Posts Tagged ‘Amazon DTP’

Updating Books on the Kindle – A Big No-Go?


23 Mar

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Posted in About Publishing | 2 Comments »

One of the attractive options about publishing through Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP) to the Kindle Store was that books could be updated, and folks who had bought an earlier copy could re-download the revised one.

Now, I’ll be darned if I can find the documentation on that (although I very strongly recall that it wasn’t just urban legend), but a recent post on the DTP forums put a torpedo in that particular ship. One of the folks on the forum called Amazon support and was told that there currently is no way for readers to download an updated version of a title, unless they ask for a refund and then repurchase the book. And, of course, Amazon apparently won’t allow that as a general rule.

Hopefully they’ll add that as a feature, because it would be an extremely powerful advantage, particularly for “how-to” books that can be updated periodically with the latest information. Come on, Amazon, push the envelope a bit, would you?

Amazon DTP Publishing Tip: PDF Conversion to HTML


17 Feb

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Posted in About Publishing | 6 Comments »

If you have a PDF that you want to convert to HTML to upload to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform (DTP), Adobe has a free service to do just that!

Head over to the Adobe Online PDF Conversion Tools page. You have the option of e-mailing the PDF as an attachment, or uploading to the system from a web URL. Before you get started, you should probably read the FAQ page so you’ll have a better idea what to expect.

Adobe gives you two conversion options by email: one to make your PDF file into a plain text file, the other to convert it to HTML:

For our purposes here, converting the PDF for upload to Amazon DTP, you’ll want to use the HTML option.

For the URL conversion,  just type in the URL of the PDF, click the button for the format you want (HTML or text), and click Convert.

I tested both routes – email and URL – using the sample of In Her Name, with the following results:

  • The email conversions worked fine, but you need to make sure you send the emails in plaintext format (not rich text or HTML). Any files I sent that weren’t plaintext format got kicked back.
  • The URL conversion didn’t work for me and gave me an unspecified error, so you may or may not have better luck with that.

As for how the resulting HTML file looked, it was generally quite good. However, the big downside for anyone who has files with images is that no images were returned from the conversion process, only the text.

Also, don’t think that this (or any other PDF conversion) will result in clean copy: you’ll almost inevitably have to go in and tweak the HTML a bit to get it formatted the way you want. But that’s generally not too big a deal, and the conversion definitely gets you moving in the right direction!

Credit for this tip goes to DTP user booksdontchange.

Publish Your Book on the Amazon Kindle: A Practical Guide


27 Jan

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Posted in About Publishing | 6 Comments »

It’s no surprise that there are a lot of authors and small press publishers who want to get their work on the Amazon Kindle!

Unfortunately, making that happen is not always as easy as it should be, and that’s why I’ve put together Publish Your Book on the Amazon Kindle: A Practical Guide, which is now available in print, on the Amazon Kindle, and on Mobipocket.com.

I wrote this book specifically for folks who don’t have a lot of – or any – technical background, and who are frustrated with the seemingly mystical process of getting a book published on the Kindle. Chances are you’re an author or publisher who doesn’t want to deal with a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo and just wants to get the job done so you can get back to writing. This book will take away the mystery and frustration, and give you a clear path to success. (more…)

Michael R. Hicks

Tales and Musings

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