The new version of the weight-loss cookbook is on its way to publication in print and at Amazon! This afternoon I sent all 296 pages and the wrap-around cover over to the printer, and then set up Kindle to accept the final version of the .mobi file, which should appear within a day or so.
The latter still needs to have its table of contents updated — bizarrely, Kindle can’t read a table of contents that has been compiled in any Mac-compatible program. So every time I need to upload a bookoid that contains chapters, I first have to send it to Tina, who performs the 30-second task of updating the ToC on her PC.
The copy in the new, renamed edition is largely revamped. Its first incarnation, How I Lost 30 Pounds in Four Months, was the first book I had ever uploaded to Amazon. And — wouldn’tcha know — it had the most complex formatting of any book I’ve posted there. In the fools-rush-in department, I took on footnotes, tables, lists, heads, subheads, sub-subheads, and even images without having a single clue to what I was doing.
Nor did I understand that Amazon’s online Kindle previewer is next to useless: what you see in that thing is decidedly not what you get. The result was a mess, but because I’d proofed in that online program, I didn’t know it was a mess.
Not until an angry reader posted a rant about the horrible formatting did I realize something was awry.
By then I’d figured out that you have to download a resident Kindle previewer onto your terminal — and, preferably, download your .mobi file into a Kindle reader or into an iPad, if you can figure out how. When I viewed the How I Lost file in the previewer installed on my Mac, I was horrified. No wonder that poor reader was flummoxed, frustrated, and infuriated!
At that point, though, I was maxed with other work — the plan to post eight to ten bookoids per month was absorbing 12 to 14 hours a day. Revamping the cookbook was not going to happen.
So I took it down from Amazon — unpublished it and forgot it.
Now that cutting the production schedule by 50 percent has allowed life to settle, I’ve returned to the cookbook. After posting more bookoids than I can count — some of which contain formatting challenges — I’ve learned what one needs to do to simplify a manuscript and get it to go online with relatively few glitches.
The manuscript has now been reformatted in a new template, its structure revamped and simplified, a great deal of extraneous detail cut. That made it look better. Then I went through and cut as much of the Bloggish as I could get rid of without rewriting from beginning to end.
Much of the original content had been copied and pasted from Funny. And y’know…blogging is not the same as writing. Blogging is more like a combination of texting and personal letter-writing. It has its own conventions, and its tone and style are casual to a fault.
In the book world, to a large fault. 😉
Language and style cleaned up, format reorganized, the book deserved a new title and new cover art.
Hence the new title: 30 pounds / Four Months.
This book would make a good Christmas present. It has about 120 recipes, some very old (even historic!) and some very 21st-century. The strategy it describes for losing weight really does work, and sticking to it isn’t at all onerous, once you see what works.
So watch this space! I’ll let you know when the electronic and the print versions are ready. If you’re interested in a print copy, let me know in the comments to this post and I’ll arrange to send one to you whenever I have them.
