Death Roll is on Kindle!
But, man, it wasn't easy. After three weeks of research, experimentation and diddling around, I finally got things to work and thought I'd share some of my bumps and bruises for anyone else trying to take the journey to KindleLand.
First, you need an Amazon account. Easy enough. Then come the ton of Internet links about formatting your book for Kindle. And they don't agree. Change your Word.doc to HTML. Download a converter. Huh? Finally, I did find good info at Amazon's site at their DTP--Digital Text Platform page. Some good stuff here about removing page breaks, using the Veranda font. Stuff like that. But how would I know things looked okay?
Ignore the Download Kindle Generator at the bottom of the page. That got me off track. I didn’t find it necessary. The top link at the Kindle Publishing Program page goes to the DTP is where the work is done. Option 3 saved my bacon! It let's you upload and preview the book. After cleaning up the manuscript in Word, I uploaded it to this site and could PREVIEW what the book would actually look like on Kindle. Yay! This allowed me to go back and make adjustments until things looked pretty good.
Oh, another issue was the cover art. Marilyn and I do not own the cover art to the published version of Death Roll, which meant we had to create our own cover for the Kindle version. A little work with Microsoft Publisher and we had something we liked. Various web sites suggested numerous formats for the cover. (Not this again!) I ended up ignoring those sites and went with what was on the Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidlines link.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000234621
Another thing I learned is that things don't all update at once on Kindle. While the book and cover were available immediately, the product description didn't appear for several days, and a change I made in another part of the text three days ago hasn't yet updated. On the plus side, two days after making the Kindle book "live" (you can turn it off) the Kirkus Review and other info that appeared for the printed version of Death Roll was automatically copied over to the Kindle version. BTW, you aren't allowed to put in reviews or blurbs on a Kindle book; however, if the book exists in print, Amazon will transfer the existing blurbs for you. Nice!
Not a painless a process but it worked. Now comes promoting the book, itself a delicate dance. It's considered bad form for an author to go on Kindle book forums and tell people to buy his book. Very crass. One has to be artful and considerate. More to do.
--Michael
2 comments:
Hi, I'm on Kindle too and just love it. My royalties don't amount to much yet but there are some and they will grow (I hope). Enjoyed looking at your interesting books with attractive covers - enjoyed my visit and the pictures too. Good luck to all of us,
Jackie Griffey
Hi Jackie, thanks for visiting. Yeah, not a lot of Kindle sales for us but it does help keep the Death Roll alive.
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