(see info below for free books)
I have created a slide presentation in Powerpoint (PPT) to illustrate my books and all their different formats. You can download the Powerpoint Presentation to your computer directly and view it in PPT format if you have the Powerpoint program on your computer or you can go to my Picasa Web Albums to just view it as photos in a slideshow format. Select your choices below. You can also get some free digital books, see below.
If you choose the Powerpoint Presentation, it is animated with slide transitions and hyperlinks that you can click on to view my books at Lulu.Com or move to the next slide. If you just watch the Picasa slides (with no animations) you can also see my books at Lulu by clicking the link below. It has been quite an experience for me learning about and then trying out the different formats and testing them. I have basically learned how to do this all by researching the info on Google.
I also save some money doing the formatting myself when I want to publish another book. If I just send my new book in WORD format to my publisher at Lulu.Com they will format it for me for a cost. To just take my already published books and reformat them for the new ePub version to be sold on Lulu or at the Apple bookstore called iBooks, the cost for me is $99 (up to 250 words), $199 (up to 500 words) and $299 (up to 750 words). The cost to advertise a new book in various media outlets can run in the thousands. So I have decided to “just do it” all myself and have fun learning a new skill in the process.
I have tried to make the books available for purchase in three formats for your convenience on Lulu.Com. They are Paperback, PDF and ePub. Each format requires a different set of parameters that need to be adjusted to make the final product readable in that format. The cost of each book is pretty much determined by the publisher and if I want the book circulated to other media outlets like Google, Amazon or iBooks. I still have to pay almost 80% of the final sale price to buy my own copy of the book. Nothing is free. With each sale, I only receive a few pennies revenue as the author. However, I am glad for each sale as my books get greater circulation and readership.
The Paperback format is a regular printed book with colorful cover and white paper pages with black print. Some readers prefer to hold a real book in their hands as they browse the pages. The Paper version is first typed in WORD and requires, page sizing (4x6 inch for Pocketbook), margins, fonts, font sizes, headers, footers, page numbering, page breaks and any special hypertext links. I then upload it to Lulu and go through their publishing Wizard to design a cover, select a copyright, describe a preview and then select the marketing outlets.
The PDF is similar to paper but is in digital format (Portable Document Format) that you can download to your computer and read with Adobe Reader (free download at Adobe.com). After, you can either read it on the computer screen or print it out to paper. To get the WORD document into PDF you need to have a WORD (Add On) that saves the document in PDF or a special conversion program from Adobe. Once in PDF, you can resize the document to fit the screen.
The ePub is a new format that you can read on a handheld device like the iPod Touch from Apple or the Kindle from Amazon. In this format the document is free flowing without paragraph endings or beginnings and can be automatically resized to fit the screen of your viewing device. You can also resize the text larger or smaller, you can flip pages with a finger tap on the screen and you can select a table of contents that allows you to move to another section or chapter of the book. You can also set bookmarks or highlight or look up info in a dictionary or email a section.
You will need an eReader APP to read the ePub books on your iPod Touch. I find the iBooks APP to be the easiest of all the eReaders. It is free and you can download it from the APP Store. To get my book in ePub format, I first save the manuscript in WORD to an HTML Web Format. I then have a special program called SIGIL that converts the HTML to ePub. Once in ePub format you can adjust the text for page breaks, chapters and table of contents. This took a lot of trial and error to find all the finite nuances to this formatting method. Once in ePub format you are now ready to upload the book to Lulu and process it through their editing system. This is all quite time consuming but also satisfying when you are done creating your own book.
Once you have the iBooks APP on your iPod Touch your can go to the iBooks Store and download thousands of books. Some are free and others have a cost. You can also get books or documents sent by email in either ePub or PDF format that you can open up in iBooks with just a tap of your finger. In iBooks you can flip back and forth from PDF to Books and see all your selections neatly stacked on a book shelf (See Picture Above). You can also buy eBooks from Amazon and other outlets and download them to your computer or iPod Touch and open them with the iBooks APP. You can see additional info about iBooks at the following link at Wikipedia …. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBooks .
If you would like a sample eBook to read in iBooks on your iPod Touch or iPad, send me an email and I will send you one of my books free. If you want to try one in PDF to read on your computer or iPod free, send me an email. You can also purchase any of my stories in digital format (Paper, ePub or PDF) for as little as $1.76 at Lulu.Com. Try it out, we now live in a new digital age and need to learn new ways or be left behind.
Click your choice below (1,2,3)
1. Powerpoint Presentation ….. click link …….. https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AbdIp6qZEsAXZGZqdHdrODVfMjFoa2JnejhnNA&hl=en
Then click (Start Presentation)
2. Picasa Web Albums at ….. click link …. https://picasaweb.google.com/markryan312/AdventuresOfTheRomeoGangBooks#
3. Lulu.Com …click link ….. http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?fListingClass=0&fSearch=Adventures+of+the+Romeo+Gang%2C+Mark+Ryan&fSubmitSearch=Go&showingSubPanels=&fSort=relevance_desc
Let me know if you have any problems with the selections. I am always willing to help. Comments are always welcome. markryan82@comcast.net .
