Sunday, July 22, 2012

An Addendum on Formatting Kindle Books

That dang map!
       I received instructions from Kindle on how to format images for uploading.  It's quite thorough and I do not fault Kindle Help for anything, because I'm the ignoramus when it comes to computer knowledge.  I did manage to understand quite a bit of it.  It seems that when you convert a .doc to HTML, the images are saved in a separate file.  I actually found the file with the image at the beginning of my documents menu.  Then they said to zip the files and I did that.  But it still won't load.  Apparently, you're supposed to insert a bit of HTML -- here's what they gave: IMG SRC="imagename.jpg"  The image name in the folder that I found is Image001.  So I stuck that in:  IMG SRC="Image001.jpg"  But I have no idea where to insert this bit of HTML, so I put it at the top of the image, and went through the whole process, converting to HTML, zipping, etc.  I must have tried about 6 different versions and nothing would load the image. 
       So I wrote them again.  If I still can't to it after hearing from them again, I'm going to drop the map and put a note in the book telling people to print or download the map from this website.  Or else buy the print book!  No problems there!

Footnotes
       I discovered something called cross-references in Word, so I made a sample and converted all the footnotes (it turns out there are 72 of them) to endnotes, then experimented with linking them up.  I had no luck with the cross-reference menu, so I tried the bookmark/hyperlink method that is used for ToCs.  It wouldn't work.  I even checked out the Smashwords Style Guide, because they are really very complete (read verbose) in their explanations.  They let me down.  I think they just expect you to use the same bookmark/hyperlink system, but it doesn't work the way it does with the table of contents.  The links don't work when you click on them.  Maybe you have to type in the endnotes rather than using the converted footnotes. Hmm.  I could try that before I give up.  If I typed them in, I could put the notes at the ends of the chapters.  But no matter what I do, it's going to be extremely time-consuming.  

I'm getting no feedback as to what people would prefer.  I still would like to know:  Would you rather read a book with notes inserted in the text or placed at the end?  I will not place them at the end if I can't figure out how to link them both ways. 

2 comments:

  1. I would prefer having notes inserted within the text, while the thought is clear of what I'm reading. Sorry, it's a pain to figure out...

    Good luck to you!

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  2. Thanks for the feedback, Beachlover! You've just reinforced what I decided yesterday evening! I just began this morning to format the Kindle version in that way! The reader can grab the sense quickly and go right on, without a lot of click-on-this and click-on-that. Or if they prefer to overlook the note entirely, they can do that, too!

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