Writing like any other work is ... work

I just finished publishing The Clan of the Black Sun - book 3 of The Juno Letters. It seemed a good time to reflect on the story and the versions of the print and e-books, especially since my audio producer, Gary Regal, just finished the audiobook of The Juno Letters - Book 1. Let's face it - e-books are just plain **** ugly. They appear like one long text message. It is difficult to put much formatting in one - I struggled to get the block quote of the letters and journals working for a long time. You cannot control the line spacing very well, and mixing things such as first line indents and flush lefts are trouble. I have a template now that allows me to safely do the three formatting things I need to tell the story, but I dare not change any of it. Every time I produce a book, I cross my fingers and pray to the SMASHWORDS gods. I still cannot get the Table of Contents to work right in Kindle and ePub. But they work well enough - given the state of the eBook world. I decided I could still create a beautiful book in print, so I redid the format of my books on CreateSpace. I use Trajan Pro for the headings, the same font I use in the covers, and a more readable text font. I have far more control over the layout, and get to use 'fleurons' - those curlycues and flower-like objects used as separators. The result is wonderful. Like I have written many times, a book SHOULD BE a work of art in form as well as writing. Apple make a program called iBooks Author that allows a writer to create an enhanced e-book using discrete formatting - plus a host of embedded gizmos - available only in landscape mode. In portrait mode it flows like an ebook - the best of both ... almost. The templates for the program are not well formatted for novels. I struggled with this for a log time, and gave up last summer. But I took another look - determined to create a solution. I jury-rigged a template to work in both portrait and landscape, and still produce the correct TOC. The result is an enhanced iBook version of the entire series on iTunes, and I am pleased how they turned out. There are some improvements I can make, I am certain, but compared to the average ePub, it is a work of art. Changes to iTunesConnect have made it easier to publish despite a couple of bugs I discovered and reported (it's a curse), but it still takes way too long for the books to go live. Such is the fun of being on the cutting edge of a new media revolution. Check out the iBooks version when they finally go live - available only on an iMac, iPad, and iPhone (probably iPod too). It is the closest thing to holding a real book you will find in e-format. If you have any other version of one of my books (not including NOCK, sorry) just email me and I'll send you the enhanced ibook version for free. I have reformatted all of the versions with some minor format improvements, and will replace any kindle or epub files as well. Email me at larryh@hewittmbm.com

Ascendency of Digital Publishing

Digital publishing has risen to seriously affect the traditional print market. Tradition print is dominated by a select few publishers who exercise undue influence over who gets published, how long titles remain in print, and royalties. That world is beginning to crumble. Harlequin Romance novels are published by Torstar, a holding company. That division saw a considerable loss of profits last year. If you want to read a very boring corporate financial report that details this, go to http://www.torstar.com/images/file/2013/2013MDA%20030414%20final%20v2.pdf For a quick synopsis, I quote: "... a number of digital-only publishers and other digital distribution models are emerging and authors have greater opportunities to self-publish, often at lower prices than traditional publishers. The proliferation of less expensive, and free, self-published works could negatively impact [sic - the corrrect word is 'affect'] Harlequin's revenues in the future." (see link, p. 36) Read Mark Coker's summary analysis on his blog as SMASHWORDS:http://blog.smashwords.com "10 Reasons Indie Authors Will Capture 50% of the Ebook Market by 2020" Cheers

Juno Letters featured on "Fly High"

Fly High is a blog from Rome, Italy about art, literature, and movies published by Maria Garza. She featured The Juno Letters in her most recent interview ... take a look at BRINGING THE PAST BACK TO LIFE - AUTHOR INTERVIEW: LARRY HEWITT, THE JUNO LETTERS SERIES.

Book 3 - Clan of the Black Sun will be published this week! Hooray! I will post a link to the Prerelease Edition when it is ready - probably Friday. You will have a period of time to download a free copy - you can email me with all my typos! (I have been editing for 3 weeks - there'd better not be any)