It's Alive!

[dancinghorse]

I received my "proof" today and it is good, and now it's a book!

A Wind in Cairo is live and available for purchase. For readers, a download; for collectors and lovers of the printed book, we have a trade-paper edition. It will go on Amazon eventually, and I'm mulling actually paying to get it listed on B&N and Ingram. I probably will go with that unless the consensus is that it's nuts. I have Post-Camp Brain tonight and thinking is not happening. (Short-form Camp review: A definite success. Of the "we're all coming back as soon as we can" variety.)

The book sure is purty. Very good quality package, a distinctly professional look, and of course kickass cover and design, thanks to our own neutronjockey.

I will be posting a teaser chapter on Book View Cafe. I'll link to that when it goes up.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That is excellent. I will need to wait for Amazon, being in the UK, but yay, book!

[estara.livejournal.com]

Really? I ordered print from Lulu before and they had no problem sending it to Germany...

[janni.livejournal.com]

It is very pretty! :-)

[windrose.livejournal.com]

I can't wait to get a shiny new copy. 8)

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

It really is shiny. And very purty. (And I owe you email. I have no brain. When it comes back online, I'll get right to it.)

[windrose.livejournal.com]

Kick back and have some tea, dear. You've earned it.

Bought & Downloaded

[estara.livejournal.com]

Once Lulu makes it possible to write reviews again, I'll add a review, too.

You might want to mention on the page that there's an added story in this edition.

Re: Bought & Downloaded

[estara.livejournal.com]

I wish the ebooks were .epub, though, but from what I can see all Lulu offers is .pdf.
I take this anyway I can get it ^^.

Re: Bought & Downloaded

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Done! Thank you. I'm still learning how all this works.

You mention that you wish it was .epub. What is that?

It's all an experiment. I would like to have different e-formats eventually, but am not yet up on how they all work or whether I can do those through BVC without running into trouble with Lulu Central.

Oh, and? Camp Lipizzan isn't just for writers....

Re: Bought & Downloaded

[estara.livejournal.com]

.epub is a file format which is slowly getting to be an open standard (and has the advantage of being fairly easy to convert to something else if the layout of the original file isn't useful for your reader - which happens to me a LOT with pdf. files), but Adobe also offer drm-epubs from their server.

http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EBooks
-this is a good general introduction and already points out the problem that with dedicated eReaders the pdf layout flow is often problematic.

http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EPUB
http://www.spannet.org/article-view-xml-ebooks.htm
-explanation of the standard (actually I prefer native .lrf for my Sony Reader, because it automatically justifies the textflow and doesn't show page numbers that get screwed up when I increase font size which I often have to do - but only formatting for Sony would be a mistake with the amount of other readers out there).

The Sony Store and Google Books both prefer .epub now.
http://audiobooks.suite101.com/article.cfm/what_are_epub_books_at_google_books
-Advantages of .epub explained

Re: Camp Lipizzan - sartorias also thought I'd have enjoyed myself, and so have I (thought) since you mentioned the idea a few years back and had the first impressions on LJ, but the fact that I'd also have to travel to the US from Germany makes it veryyyyy expensive and currently out of my range (I would love to met you and sartorias in the flesh).

I'll have to live with just supporting you by buying your books and reading your posts about Camp Lipizzan. Unless I win the lottery, of course ^^.

Re: Bought & Downloaded

[estara.livejournal.com]

Here's another authors musings about the format wars.
ePub vs. Kindle (http://www.nanney-land.com/2009/10/epub-vs-kindle.html)

Re: Bought & Downloaded

[estara.livejournal.com]

Addendum: I went to Lulu via the above link again, and you do have the extended information on your storefront page (the "capriole" bit), but you DON'T have the information on the single paperback and download order pages (where the layout of the blurb text actually is better than on the storefront page, hmm).

Re: Bought & Downloaded

[estara.livejournal.com]

the point being that if people don't come up to the link via your storefront but search on Lulu for your name, they get led directly to paperback page
http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum=-1&search_cat=2&show_results=topics&return_chars=200&search_keywords=&keys=&header_search=true&sitesearch=lulu.com&q=&fSearch=Judith+Tarr&fSearchFamily=0&fSubmitSearch.x=0&fSubmitSearch.y=0

[aberwyn.livejournal.com]

Good! I lent my copy of the paperback to someone years ago and never got it back, curses upon them! Now I can get a replacement.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

:)

[smoemeth.livejournal.com]

YAY!!! :)

How much does it cost for the extra listings? If it would only take selling an extra copy or three to make back that investment, I'd say it's definitely a worthwhile experiment.