Money in America – the Publication

When this project began, it came from one random thought: that few had ever seen a U.S. silver certificate. The first post became many.

The writing involved research and discovery; I learned new things along the way, went on tangents, refined the narrative and passed it along. Once finished, it still felt incomplete. So I collated all the posts into one document and put it on Scribd.

Your suggestions led to Amazon and I had quite another project in mind about there. A while back someone had mentioned CreateSpace, aha.

https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/

The good news is, there’s much information there; the bad news is, I’ve seen better organized web sites. After several hours of poking around various sections, I understood the phrase, “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” Having acquired an associate diploma, Professional Writing and Editing (with particular focus on print layout) I left with more questions on their process.

I’d looked at some of the topics and followed some threads in the community forums. The following day, I registered and decided the only way to see how it worked was to have a go, and like Indiana Jones, make it up as I went along. Despite my misapprehension from the website (Overview / Cover / Interior etc.) after the administrative bump, you do start with the interior content.

Well, it was far easier than I expected. The ‘Create a book’ button takes to a login page, from there, a multi-step process begins. Enter a title, fill out various form info – including the droll ‘reporting to the IRS’ topic (Big Brother is everywhere!) and follow the creating steps in sequence. There are options along the way, including for-pay professional help. On your own, you can exit at any stage and return to that step later.

Early on, you have the option of taking the free ISBN number provided by CreateSpace (such a deal!) But there is flexibility if others require another way.

There’s plenty of good advice from other users in the community. There are various industry standard templates to use in word processing software. You will need to know some details about formats, both text and graphics.

Both of the images I’d used were snagged from the web and caused the one autocheck error in the test of my PDF file: CS process wants 300 dpi for images and typically from the web one has 72 dpi. A simple matter to convert.

As I run Ubuntu linux and the Open Office suite, and the Gimp (Graphic Image Manipulation Program) a couple of tweaks fixed the problem. (Both of those programs have Windows versions, btw.) And with OO, I can save as .doc format or alternates and also export a PDF which CS prefers. You will select a book size (aka, trim size – page dimensions) this is where the template comes in, and there are various industry-standard sizes, in both plain and formatted types.

As mentioned, your images need to be 300 dpi (which I had not checked aforehand) and the PDF must have the fonts embedded. There is a tickbox in Open Office to do this – embedding a font insures ‘what you see is what you get’ as there are untold numbers and styles of fonts.

Once the process determines your file is acceptable, there is an Interior Reviewer to inspect. This gives you an online squiz and the ability to spot mistakes, a final proof read.

If the ‘robot’ has found no errors, it’s on to the next step: a final check, apparently by a real person, and an email will be sent confirming the digital proof is acceptable. And you can download a copy. Onscreen it’s suggested you can go on to the next step, which is the Cover Designer. There are five pages of styles, and optional images from their gallery.

Once you select a type, you can modify, include an author image, back cover text, style and colour for front title and author name, a lot of options.

I made my choices, and ‘go’. A confirmation email will be sent within 48 hours.

OK. From the time I asked a last question in a forum on Saturday the 30^th, to starting and completing the project was but a few hours. The confirmation “Proof is ready to order” was here on 1 July. Yay! I immediately opted for five copies (the max at cost, $2.55) and 48 minutes later, the email confirming the proofs were shipped. Woah!

From a file to a book in under a day? “We have the technology!”

And surely the dinosaurs trying to prop up a 20^th century business model here and now are Very Scared. By comparison, in 1993 I offered a project to a business publisher in Melbourne. Not exactly their area, but no one else in Australia had published anything on computer bulletin boards. They went for it. Months later, it was ready (all the delays due to them.) Cover price, $20 and my cut, $1,50 a unit – but you had to chase them twice a year to get the royalty checks.

Not the best experience, but it was good having a book in hand, even better when it ended up on university recommended reading lists.

I haven’t run the final figures for the Amazon book but the rough example I put through earlier was

For a 184 page black and white book, you set your USD list price at $8.99. A customer purchases your book on Amazon.com and a book is printed to fulfill that order.

Sales Channel % = $3.60

Fixed Charge = $0.85

Per Page Charge = $2.20

Your Royalty = $2.34

My later check for my project yielded “@ $8.95 for MIA, royalty $2.82 Amazon.com, $4.61 CS eStore.

Returning to CS, there was one more step, they offer the option to link to Kindle Direct Publishing. CreateSpace is part of the Amazon group of companies. And the completion of their create process offers the option of going to Kindle Direct Publishing. KDP. Maybe … I’ll just come back here later, and opted to find out more my own way.At that point, CS offers download of the book cover and the digital proof PDF but cautions that KDP does not like PDF. *shrug*

So I then delve into their requirements of formats. And look at their forums. Oh, my, why do things get so complicated?

CreateSpace is ‘part of Amazon’ but you need to register with them. With KDP, you use your existing Amazon account to sign in. Hmmm …Here’s the KDP home page:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin

And a link to a “Getting Started” page with a link to a “Do It Yourself” option. OK. This offers building your book for Kindle, and a second link for Mac.

The first, being Mcrosoft-centric … argh! No thanks, I don’t need a Kindle Edition even if it IS free, because I don’t have a Kindle! So I poke around the website for info on what format they really really prefer and can I do it their way?!

Back to the home page > Prepare Your Book > Types of Formats. Uh huh.

“KDP accepts most DOC files for eBook conversion;”

Long story short after much travail. Like the old commercial said, “Oils ain’t oils, Sol.” No, some .doc files are more equal than others, especially if they are ~proprietary~ (sneer quotes intentional!)

And KDP also accepts ePub, Plain Text, .mobi or .prc, HTML, Rich Text Format … and PDF (but maybe only if it Adobe-centric(?) Or not or WTF?

At that point, it’s another “suck it and see”.

What was so easy with CS is grrrr! time and it’s getting late and I plunge ahead. More forms, cluttered, and wanting information already produced for the book version but alas, it’s flash time – c’n’p. With the preliminaries out of the way, it’s upload the interior. I save a .doc but it no like. I export an HTML but no … and I’m searching more ~help~ on the website. Near as I can figure, the preferred HTML (if it conforms to the Supported Tags) would be generated as a Filtered HTML from Microsoft Word.

WTF is that?

Wasn’t the whole hassle of computerization in the early days about interchanceability and compatibility? Like some unknown genius said a long time ago: “The nice thing about computer standards is, there’s so many of them.”

Now, if I could understand what it is they REALLY wanted, I could probably build it, made by hand. Or I could just give up and use a Microsoft box.

But I tried various conversions, even HTML and inspecting the source and see the data for the two images but no. Dammit! Oh wot the hell, I throw my CS .pdf at it and the computer seems to hang … bloody hell … but I find there’s an alert box had popped up about the previous attempted upload, only it’s under another window. Whimper. X that. Hit the upload again … I see no activity and suddenly, Conversion completed successfully.

I should add that on this process page were several form entries that disappeared more than once. Obviously the geeks that write the code here need some lessons from the CS crowd. But magically, it seems that I’m moving along. And I can view the ‘proof’ in a little window and begin and suddenly I am passed on to another page and it’s all done. WTF? Why, how?

And I didn’t have the option of downloading the completed file, probably because I don’t have a registered Kindle. Nor could I read it anyway, one of their pages said so. Oh, there are free Kindle readers for PC and one for Mac.

Argh. And I see the first email next morning, rec’d 04:25:21, “The book “Money in America” you recently submitted to KDP has been published to the Kindle Store and is already available* for readers to purchase here.

So, yesterday I Google for linux kindle reader and … WTF”

Search returns with some mentions of open source approaches and also:

https://read.amazon.com/about

for the Kindle Cloud Reader.

Kindle Cloud Reader runs in your web browser but looks and acts just like an app—and you can continue reading even if you lose your internet connection

Another anomaly from the site … several pages refer to the ~fact~ that kindle’s don’t handle tables. But the specs for the new, improved models state that table rendering has been added, yay.

Well, I haven’t actually seen my finished Kindle product yet. If it looks like a dog’s breakfast, I’m Han Solo: “It’s not my fault!”

Really, the takehome lesson from this experience is, the problem had to do with two images in my original. And yes, a couple of minor flaws by using my own template which was designed with “white space” … i.e., more readable on the screen”. Oh well, trial-and-error (rinse and repeat) worked for Edison.

I’m sure the next project will go much easier.