Publishing on Amazon

I've been chugging away hard on my newest book, Choosing and Using Handplanes.  This is a book for woodworkers who are relatively new to the use of handplanes that describes them and how to set them up for effective use.  My plan is to publish the book as an 8-1/2 X 11 inch paperback and also in a Kindle edition. 

I wrote the book section-by-section in Word, then pasted it into Microsoft Publisher for laying out the 99 photos and figures in a pleasing format.  I am now only lacking the foreword from having a complete text.  Once I have that in hand and know my final pagination, I'll finish the Table of Contents, convert the book to pdf format and upload it to Amazon.  The cover has already been designed, so that will get uploaded at the same time.  So the hard work has been completed on the paperback version.

Not so the Kindle version.  Kindle books are best submitted in Word format, which means I had to convert the Publisher file back to Word.  Unfortunately, that process stripped all the photos and figures out of the book and they will have to be re-inserted.  Also, for some reason the sections of the book were saved in Word in the sequence in which they were originally written, not their final sequence in Publisher.  That meant I had to do a lot of cutting and pasting to get things back into the correct order.  Then there are the headings to establish so Word will create a Table of Contents that Kindle can use.  And hyperlinks to add; I didn't need those in the paperback version, but I want the Kindle edition to be as user-friendly as possible and that means adding links to resources and to various points in the book to which readers might want to jump. 

It'll take a lot of work to get the Kindle version finalized and submitted for publication review by the folks at Amazon.  Kind of makes me wish I had taken the time to study Adobe's InDesign program, which I believe would have generated a mobi file for Kindle without all the extra steps.  Next time, I promise.

A Return to Africa

Some years back, I went on safari in Africa, mainly to Kenya but also to Botswana and Zambia.  While there, I amassed many memories, a number of stories and about 5,000 photos.  I've longed to share these ever since.  Finally, with the ability to publish eBooks, I've decided to convert my work into publishable form.

A newborn elephant begins walking only hours after birth, keeping pace with the herd, which must move on to new feeding sites.

The text is written, pending some edits.  I'm now in the process of selecting the photos that will accompany it, after which I'll edit them for final publication.  Then will come the challenge of laying out the final publication using Adobe InDesign.  This software holds great promise, but I am not yet fully conversant with all its features so there is on-the-job learning to complete.

My target for publication is April 1.  When it's been released, it will be available on my web site at http://positives.biz.

A New Writing Project

I've been a semi-professional photographer for over 30 years.  Though I've published many photos during my career and written many articles illustrated with my shots, I've never ventured to write about the craft of photography.  Until now, that is.

What I'm about now is a book about landscape photography.  It will be a short work, perhaps 30-40 pages, with brief tips for making better landscape photos.  The intended audience is the amateur photographer with minimal experience who wants to achieve more professional-looking photos.  I'll illustrate the book with photos that underscore the tips.

My plan at the moment is to market the book myself, at least initially.  I'll first release it in a pdf version.  Later, after I've learned to use InDesign, I'll publish an ePub version that can be read on iPads and Nooks.

The principal points I'm making are that great and inspiring photos must be made, not merely taken, and that they depend more on the photographer's vision than on his or her equipment.  I'll give tips on how to go about making photos that inspire.  That, in fact, is what my tentative title states--Making Landscapes That Inspire.

I've already drafted the text and I'm now in the process of selecting and editing the photos I'll use to underscore my points.  I will soon set up a web site that I'll use for marketing the book.  At the same time, I'm practicing with InDesign to see how I can build great-looking layouts so the book will look its best.

I've not yet decided whether to include dynamic content in the ePub version of the book.  Frankly, I'm not sure what I would want that to look like.  I think dynamic content could be a very effective way of teaching photography, but given what I still need to learn about InDesign, I think it is something I'll take up after I've released the static versions.

If anybody has any suggestions for how to approach dynamic content, or has good examples to recommend, I'm all ears.  Please leave a comment.