Tag Archives: ebooks

It’s Been a Very Good Week (So Far)!

Posted by Norma Beishir in Angels at Midnight, Beishir Books, Chasing the Wind, Collin Beishir, Norma Beishir, The Unicorn's Daughter and tagged with , ,

The Unicorn’s Daughter and Angels at Midnight seem to be running some kind of ranking race over at Amazon. First one is ahead, then the other. I don’t think there are any hares in this race, just a couple of very determined tortoises. It’s made Collin and I decide to lower the price on Chasing the Wind….

Angels at Midnight/Product Details

    • File Size: 641 KB
    • Print Length: 355 pages
    • Publisher: Beishir Books; 2nd edition (July 10, 2012)
    • Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
    • Language: English
    • ASIN: B008JLF2SC
    • Text-to-Speech: Enabled 
    • X-Ray: Not Enabled 
    • Lending: Enabled
    • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,827 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
 

The Unicorn’s Daughter/Product Details

The Second Time Around Took Longer Than the First….

Posted by Norma Beishir in A Time for Legends, Beishir Books, The Unicorn's Daughter and tagged with , ,

That’s how it was starting to feel, anyway.


Getting The Unicorn’s Daughter ready to debut as an ebook looked pretty easy…at first. All I had to do was scan the pages and give them to Collin, who would then use Omnipage to peel the text from the scans and convert them to a Word document. Then the Word document would be converted to HTML for the ebook edition.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Unicorns-Daughter-ebook/dp/B00860WC7U/ref=la_B002BMF4CO_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1338040679&sr=1-8

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?


Not simple at all, we quickly discovered. Late Thursday night, Collin uploaded the HTML file–after carefully checking the file on the KDP viewer. We were told it would go “live” within twelve hours, but it didn’t take that long. I got an email from my surrogate sister Beth early Friday morning. It was up and running. I immediately went to KDP Select to set up the free book promotion.


I should have checked out the free sample first.


After setting up the three-day free book promo, I went back to the book’s product page and clicked on “Look Inside.” I thought I might be on the verge of a stroke!  Somehow, the text we had so carefully prepared had been replaced–with the scanned JPEG pages from the original edition! 


Converting those JPEGs to a Word document had not been easy. It might have been easier to retype the book. It was originally written on an electric typewriter; there was no disk to work with, not even the original manuscript, since once it was edited, it looked like fourteen miles of bad road. No…there was only the printed book. And it was full of errors that existed in spite of the best efforts of my editor, copyeditor and myself. 


This is why I find the criticism aimed at errors in self-published books so funny. As if conventional publishers never get anything wrong. The ebook will have fewer errors than the original. There are things we couldn’t change–like gaps between chapters and spacing inconsistencies that resulted from the typesetting on the original (to fit the text  to the pages, it was sometimes necessary). I have no doubt some nitpickers will point that out in their reviews. If that’s the only criticism they have, so be it. 


I thought I might have to cancel the promo, but Collin–with some assistance from Mike–corrected the problem almost immediately. To unwind, Collin and I headed for the cineplex…to see The Avengers again!


The free ebook promo is now set for Sunday through Tuesday.Now to deal with the paperback reissue….

 

5/27/12: Looks like it was worth the effort. The free book promo is getting off to a good start ….

Product Details

Okay, the World Must Really Be Ending on December 21st!

Posted by Norma Beishir in A Time for Legends, Angels at Midnight, Beishir Books, Norma Beishir, Solitaire, The Unicorn's Daughter and tagged with , , , ,

Miracles do still happen!

It’s finally happening! After several failed attempts, my backlist books will finally be released as ebooks, starting with The Unicorn’s Daughter next week. I’ll be releasing a book a week until the entire backlist is out there…minus the four to which Harlequin still has rights (and they’ve already released two of those four in ebook format.

I’m starting with the five books written under my own name and originally published by Berkley (Penguin Putnam). Two will go back to their original titles: The Unicorn’s Daughter (A Time for Legends) and Alexander’s Empire (Dance of the Gods). All will have new covers, designed by Collin. We’re also going to be releasing new, updated print editions.

Collin is also working on the advertising for the books and will be doing book trailers. He’s expanding the services he offers authors to include book covers, advertising, e-book formatting, press releases, and now book trailers.

Next up: Angels at Midnight. Collin’s still working on the new cover. In June, we’ll be releasing Alexander’s Empire, Luck of the Draw and Solitaire. As for the romantic comedies, written under my “Toni Collins” pseudonym, that’s still up in the air. Harlequin still has the rights to four of them, and I have to be sure I can use the pseudonym while they still have some of my books in their possession! I hope I can…I also have a new project in the works that works better for Toni than for Norma….