‘Simply Elfje’ final cover.
I had hoped to have the e-book version of ‘Simply Elfje’ ready by now but unfortunately things haven’t quite worked out to plan.
I created the print version with Amazon’s CreateSpace platform. Once the print version is done you have the option of clicking on a button to send the files to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) for publishing as an e-book. Then, when the files have been sent you are told you need to go into KDP to tweak them as necessary and add anything that needs to be included – such as the ‘tweet to let your friends know you have read this book’ etc. Sounds easy-peasy. I clicked on the button.
The reality? My files would not upload. I do not have MS Office, not since I bought my new computer a couple of years ago and I was told my old version of MS Office would not work with Windows 10. I did not want to fork out for the latest MS Office suite so I now have Libre Office, which is a free to download ‘Open Source’ software package. I set out the book in Libre Office Writer, which is compatible with MS Word and indeed, you can save documents as a Word doc. instead of odf. (the file format for Libre Office). However, you are warned that the formatting may not survive intact. Now, I have saved prose documents as a Word doc. many times with no problem – but then the layout is not that critical. Every time I tried to save the ‘Simply Elfje’ document in Word the layout I had set for these little poems went completely AWOL. So I saved the odf. files as pdfs. to preserve the formatting and which CreateSpace accept without any trouble. So far so good.
The problem is KDP does not accept pdf. files, so when I clicked on the CreateSpace button I got a message that the files could not be uploaded. Nor do they, as far as I can tell, accept odf. files. This means in order to produce the e-book I need to completely reformat the whole document to work in Word and I am not totally sure if I can do that! I am back to square one, having to create the book all over again from scratch. Having spent a week after my recent holiday trying to produce the e-book, and finally accepting this inevitable fact, I had to leave it as I needed to get on with editing the magazine I produce twice a year for a sailing association. This I have now done and the magazine is ready to post out.
I have now downloaded the KDP formatting instructions in order to see what I can do. However, I am off on my travels again at the end of the week and will be away for about a month. This time I will be taking my computer with me and I hope to find time to get to grips with this problem while I’m away – I might even manage to get the e-book done! I will be travelling around a bit though and regular Internet access may be a problem. Either way I sincerely hope that the e-book will be ready sometime around the middle of June. Please be patient – I’m sure it will be worth the wait!
Simply Elfje 