Tried to put this in a comment post for Jon, but I think it disappeared! Hope this one will work as a hyperlink........
http://brian-angelmountain.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/angel-mountain-kindle-freebie-promo.html
By the way, if you are romantically inclined (as I am occasionally), that's Carningli on the skyline. if you look carefully you can see the reclining Earth Mother, or Earth Goddess, or whatever you want to call her....... head on the left, breast, rib cage and raised knees to the right. FAR more sacred that that tumbledown old collection of crags called Carn Meini.........
Thanks Brian, much appreciated
ReplyDeleteDo you have a preference for the high percentage unprotected package (70%) or the low percentage, protected?
Cheers
Jon
Jon -- I have gone for the 70% package. Don't see any merit at all in opting for the lower figure.
ReplyDeleteBrian,
ReplyDeleteI can vaguely see the reclining Earth Goddess. But her bearded admirer in the lower right foreground is unmistakable. Protruding left eye brow, straight nose, heavy bearded upper lip and jaw, and even left eye lashes clearly visible!
Am I the only one that sees these things?
Kostas
A hit, a very palpable hit.
ReplyDeleteA pearl of an observation.
Def. one to yourself Mr Kostas- the eyelash is especially convincing.
Little escapes you and the point is well-made.
(Dowsing the picture with my crystalline bob I think there are at least ten ley-lines, another resting place of King Arthur, golden treasure, but more important this year up-gushing water all beneath those craggy features.
An admiring Myris.
Speaking personally, when I look at the edge of that stone wall I see the Lion King.
ReplyDeleteThanks Brian
ReplyDeleteDifficult to see the disadvantages of 70%, There must be one or the other option wouldn't be offered?
Jon
Thanks for the valuable advice about publishing for Kindle. I agree that Twitter is a powerful tool - I don't have many followers but tweets are relayed to my other social networks and end up reaching a surprising number of people. Now I just need to find a useful subject to tweet about :)
ReplyDeleteI wonder how you are reaching out to so many target groups. Do you use the list function?
I started reformatting something for kindle but gave up - no patience with all the formatting rules and no way to do images. Jon, when you are authoring stuff you might want to read the rules in advance and make your life simpler - or you might want to move to i-books author where you have good integration with images and video and a ready market via the Apple network. There is a lot of basic stuff like putting one space after a period which is counter-intuitive to me but makes life easier for web publishing. I am sure Brian can give several tips after his marathon self-edit.
Hi Chris (& Brian)
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen a significant problem with converting documents containing images and/or complex formatting to formats such as Amazon (though you have to follow the correct sequence to make it work). Seems to be a simple process as far as I can tell.
Having said that, conversion does seem to get mind-bogglingly difficult if you try to use Microsoft word as part of the process.
Jon
Myris my friend,
ReplyDeleteThanks for confirming! It means much to the 'Earth Goddess' admirer (found at the bottom to the right of the foreground) to be recognized.
Brian: Is your “Lion King Theory” evidence based?
Kostas
Ah, now I see that interesting face, Kostas! I think it's that monkey fella from Planet of the Apes -- a great likeness! Forget about the Lion King..........
ReplyDeleteOn my Kindle exercise, I agree Jon that the biggest problem is probably that I use an Apple iMac and have to use Word prior to uploading -- and it is very clunky indeed. Everybody who uses Word has problems with images -- I must have tried to upload my map for "On Angel Mountain" 20 times, without success.......in spite of the best advice the Kindle support team could pass over to me.
ReplyDeleteOn doing my Twittering targetting, I used lists occasionally, but maybe the most productive thing was finding a good target and then working through his or her list of "following" people -- not the lists of followers.
I doubt it's the Apple Brian, just Word: It seems to me that there are too many special control features that only Microsoft know about.
ReplyDeleteAs it happens, I'm passing through Pembrookshire next week (from memory you are in that area?): If you would like to see (and maybe try out) how it's done by by-passing Word and using open source instead, let me know.
It's a slightly longer process (about 10 minutes per document conversion) and needs some very specific steps but it all seems to be available for, and thus do-able on, a Mac.
Jon
Thanks for the advice, Jon. Agree it's more of a Word problem than a Mac problem -- but there are still fewer alternatives for Mac users to try out. Which programme do you use?
ReplyDeleteWhen are you passing through Pembs? We are near Newport, but are away part of next week.....
By Zeus and all the Gods has this become a dating site?
ReplyDeleteIf so..
Mature? Scholar works in large library. Greek, Latin and a little Coptic likes walks by the Pharos.
Looking for a rich young lady preferably one hatched from a swan’s egg.
M of A.
Hi Brian
ReplyDeleteStaying overnight at Bridgend 04/06 and also passing Newport morning of 09/06.
For conversion I use openoffice and firefox combined with mobipocket creator: It's a series of program tricks which force a proper conversion.
Jon
Neither rich nor a lady Myris, so no luck with me. Do you have a link to Tvauri - he does not answer my mails and my phone calls run quickly into "technical difficulties".
ReplyDeleteWord is the root of the problems for me. I had a nightmare job a couple of weeks ago with a 500 page document written over several years by several people using Word on PCs and Macs. I had to pay over a hundred quid to Microsoft to update my Macword and even then it only solved some of the issues. I used a PC in parallel with the latest PC versions - different problems.
I am really annoyed that Microsoft have earned billions over the years and never bothered to make Word into a good tool, but that is another story.
I wonder how Jon is doing it? I have recently switched to Pages, having used Scrivener for some time. I used Open Office for a while but it has problems with complex documents too.
Jon
ReplyDeleteSadly, it sounds as if we will be on the road at the same time as you, heading in the opposite direction! Going out from Tilbury towards Goteborg on a container ship on 9th June........ time to meet up with the Swedish clan again.
Hi Chris
ReplyDeleteDepends on the task you're trying to achieve. Fro example, if you're trying to get from a wordprocessor to mobipocket ready formatted for Amazon (which is what I think you're trying to do?):
1: first save in an old format that Oo can read (this stage may need serious tweaking depending on which processor you're using)
2: pick up using openoffice
3: export to .html placing the file in exactly the same directory as the imported document (this might work with Word but I've never tried)
4: pick the .html file up using firefox
5: save the file in a different directory using firefox's "save page as" (it will create its own graphics directory ready formatted for mobipocket)
6: import the html using mobipocket (the structure should have been made ready to create a TOC usually using tags like h1>style)
7: create using mobipocket creator, save and done
But there are other approaches depending on what you're aiming to do
Cheers
Jon
Hi Brian
ReplyDeleteShame: Might be worth trying the procedure above and see what happens. It's easier if shown though!
Jon
Dear Mr Johnson
ReplyDeleteSorry I cannot help I have no inside route or any other to the gentleman.
I shall ask around my ((few (but some close)) rock-art friends.
M o A.
What is the last line from "Some Like it Hot""??
Nobodies perfect
ReplyDeleteSomething I meant to mention: If the work is heavily hyper-linked, there's a slightly different procedure.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jon for all that extra info. When I get a moment I shall settle down and try to follow your instructions! First I need to recover from this freebie thingy -- if you are interested, I have updated the info about my Kindle adventure on my old web site, here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.brianjohn.info/kindle1.html
Thanks Brian
ReplyDeleteVery interesting stuff! I was asked recently to review a new kindle book about Stonehenge. The author hadn't thought through his publishing strategy: His pod-publisher expected reviewers to buy the product.
Is the 5 day allocation fixed or could he have spread out the allocation so that it was free on specific days for those in the know?
Jon -- you can do the free promotion any time. It's up to you. The only limitation is a max of 5 days in any 90-day period. I suppose if you were smart you could do 5 days at the end of one period and 5 days at the beginning of the next period, giving you 10 on the trot. Not sure if that would bring great benefits.....
ReplyDeleteYou could do things one day at a time (for example on every Sunday for 5 Sundays) but I don't think that would work very well -- because of the time lags involved. By the time people have noticed a one-day promotion, it's probably about to end!
Thanks Brian
ReplyDeleteHi Brian
ReplyDeleteDon't know if you read the older posts but this is how the formatting turns out using Firefox and some other tweaks:
The Broken Stone
The only big problem with images and kindle is that the "preview" mode displays as html rather than as "kindle friendly", which means that images don't get centred. The hyperlinks (if you use them) also need a lot of work (I have about 200). It's currently on "promotion" which means that the price is 10% of the hardback edition: Not sure how that will work out.