Friday, May 29, 2015

My First Kindle Book is Uploaded and Processing

Urged on by colleagues and bolstered by the number of hits I'm getting for all of my Regents exam blog posts in these days leading up to the next round of testing, I decided to collect the Algebra 1 (Common Core) tests together under in one volume, along with my answers and explanations.

It's a first try, and it may not go as well as I would have liked. I will be honest: I pushed this as hard and fast as I could, while still taking time to review it for errors. However, I had a deadline: the test is coming up in a couple of weeks. If I don't have this up now, I miss an important window of opportunity.

I have read up on Kindle publishing in the past. I have read how to convert a Word file, and I've read that the easiest thing to do is to post a .PDF. I opted for the .PDF because of the extra care that needed to be taken with all the images in Word files. There are a lot of images in these tests.

That being said, Kindle gave me a warning about Bad Things that might happen converting a PDF. From the preview, I think that might've occurred. I thought that a PDF file would be better for educators -- I may have been wrong about that.

It's a little early yet. I'll know soon enough. And changes can always be made at a later time and uploaded.

Time will tell.

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3 comments:

  1. UnknownFriday, May 29, 2015 10:29:00 PM

    Good luck!

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  2. DMcCunneySaturday, May 30, 2015 9:18:00 PM

    What you convert depends upon your intended output.

    I've done the odd conversion, and in general, PDF is not where I prefer to start. Given a choice, I don't get eBooks in PDF format in the first place.

    PDF can be a necessity if exactly reproducing what the printed page would look like is critical, but PDFs generally don't reflow well to fit the screen size of the display device, and sideways scrolling is actively painful.

    If the end result is a file that can be read on a Kindle (which may not be able to display a PDF At all), you are better advised to start with a Word file. Save As something like HTML, and convert from there. (The Mobipocket format used by the Kindle is an encapsulated subset of HTML 4 with a metadata wrapper.)

    I'd go to MobileRead at http://mobileread.com and peruse the forums. There are dedicated forums for Kindle support and for eBook creation, and you'll get good advice on how to proceed.

    Disclaimer: I am a moderator and New York Editor there, hence biased in favor. :-)
    ______
    Dennis

    ReplyDelete
  3. (x, why?)Sunday, May 31, 2015 8:45:00 AM

    Thanks for the help. I'm beginning to think that I need to rethink what I was doing, and who I am doing it for. (Teachers? Students?)

    I'm still thinking more in terms of PCs and printing than about ebook readers.

    It's a math book, and essentially a workbook with quite a number of images that need to be pulled into a Word file, if I'm reading Amazon's instructions correctly.

    I have the summer to rethink everything and by the next round of testing, I could have a series of books ready, instead of just one, for one subject.

    ReplyDelete