as you experienced, if there is any payoff at all, it is a _negative_ one, regarding the generated e-books.
if you make your master-format "look like" the p-book, your generated e-book outputs _might_ look like crap...
(or they _might_ look and work just dandy, which would be the type of situation we will be aiming for, but if we must change something, change "look like the p-book".)
I will know to avoid "span" in my web pages in the future, and to put in the special style that prevents kindlegen from indenting the first line of every paragraph, etc. I am gradually learning the tricks.
that's good. tricks are good. :+)
the thing is, the e-book environment is still shifting. the ground isn't steady. so a trick you learned today might not work tomorrow. it might even back-fire... which makes you look bad. that's just the way it is...
However, the reformatting is not something I could have done without having two different HTML versions, and the Kindle really needed it.
well, james, if you are willing to change your "web" version in the way that i suggested up above, then you might well be able to do everything very simply.
that's what i will be willing to show you, if you like...
So archive.org has a nice Kindle version, and the Kindle Store, but PG (which has by far the most downloads) has a disappointing one and the Kindle Store will have two disappointing ones competing with my good one: one by Amazon and another by some reprobate who seems to make a quick and dirty version of everything released by PG before Amazon makes their free version.
the way i would suggest doing it is to use light-markup.
and then _generate_ the .html version -- automatically!, at the same time _generating_ the .epub and the .mobi, and a nice .pdf version as well. less work, better results. more fun, and with faster throughput, to do more books.
moreover, when the rip-off publishers rip off your .html, they'll rip off your .mobi and .epub versions as well, and at least the book (and maybe your name) will look good.
So it would be nice to have the option of preparing a hand formatted version for EPUB and MOBI so when Kindle owners grab them the results are as good as possible.
yeah, except that approach then requires _everyone_ to "hand format" an .epub and a .mobi, and they won't do it, or they won't do it well, so that's the wrong path to pursue.
far better to make it _easier_ on everyone, in the first place, and get dependable high-quality versions across the board.
-bowerbird
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