Indie children's books on Kindle

I have just added "The Jenie Jazzles" to my Listmania list of the Itinerant Poet's works available on Amazon for Kindle.  It is a re-working of a story the Itinerant Poet wrote back in the 1990s.  It was originally published in a single volume alongside "Leo's Magic Shoes" under the (sub)title "Another quarter pound of chocolate drops please".  It was extremely popular with children and many schools bought entire class reader sets.

Plot summary:  Leo loves to visit Mr Bowers' old-fashioned sweet shop every Saturday morning to spend his pocket money.  One day, he buys some different sweets from his normal favourites.  He hides in his secret den while he eats them all - rather too quickly - well, nearly all of them.  Strange things happen to his eyes and he realises the Jenie Jazzles have given him x-ray vision.  The following Saturday, he buys more but they do not have the same effect.  He doesn't tell anyone about the magic but discreet enquiries of Mr Bowers reveal he had sold the previous batch to Leo the previous week.  Leo fears his adventures have finished.  However, on accompanying his mother and sister to the hospital for her hearing test, he finds the last remaining two Jenie Jazzles in his pocket.  He overhears doctors talking about a boy whose life is in danger and realises he and his sister can save the boy's life by using the sweets' power.  Hailed as a hero, he is rewarded by going into business with Mr Bowers.  Scientists never manage to discover the secret of the Jenie Jazzles.

Original Cover

Illustrations and litho vs digital

The original versions of both "Leo's Magic Shoes" and "..Chocolate Drops..." had illustrations created in ink and paint by our artist friend, Kirsty Munro.  The books were litho printed back then and I did not hold digital copies of the files though I did keep the physical artwork.  The books were originally created in Word then saved to RTF (I think!) before being loaded into Pagemaker 5 by the printers for further processing by them.  Our minimum print run was 500 but 1000 was more usual so when digital printing came on the scene, it was an obvious route for us due to the possibilities of smaller print runs for our increasing list of titles.  However, we chose not to reprint the original combined book and so it just disappeared from our stock list.  It is still present in many of the schools who bought sets, though the copies are a little battered now - obviously much-used!  I often wonder if our digital print copies will last as long.

Converting ancient graphics files for modern use

Years later, I approached our former litho printer and asked them if they could dig out the old files and send me the manuscripts and pictures.  They duly did so but I put them away in a cupboard and largely forgot about them until I started to e-publish our books.  Initial attempts to load files from an ancient format into a modern graphics programme failed but I kept on trying different conversions until I finally succeeded with what turned out to be the most simple step of all - amending the file extension!  The original filenames were such as LeoGoingIntoShopTIFF with no file extension.  The final solution was to change the filename to LeoGoingIntoShop.tif and it loaded straight into Photoshop Elements 6.  I added layers and semi-transparent colours to the black and white originals before saving "for web" as JPEGs to reduce the file size and reduce download costs of the book.  I like colour and think it best to offer it to people who read on Kindle for tablets/computers with colour capacity even though I personally only have an original black and white Kindle.  Link here to free downloads of reading apps for computers/iPads etc and device purchases from Amazon.

Future plans for the book

Although digital printing is still a possibility for this title, we have so many now in print or in the process of production, that I wanted to make this available purely as a digital version.  If you do purchase a copy, please do me the huge favour of writing a review for the book on Amazon - a wonderful review, of course ;)

 You can buy "Leo's Magic Shoes" as an ebook too.

New version available from Amazon for Kindle
(Look Inside available on Amazon page)

Leo's Magic Shoes available from Amazon for Kindle

(Look Inside available on Amazon page)

Epublishing a backlist

The job of epublishing the backlist of poetry books in printed format, has been calling to me for some time from my to-do list.  I had put it on the back burner because of the headache over the inclusion of images.  I really want the children's poetry books to retain their images in digital format as I took a lot of time and trouble to create them.

So... how long did it take me to tweak and epublish a book with no internal images?  Any guesses?  And... how long did it take me to epublish a shorter book with images?  Well, it took me about 25 minutes to do the poetry book with no images and about 25 hours to do the one with the images.  However,  the good news is that I then went on to process three more books with images and I have improved on the 25 hours.  This is also partly due to updates to the Kindle Direct Publishing software since my last attempt way back in October 2012 that have made file conversion work properly.

The main problem is that the Kindle software shrinks the images.  It specifies that the maximum size that can be displayed on a Kindle is 600 x 800 pixels (presumably this is for the basic Kindle like mine).  I duly went through the entire book, deleting all the pictures.  I re-processed the originals using Photoshop Elements 6.0 and re-sized them to 600 x 800 before painstakingly re-inserting them into the Word document.  The result was exactly the same (give or take) as the first attempt at conversion BEFORE mucking about with sizes.  Either way, a picture that should have filled a Kindle screen was shrunk.  As a consequence, I gave up re-sizing for the subsequent books and there is no apparent difference except perhaps in the file size but it's not big enough to create a huge financial hole.

The other problem with the images is that they don't always behave properly.  You think they are in one position on a page but they appear somewhere else instead, like at the top of the next page and obliterating half of the poem on it.  I think I have sussed this now - you need to check that the little anchor marker for the pic is definitely above the page break line.  I found switching to Web Layout View in Word was the best way to check this.

I am still not totally satisfied with the way they appear on the screen but I can't see how to improve them so that is how they will stay.  I only have one further book to convert but I can see it is going to be the most challenging.  They are all listed on a Listmania list on Amazon.

Home Front or Foreign Shores?

We are now at the planning stage of our June tour.  In previous years, we have journeyed around western Europe in the mighty Burstner but this year, we may opt for the UK.  The cost of fuel is one factor but also is the fact that we have never been up to Scotland in the van with the crew.  I have fond memories of a wonderful holiday in the far north-east of Scotland 31 years ago when I saw the Northern Lights in the distant summer sky.
 I have wanted to return ever since.

However, I also REALLY love going to France and Spain.  France is my favourite - such diversity of geography within a single country - and the Dordogne in particular!

We will almost certainly go there in September this year so I am more tempted to to the UK trip.  This would mean that some amazing museums in the north of England could be visited en route - Beamish Museum for a start.  The idea is to find loads of cycle trails too.  I love this sort of research so can't wait to make the final decision and get started.

When we do the long trips, we often see if there is a school or other educational establishment where we may be able to find a day's work and to offer it at a discount.  This way, some of the mileage counts as business mileage and helps to offset a proportion of the costs on the motorhome in our annual accounts.

Last year, we linked up with a bilingual group to the south of Poitiers.  We investigated an international school near Toulouse but the proximity to the end of term is an issue so I have contacted a small village school near Crieff.  They contacted me to see if we could help out with a last-minute booking for World Book Day in March but the Itinerant Poet had been fully-booked for many months.  The head teacher sounded really nice and I promised to call her if we were travelling north of the border in the motorhome.  I was really happy when I called her yesterday and she remembered me making the offer.  Plans are now underway...

Now that the IGCSE English exams have been sat (and hopefully passed) we are looking ahead to next year's selection.  Current favourites are geography and physics.  Wherever we go, the diverse landscapes and map-reading can be incorporated into the geography study and the pressure/weather patterns into both.