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Legacy Published

Legacy is now published and I'm working on a podcast of it next (mp3.)  Fun.

*** updated ***

Podcasts are cool; just an XML header pointing at an image (cover) and MP3 audio file.

*** updated ***

Until I get the XML wrapper done, I've uploaded Legacy audio to two places:

• octavianit.com/legacy.mp3 (sometimes flaky)
• SoundCloud

Mission: iBooks

It is done.  It isn't painful, but it isn't trivial either.  I was unable to publish the stories individually - I could have fought with iBooks Author to try and get it to like my format - but ultimately I gave up and used its format.  You have a choice of writing a chapter book or a text book.  So I took the five published stories and made a short chapter book.  The import from Word per chapter was easy enough.  It even kept additional formatting (the list and font in Smackdown.)  But I could not use my stock book cover that I have on Play or Kindle.  There probably is a way but it was not obvious - I didn't see any over "default" covers so it is possible.  There are some quirks in the text edit for titles - it doesn't provide a mechanism to insert a newline, and if you split it, it looses the multi-line information when it gets pumped into iTunes Producer.  It was funky again when picking the device to publish to: one choice - iMac. One unfortunate thing about the BISAC codes - you can only pick one subject. iTunes Producer was trivial to use - but the publishing region is funky - if you select "world" it will not add it as a region (bad HCI Apple?  No interaction feedback? No!?) So, to select all regions, you have to select all regions!  The previewing tool was decent but the tab chapter view wasn't obvious (use the left and right arrow keys, don't click.)  It looks like it was designed for gestures.  Anyway, I'm going to splurge and see how it really looks on my iPad.

My brief summary: if you are starting from scratch iBooks Author is a cool studio.  But if you are just importing existing books, its not great.

The Master Plan

Someone asked if I have a plan or order to the stories I'm writing.  Yes.  For the most part it is chronological based on my experience.  But the topics and themes will change.  I've already rolled a couple ideas into one story.  But here is my "second" outline.  I lost the first.  If you see it, let me know.  Possible titles of stories:

• Graduation/First Job (became "The Beginning")
• Smack Down
• The Mexican
• Executives (became "Talking to Executives")
• Prima Donna
• You Must Learn Control (became "Legacy")
• Playing Nicely with Others
• The Nth Reorg
• Project Managers from Hell
• Cube-land
• The Christmas Party
• Hall Monitors
• The Impressive Clergyman
• Switching Teams
• Assassination
• When Dunning Met Kruger
• Shadow IT
• Last Man Standing
• Up, Over and Down
• Transformation
• Start-up 101

There may be others as I dredge up suppressed memories.

Google Books

Publishing to Google Books was painful.  First, the mixture of my managed domains and personal email confused Google to not let me create a publishing account.  I could not figure out what services to turn on in the managed domain to fix it.  So I did get it going via my gmail account.  However, the new vendor registration does not work with Chrome!  Fortunately for me Internet Explorer understood the HTML/Javascript under the hood, and I was able to set up an account.  But Google wants you to fill in a lot of extra information for the book, including the BISAC code (found via the internet.)  I was not able to fill in the Vendor information without saying I was a company with a personal benefactor, at which point it let me enter my ITIN.  There is other weirdness; the currency conversion.

Wow.  About 1.5 hours to figure it all out for one story.  And now I wait to see if it makes the Play store.

I am now starting to worry about accounting.  I take it if I ever make money on this, I will need to tell Revenue Canada, but that is a problem I'd like to have.

Books via Google are PDF.  That's a good thing.  Not sure how DRM works here though.

*** UPDATE ***

Supposedly the first story is now live on Google Books and Play.  However, it does not appear in the search.  That is not helpful.

*** UPDATE ***

Google told me today it can take weeks to appear on the store.  But my new problem is my last two stories are being rejected due to low quality PDF.  PDF output is the same as my first book; publish, high quality, standard font.  Not much information as to what the issue is but Bianca ,the nice lady on the other end, said she would put them through manually.

NOOK nope.

I tried to expand to Barnes and Noble today and NOOK books.  Everything went okay (well mostly okay, it doesn't like docx too much though it says it supports the format) until I went to create a vendor account.  Canada is not an option - so I cannot sell via that platform (yet.)

*** Update ***

NOOK support got back to my question of "When will you support Canadian authors?" with an answer of "We support US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, and Belgium.  Check us out often for updates!"  I didn't reply that where and when are not the same kind of question.  I love service organizations that don't answer questions directly.

Talking to Executives

Talking to Executives is now live on Amazon.  This story sees Mark meet the big bosses to share his ideas...  telling the bosses how to do their jobs better is a great idea, right?

Remember it only takes an additional $1 to fund the kickstarter campaign!  And please tell your friends.

Editors and Spelling

My sister-in-law Becky is a professional editor.  She was generous to offer her services to me so I didn't look silly.  This is one of the main points Kindle makes on their KDP website: use a professional editor.

One of the first things Becky pointed out is my title is wrong.  "Memoires" is a spelling mistake.  This escaped me because my copy of Word and its dictionary says its spelled correctly.  But sure enough, unless I'm speaking french (and missing an accent), it is not the Canadian spelling.  I googled "Memoirs" is correct.

So at first I thought "Well, that's fine.  Nobody has caught it yet, and I'm self publishing."  Then I tried to justify using it, maybe making a story out of it (because who hasn't been thrown under the bus by a spell checker or auto-correct.)  Heck even Google misspelt Google from Googol.  Now Google is a word; a verb and a noun!

Finally I gave in.  So I updated by source documents and cover pages and all the other places I had it spelled wrong.  KDP, Kobo, Kickstarter, Blogger, and Facebook were all very forgiving in letting me change the titles and descriptions.

Now let's see if it makes any difference what-so-ever.

Apple is not so simple...

Publishing to Apple for iBooks is not so easy.  You need to mail in a GST form to Apple that they file to say its okay to collect on your behalf.  Then you need to go and buy a Mac (if you don't have one already) to run two "free" software called "iBook Publisher" and "iTunes Producer."  The first lets you make an iBook format book.  The second lets you package it for iTunes.  At least this is what I've read on the surface.  I intend to borrow a Mac to try this out.  It is unfortunate I can't just upload a cover page and content.  But then, Apple still uses WebObjects for all their stuff.  Wow.  That attempt at a stateful web technology really should have died ten years ago.

Kobo is good too!

Kobo.  I saw Kobo eReaders in Chapters.  Apparently they own a healthy portion of the market in Canada.  Signing up for self publishing was easier than Kindle (that was really easy.)  Kobo calls the service "Writing Life."  The royalties are better than Amazon for small amounts (45% compared to 30% for Amazon.)

The document to eBook import isn't as snazzy as Kindle.  It ignored spacing formats from my source word document (so I need to go back and add white space.)  The web javascript editor seems totally broken (under Chrome.)  Also, the cover creator isn't as nice.  I went through my picture library to find something interesting and added a title with photoshop.  Guess what the picture is of?  My first fax machine - that exploded when my cat (whom loved to sit on the warm printer beside the fax) coughed up a hairball on said fax machine.  Neat huh?

Click here to download the Kobo version of "The Beginning."

Amazing Kindle Direct Publishing

This was very easy to set up.  I published in an hour.  It helped that the IRS had already been kind enough to grant me an ITIN (when I signed up to sell apps on the Windows store.)

Click me to see "The Beginning" - the first story on Amazon.

Or click me to see "The Mexican" - the second story (also on Amazon.)

The cover page creator from Amazon is very nice, but I wonder about the (C) on the images.  I am too lazy to make a picture but I really liked this one.  Unfortunately I won't use this cover on other services...  CMA.

As of today, I've sold 2 copies of story one, and 1 copy of story 2.  I'm beating expectations!

Linking via Twitter and Google+ has generated no interest, well, I got a few followers of 16yr old girls wanting to be aspiring singer/actresses.