The Cross of Fire

The next "Juno Letters" installment is underway.  It will follow the story of Gela from the rural farmlands of Poland in the depression years to France in the immigration wave that unsettled Europe and gave rise to a new wave of anti-Semitism.  In France the group of neo-fascists that tried to overthrow the government headed by A Jewish prime minister was called the "Croix de Feu" - Cross of Fire.  It is through this vehicle that I will develop the increasing anti-semitism that resulted in the deportation of French Jews, ultimately landing Gela in Natzweiler where she meets Marianne.

Target date - January, 2014.

Progress slow and steady

I am finally making headway at Apple.  The tech support person I connected with has been very helpful, and aside from a couple of minor changes I had to make, I am in process.  I used the word "iBOOK" to lable the ISBN number for the version - can't use the trademark.  Plus, I needed to enter my name as "Larry" insead of "L.W." - should have read the format rule more carefully.

I hope to be online by June 1 on iTunes.  I am beginning to drive visits to my site, and have some sales under my belt.  I also added a PayPal payment option so I can sell the PDF version directly through the website.  I now handle 4 file types: Kindle through Amazon, ePUB through Google, iBooks through iTunes, and PDF through hewittmbm.com

The best advice I can give to those like myself just venturing into these waters is to be patient and thorough.

The revised portrait version of 'The Juno Letters' for iBook was uploaded at the free Apple site today.  I will be offering a special - FREE to service members, veterans, service families, and friends until September 1 at the iBook Store and a PDF version on The Juno Letters website.  Visit  hewittmbm.com/juno_letters for more details.

Getting it ... just rightt

It is funny how the little things take so much time.  I have been formatting The Juno Letters for the iBook Author program - I can add an interactive glossary and it allows note management and many other advanages.  While doing the version, I discovered - yet again - some minor changes needed to the ePUB and Kindle versions.  It seems that editing never stops.

I had an iBook version, but after spending several days fine tuning the ePUB edition,I did not like the look, so... off into editing hell once more.  The end product ill be worth the effort, however.  I spent 8 months writing the story - spending two weeks making sure the thing looks good is a small price to pay.

My way or the highway?

It appears those who run Amazon, Google and other book sites did not learn the lesson from their kindergarten (kindlegarten?) teachers, "How to play well with others."

You get a link from Google to Amazon for your book, except it is not a link to the book, but a search - that yields nothing.  Seems these two don't like each other very much, at our expense.

For a more complete story, check out the Taleist blog, at:

http://blog.taleist.com/2010/12/13/amazon-blocking-sales-from-google-books-by-denying-ebooks-their-isbn/

Just one more roadblock to industry maturation.

Coming from the technology industry, where I owned my own firm for 20 years, I can tell you that these folks need a lesson in manners.

Jumped on Twitter

I did the unbelievable, and became a "Twitterer" - is that what they call them?  I remember when being a "Twit" was not such a good thing, but then there ya go.  I have already connected with several other writers which leads me to believe this may go somewhere after all the hard work!

After 8 months writing and editing...

Go to:  hewittmbm.com/juno_letters

I have spent the past 8 months writing and editing The Juno Letters - a labor of love, sweat, and tears!  I was excited to get it published online, but was not quite prepared for how much work it would actually be.  I wanted top share some thoughts:

BE PATIENT.  The publishing industry infrastructure is robust and slowly becoming a part of the electronic world.  Many components are not "plug and play."  So be prepared to wait long periods for things to be processed and approved, and pay attention to details.

Check and double check everything.

ISBNs - Get them.  Get 10 - you will need one for every version, and the cost for 1 was $125, for $10 was $250.  I used the site at myidentifiers.com/home and was very satisfied.  Again, be patient and follow the instructions carefully.

COVER ART.  You can change cover art.  All of the sites say so.  However, it is not that simple.  Take the time to design a cover that is readable as an icon as well as a book cover and get other people's opinions on it before you place anything online.  You will have to wait sometimes days to get a cover replaced otherwise.

AMAZON.  This was the easiest to publish to.  I simply made a RTF version (rich text format) and it translated to Kindle first time.  The book was available within a few hours.

GOOGLE.  I have a program (Pages on the Mac) that saves to ePub, so formatting was easy.  The processing period is more extensive than with Amazon, and you then need to prove your copyright status - having your ISBN handy for every version is a must.

ITUNES CONNECT for IBOOK - I optimized my book for iBook, then ran into a brick wall at Apple.  The issue is simple - they need the IRS to verify your payment reporting status with a SSN or EIN, which can take several days.  The problem is that they provide no feed back as to why you cannot log in to the iTunesConnect site - it simply returns an error.  It took a small act of Congress to get through to find out what was going on.  It makes perfect sense, but will take time.  Apple needs to provide a status page like Google does.  I told them so rather succinctly.

I am up on Amazon, and ready to sell.  I will follow up on the issues I find with the others.  After 8 months I was hoping for a quicker solution, but there ya go!