Saturday, June 26, 2010

The Machinery of Freedom is Now Up in e-book format

My first book is now webbed both in pdf and, thanks to the efforts of Randomscrub, as a MobiPocket e-book file compatible with both MobiPocket software and the Amazon Kindle.

9 comments:

Pace said...

Can you make an epub format so that it works on the ipad?

Kid said...

Yeah and while you're at it can you also publish it in obscure format x so that it works on device y?

(maybe just publish the html file, so people can convert themselves)

((although it's already possible to convert the existing pdf into html and then to epub))

Robbie said...

ePub is hardly an obscure format (it is used on nearly all e-ink ebook readers nowadays). That said, the open source software calibre will convert from mobi to practically any other format.

Randomscrub said...

I made the MOBI file for my own benefit, as I own a Kindle. If anyone wants it in ePub or any other format, I recommend they either do the legwork themselves or follow Robbie's advice and download calibre, which purports to be able to convert between just about every format you could want in an e-book (and is an excellent tool for managing an e-book library to boot).

The actual conversion process from PDF was rather tedious, as the PDF format carries a lot of extraneous stuff that had to be deleted and/or reformatted manually to work right (e.g. every single return after every single line in the PDF is output into the text file). This is the downside of a static format.

I wanted to share the product with others so they needn't go through the same trouble needlessly. The object was NOT to volunteer myself for several more hours of work. Take it or leave it everybody.

Oh, and this is a preemptive apology for the lack of Appendix 1. It's all tables, and they would only display as busted html, and I couldn't figure out the problem, so I omitted it.

Skip said...

If RandomScrub has already done most of the cleanup then it should convert pretty easily to epub. Calibre does a nice job converting from most formats to most formats, but pdf is not one of them as a source format. But you should be able to just suck in the mobi format and emit an epub that's approximately as good as the mobi format was.

Oh, as a hint, if you're trying to clean up something like tables, epub is the format to do it in. the epub file itself is actually just a zip file with an .epub extension, and the contents are mostly very html-like XML. So even without an epub editor, you can fix things.

rsgeek said...

If you want to get this on your iPad, it's easy -- take the eBook file, and run it through http://www.2epub.com. Works just fine...

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much for making this book available in this format.

I bought the original softcover about a decade ago, and tried to read it but was unable. When I had time to read it, I didn't have the book with me, and when the book was handy it was during periods where I didn't have the spare time.

Eventually the book was lost from memory and disappeared. Turns out my wife had it and read it cover to cover.

I ran the mobi thru the calibre process, stole the cover image from Google and now I have it the book on my iPad bookshelf. It will always be handy when I want to read it.

The iPad *is* my bookshelf now. All paper books have gone away or are on their way there. I won't buy new books except for on the iPad. We travel full time and there is no practical way to carry books.

A biography of your father is on the iBookstore, but that's it.

I'd love to buy any of your other books there if/when you can make them available.

I do have the kindle app, but do not trust amazon, frankly, after I bought an ebook from them years ago only to find that after a couple years they had turned it off (this was pre-kindle) and I could no longer get it on my new computer.

Anyway, thanks again, and here's a pledge to buy $50 in your books as soon as they appear on the Apple bookstore.

Ann Houston said...

Another option for authors (free to them) is to publish at Smashwords (on their site they want it listed as the Smashwords edition.) If the book makes the Premier Catalog (TMOF clearly would do this) the ebook gets distributed to Apple, Sony, B&N, Amazon and Kobo. The author's royalties are 85% (if buyer purchases at Smashwords site - the big dealers cut their own arrangements which vary) And, the book is available in ePub, mobi, pdf, html, and a couple of other formats at Smashwords as soon as the book is uploaded. SW doesn't get the eyeballs that Amazon or Apple does, but it's pretty new and an easy venue to pursue. I've had positive experience publishing my novel there.

Anonymous said...

Hi, I made a conversion to ePub, fixed lots of problems, added a TOC and a Notes chapter at take back the tables in the appendixes.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10042548/Books/The_Machinery_of_Freedom.epub