It’s a writer’s job to be tough on his characters, and I’m certainly no exception. In the Master Blasters series, the heroes have to work under tough non-negotiable deadlines, invent new methods and procedures as they go along, and master new tools under time pressure. Serious time pressure.
Well, I’ve just been through that. Amazon has changed its requirements, and in order to meet them and produce a better product for my readers, I had to kick up my game and master some new tools. I’m a big fan of Open Source, and the community came through with flying colours.
There are a number of tools that one can use to produce an Epub, but the one that (IMHO) rules is Sigil. It gives you complete control over every aspect of the product, and gets the workload down to the point where I can concentrate on producing a clean readable product. “The Snowball Contract” goes live on 15 Dec 2022, and the deadline to have the final version is midnight Zulu time on the 11th. Amazon isn’t the Portal Aliens, but they aren’t much on deadline extensions, either. So I had to master Sigil, get my head around Amazon’s exact requirements for an uploaded EPUB manuscript, and knock the thick layer of dust off my HTML skills.
There are readers who like their hard copy, too. Now, one can upload a docx file and let Kindle do the work. In the past, I’ve found that a fiddly process with a word processor, and a better product meant mastering another new tool.
First, however, I had to get those new tools up and running on my new computer. That’s not as simple as turning on the computer and using Windows. Bill Gates and I parted company quite a while ago now, and there’s no reconciliation. Windows put up a fight at being kicked off my hard drive, but it’s gone. Picking the right Linux distro turned out to have some kinks, too. There’s a lot of choice in the Open Source world, and I’ve had to make those choices.
So, on to the new tool. There are a lot of commercial Desktop Publishing (DTP) tools, and i say nothing against them. My pick was Scribus. A DTP allows for sub-millimetre control over things like margins, headers, and page numbers. Fonts, too, are pretty simple. The effort to learn how to use it was worth it. The pre-press PDF I uploaded went through clean, first time.
I do my own covers with GIMP, and the upload of the cover image had its kinks, too. They had to be met and mastered, and I did. There was a learning curve there, too.
So, having met and mastered a bunch of unexpected problems and challenges and made deadline with only at little time to spare, I have a lot more sympathy for my characters. That’s not to say I’m going to go any easier on them. When you make Contract, it’s a great feeling. Right now, I’ve got that feeling. I’ve learned new things and surmounted the problems.
“The Snowball Contract” is now done, up for pre-order in time for the Christmas season, in both ebook and paperback. Enjoy!
Contract fulfilled, just hours before the deadline. I’m going to have a beer on that.
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