Friday, May 10, 2013

More Lessons Learned and a New Distributor

Today's late post is brought to you by the luxury called SLEEP.

After this week's rampage of personal/family issues and trying to get Alter Ego's latest book uploaded, I slept nearly twelve hours, woken briefly by the thunderstorm that rolled through this morning. So, FIRST LESSON, make sure you get enough rest!

(You'd think that would be obvious, right?)

I've been trying out a new distributor Draft2Digital. One of the things I love about D2D is that I can upload my own EPUB file (something Smashwords' Mark Coker had been promising for over a year and only recently delivered). They charge a hair more for distribution, but it's worth the price for direct deposit to my checking account and to avoid dealing with the misogynistic owner of PayPal. (To me anyway. You need to be looking at your own financial goals.) SECOND LESSON learned, keep your options open when looking at e-book distributors.

The only issue I've had so far with D2D is that they use EPUBCheck 3.0 and my WORD files could not convert cleanly. This meant learning HTML coding.

AAGH! NO!

Not that I was afraid, but it'd been seventeen years since I had to learn a new programming language.

Okay, I was afraid my skills had rusted out completely.

The lovely Jaye Manus helped me out by suggesting NotePad++ for my HTML editor (it's freeware!). It took a few tries and missteps, but I FINALLY produced a file that could pass EPUB Check! THIRD LESSON learned, nothing is ever as bad as I fear it's going to be.

So in conclusion:

1) Sleep = Good
2) D2D = Excellent
3) NotePad++ = Good
4) HTML coding = hairpulling, but doable

5) Hiring Jaye to do my conversions next time = PRICELESS!

2 comments:

  1. I do think sleep is under-rated. I hear so many people brag about only needing an hour of sleep or that they don't sleep at all.

    PPPP aaaa LEEEZZEE.

    I vote for more nappy naps.

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  2. Sleep is very underrated. DH is one of those people who gets by on six hours a night. I need eight and a half to be remotely functional. Sometimes, I really hate him.

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