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.

Facing the Truth of Climate Change

The Hero of Gucci Gulch is a murder mystery set in the world of lobbyists, corporate representatives and members of Congress and their staffs.  It takes place on Capitol Hill--sometimes known as Gucci Gulch--for the prized brand of Italian leather often worn by the well-paid corporate lobbyists who patrol its halls. 

But the novel is much more than the story of murder, muggings and mayhem, though it has plenty of these.  It is set against the backdrop of the global challenge of climate change and the need for meaningful U.S. policy to address out-of-control carbon emissions into the environment.  It revolves around the struggles of environmental lobbyists to persuade a reluctant Congress to cap and trade legislation as a way to curb those emissions and bring the U.S. into better alignment with environmental actions being taken in much of the rest of the world.

The protagonist, Henry Wright, is an environmental lobbyist for a public interest organization.  He coordinates his work with Alicia Cummings, a pretty young intern.  But the impetuous intern gets too close to the nefarious secrets of the anti-environmental opposition.  When Henry finds her body in a lonely Washington garden, the investigation begins.

While the police slowly follow up false leads, Henry tries to assuage his grief by working members of Congress to support environmental legislation.  At the same time, he is drawn deeper and deeper into the murder investigation until at last his own life is put in danger.

Throughout, the story follows Henry's attempts to get a cap and trade bill passed over the objections of industry's heaviest polluters.  In the end, the book not only traces the chase to find the guilty but also the difficult path of facing up to global environmental challenges.

The book is available from Amazon.com and the CreateSpace eStore.  A Kindle edition is also available.

And Now Available on Amazon.com!

Today I discovered that The Hero of Gucci Gulch, my murder mystery novel set on Capitol Hill, is available for sale on Amazon.com.  They had promised it would become available in five to seven days; they made it in one!   It is even available for free shipping by Prime, if you subscribe to that service, so you can have a copy by Monday if you order today.

As I said in my last post, the book will also be available in a Kindle version, but converting the file will take me a while so I can't yet predict when that edition will be ready.