Re: [gutvol-d] seriously, feel free to ask any questions
james said:
I'm pretty happy with the way the web page came out.
ok, i'm unclear... are you happy with the .html version mounted at p.g.? are you happy with the p.g. autogenerated .mobi file? are you happy with the p.g. autogenerated .epub file? if you're happy with all three, then the case is closed. if you're unhappy with any, then we should pursue it. :+) -bowerbird
Bowerbird, I posted a modified EPUB and MOBI at archive.org. The MOBI is formatted significantly differently than the web page. The web page looks like the printed page. The modified EPUB and MOBI looks different but reads more or less the same and looks much better on the Kindle. An example just using ASCII text: Web page: _Krishna:_ Some damsel I saw, supremely fair-- A moon unstained, that slowly rose, Or a golden vine. Eyes twin lotus-blooms, dyed with sūrm, The playground of waves of love-- Twin timid partridges, snared by Nature With nought but a rope of collyrium! A garland of ivory-pearls caressed the burden Of her mountain breasts-- Kāma pouring celestial streams from a brimming conch On a golden Shambhu! The sacrificer of a hundred offerings on a sacred shore Were blest by such reward! _Vidyāpati says: It is Gokula's lord._ _The herd-girls' darling._ 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. Eyes twin lotus-blooms, dyed with sūrm, The playground of waves of love-- Twin timid partridges, snared by Nature With nought but a rope of collyrium! A garland of ivory-pearls caressed the burden Of her mountain breasts-- Kāma pouring celestial streams from a brimming conch On a golden Shambhu! The sacrificer of a hundred offerings on a sacred shore Were blest by such reward! _Vidyāpati says: It is Gokula's lord._ _The herd-girls' darling._ 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. However, the reformatting is not something I could have done without having two different HTML versions, and the Kindle really needed it. I also made a nice cover image for the book and split the chapters into separate files in the EPUB and the MOBI I generated from it. So archive.orghas 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. Most PG books look fine on the Kindle, but some do not. Another issue I had with "Ancient Manners" was I put in the captions to the illustrations as text. When you publish the MOBI without illustrations (as Amazon does) the captions are undifferentiated text smack in the middle of regular text, making reading confusing. Now I made the captions centered and italicized, but somehow by the time they got to the Kindle Store in their free version that was lost. The reprobate's version was even worse. 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. James Simmons On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 1:44 PM, <Bowerbird@aol.com> wrote:
james said:
I'm pretty happy with the way the web page came out.
ok, i'm unclear...
are you happy with the .html version mounted at p.g.?
are you happy with the p.g. autogenerated .mobi file?
are you happy with the p.g. autogenerated .epub file?
if you're happy with all three, then the case is closed. if you're unhappy with any, then we should pursue it. :+)
-bowerbird
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James>...some reprobate who seems to make a quick and dirty version of everything released by PG before Amazon makes their free version.... I always try to take a deep breath and keep repeating to myself (when I make a book for PG) as if a personal mantra: This is not my book, it was written by another long ago. This is not PG's book, it was written by another long ago. This book is no longer under copyright, it is risen to the public domain. Now, finally, the public owns it, which is as it should be, and the public, jointly and individually, can do with it as they like, for better or for worse. === Now, having said that, I personally lose it when some reprobate takes a book off of DP before its even posted to PG -- especially when there seems (at least in my paranoid mind) to be a correlation between how long it's taking for a book to make it out of DP, and the fact that that reprobate is already making money off that book on Amazon.
Jim, Amazon says it will not offer undifferentiated editions of books in the public domain which they already offer for free. You have to do something to the public domain book to make it better than the free one. Add original art, an introduction, etc. I wish they'd actually enforce this policy. There is a lot of public domain stuff on the Kindle Store that is actually formatted worse than the PG version. There is other stuff that doesn't really qualify as a book, like the "Hephaestus Books" stuff that is just bundled Wikipedia articles. (You don't find that out until you've paid for the book, of course). Books submitted to Kindle are "in review" for hours. It would be nice if they did some actual reviewing, and reject stuff that was not up to some minimum standard. Just say "this isn't good enough to sell to our customers." My four public domain titles together have earned me a little under ten dollars since July. I don't think these quick and dirty publishers are doing much better than that. I have to wonder why they do it. I'd probably lose it myself if a book got posted to Amazon right out of DP. My own submission "Ancient Manners" was in DP for almost a year before I decided to just do the work myself. I have submitted three Raymond Chandler novels and two Robert C. Benchley books to DP Canada and they are taking months to work their way through the queue. James Simmons On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 8:10 AM, Jim Adcock <jimad@msn.com> wrote:
James>...some reprobate who seems to make a quick and dirty version of everything released by PG before Amazon makes their free version....
I always try to take a deep breath and keep repeating to myself (when I make a book for PG) as if a personal mantra:
This is not my book, it was written by another long ago.
This is not PG's book, it was written by another long ago.
This book is no longer under copyright, it is risen to the public domain. Now, finally, the public owns it, which is as it should be, and the public, jointly and individually, can do with it as they like, for better or for worse.
===
Now, having said that, I personally lose it when some reprobate takes a book off of DP before its even posted to PG -- especially when there seems (at least in my paranoid mind) to be a correlation between how long it's taking for a book to make it out of DP, and the fact that that reprobate is already making money off that book on Amazon.
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Amazon says it will not offer undifferentiated editions of books in the public domain which they already offer for free.
Ah well, a reprobate took some stuff I personally had written for public consumption and I had put it up free (as in without cost) on the internet on my own website, and then the reprobate republished that material on Amazon with my title and contents -- but with his name as the author. This in turn was instructions on how to get ebooks for free off internet. I had to go to Amazon legal with a "take down" request -- because I didn't want this guy to imply that which I offer for free is actually "for sale" on Amazon. Eventually Amazon honored my "take down" request -- and the reprobate went on to other bottom feeder activities on Amazon. I even offered Amazon that he could leave my stuff on their store with his name on it -- if at least he would change the title to make it clear that what he was offering was "different" from what I was offering! Must remember to take a deep breath: Breath in, Breath out, Breath in, Breath out...
participants (3)
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Bowerbird＠aol.com -
James Simmons -
Jim Adcock