Historical Mistakes

Sure, there’s been many, but without them we wouldn’t be where we are today. Yes, I speak tongue in cheek. Indeed, one person’s mistake is another’s success (or boon or just good fortune depending where the individual stood on the “mistake” at the time). But that’s not what I’m referring to. I make reference here to my content—specifically historical errors in my books. Some I caught in time, some I didn’t. They can be fixed, of course, with a small effort and a little money since all my books are now at Lightning Source, Smashwords, and Amazon (Kindle). For the former I need only $40.00 to re-upload and the last two platforms require only an expenditure of time.

Research in conjunction with the upcoming sequel to my latest novel Camellia Creek has uncovered several errors in previous works I now feel compelled to correct. Students of history will be quicker to pick up on them than the general reader (no one has pointed anything out to me, but that doesn’t necessarily mean folks haven’t noted them). The mistakes are painful to me because I know I was wrong in my assumptions and that resulted in my documenting an incorrect “fact.” The errors appear primarily in the Historical Notes to my novels, but one in Camellia Creek proper has caused me to make an alteration to its sequel, Honor’s Banner. That error is something I can work around, but things would have been a little simpler had I checked rather than assume the obvious was correct. Remember the old adage? “To assume makes an “ass” out of “u” and an “ass” out of “me.” [My marine-corps husband told me that one a lifetime ago. Personally, I don’t believe the navy—that would be an oblique reference to myself—has to take much of an individual effort to make an ass out of a marine since he is so capable on his own.] But, alas, I am talking about me here, am I not? And I messed up.

Except for my misspelling of the name of the freshwater fish bream, a Southern-staple, as brim in The Devil’s Bastard, all my (known) errors deal with the era of the War of Northern Aggression and the tyrannical period that followed, euphemistically called Reconstruction. And, hey, in my defense, that misspelling is not really a “historical” error, and I wrote the name of the darn fish just like it sounds—“brim.” Of course, one might think that in fifty plus years of eating the thing I’d have seen the word in print, which I did after printing up 2,000 copies with an offset printer. That was long ago. The upload to LSI is correct and as disgusted as I was with myself at the time—I’m a Southerner, I really should have known how to spell the name of the fish—I’ve learned to take such embarrassments in stride.

I recently discovered another particularly egregious error in Camellia Creek. In Chapter Twenty-nine my hero, teasing his young wife regarding her belief in ghosts, makes reference to Irwin Russell, who linked the old darkies’ ability to commune with the dead as a gift given the ignorant and childlike.

Born in Mississippi in 1853, Irwin Russell became a renowned author in postbellum days, but though he was alive and kicking at the time of Eli Calhoon’s 1865 reference to him, he would have been only twelve and the work containing Russell’s observation, Christmas in the Quarter, yet to be written. Like the misspelled brim (and believe me, I searched for an alternate spelling) there was no getting around the screw-up short of a revision. Fixed it is, but that doesn’t change the fact there’s probably a hundred copies of Camellia Creek in circulation with that anachronism.

Ah, now space grows short, and I’ve other “mess-ups” to confess. Those I plan to address in upcoming posts. Not only does that afford me the opportunity to acknowledge my mistakes, it will allow me to introduce readers to my work without shoving the books down their throats—part of my non-obtrusive marketing strategy—see my two preceding posts below. It is hoped that, if nothing else, readers will enjoy my take on the history.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be discussing John Lusk Alcorn and his role in secession (“Historical Note,” Wolf Dawson); President Andrew Johnson (“Historical Note,” Camellia Creek); and Kentucky’s economy prior to and during the War (Camellia Creek proper). I’ll also throw in one or two near misses that I did have the good sense to check before I went to print.

Thanks for reading.

Charlsie

Social Media Marketing Part 2

This is my second consecutive post on my most recent social media marketing initiative, and it picks up where my 30 January (2014) post left off.

I started this blog...goodness, it’s been over two years ago now. Rarely do I receive a comment, but I do get visitors—this I know from the stats Blogger provides me.

Shortly after starting my blog, and in keeping with popular social media marketing strategy, I signed up for a Twitter account. For a long time, the account just sat there, primarily because I didn’t know what to do with it. I kept writing my blogs, writing my books—publishing my books and going more and more in debt and occasionally visiting Twitter to look at the tweets. Rarely did I respond to anything because I wasn’t sure I should. But people did follow me—based on my profile, perhaps? Certainly not because I was an engaging individual, but I followed those folks back. I attracted and was attracted to conservative, state rights, tea party folks. Every once in a while a well-meaning Republican/conservative "type" would state how Black folk should abhor the Democratic Party since that was the party of disfranchisement and racism and the KKK, and the Republican Party was the party of freedom. I think to myself, "The bane of our founder’s Republic was the party of freedom?”

Okay, I’ve digressed a little here, but I do have a point. Regardless of how you feel about the Democratic and Republican parties of today, there’s a lot of history between then and what those posts imply, and I do have a basic knowledge of that history and an unfailing prejudice when it comes to the South (I’m pro—and I wonder if those people realize there was a Northern wing to the Democratic Party, which was....) Oh, never mind; that’s not my point. My point is that I comment when I see such. And guess what I have discovered? Anytime I interact: favorite, re-tweet or comment, whether folks agree with me or not, my Blogger stats go up. So, take note you budding internet marketers, there is a definite correlation between participation on one social media platform and its impact on those it’s linked to.

Based on that long, drawn-out “analytical” discovery, I decided even more social media interaction was in order, hence the internet marketing course thru Education 2 Go (Ed2Go) discussed in my last post.

The course covered the five big social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin, and Google+; I have fledgling accounts at all. I have finished the course, but I’ve just started honing my “social media” plan. My intention is to go back through the course notes and flesh out each platform vis-à-vis Loblolly Writer’s House. I’ve started with Google+ (see the sidebar?), and I’ve added reciprocal buttons to several pages on my website. I’m supplementing the bare-bones Ed2Go course with a copy of Jesse Stay’s Google+ Marketing for Dummies. I’m in the process of going through his book page by page building my platform, using what’s relevant and cogitating what I don’t understand. I’ll figure it out; I’m only halfway through the book. Besides, I think I should have read Google+ for Dummies first and learned the mechanics before attempting to master exploitation.

I will follow up with my Google+ progress and eventually the other platforms. So far, I've created some Google+ circles and been placed in circles and joined a handful of communities—I even found one on secession! I’m interacting and seeing activity in my blog stats. Maybe one day I’ll even get a comment. In the meantime, I’m going to continue my base strategy of weaving writing and publishing content as well as history notes into this blog. Hope you’ll be back and thanks for reading.

Charlsie

Social Media Marketing Part 1

This past November (2013), I completed an online social media marketing course offered by my local community college through Education to Go (Ed2Go). I’ve made reference to this learning source over the years on both my website and in these blog posts. For you struggling self-publishers out there with empty pockets, shallow pockets, or no darn pockets, I highly recommend learning to do many of the otherwise cost-prohibitive tasks yourself. Those would include typesetting, website design, cover design, and ebook formatting for starters. Unless you’re publishing only one book, purchasing good typesetting and graphic design software such as Quark or Adobe Indesign will pay for itself in just a couple of books. Granted, you don’t need a typography program if you intend to publish only digitally, but you still need to format a good-looking ebook. At the very minimum learn “.html” formatting (hypertext markup language) and download a free copy of the word editor program Notepad++

I learned the bare minimums of .html years ago by taking a “Create Your Own Website” course through Ed2Go. Later I took a course on cascading style sheets (CSS) from the same source. I intended to upgrade my website using CSS, but I still haven’t gotten around to it. I did, however, grasp enough CSS to incorporate it into the format of my Kindle books. All other formats for my digital books are produced by Smashwords. Smashwords also distributes them. But creating the physical book (or the digital book) is only half the equation, and with that I return to where I started this post—book marketing.

Last fall, I carved out time and eighty-nine bucks and enrolled in “Using Social Media in Business.” I’d been looking at the course syllabus for over a year, and with the craft-fair season winding down, I decided to go for it.

Note: From the start, my primary sales outlet has been the “craft fair.” This was the case before there was an Ingram-owned Lightning Source (LSI) print-on-demand printer and its accompanying promise of distribution. Craft fairs are ubiquitous, most relatively cheap, and they take me to the nooks and crannies of my beloved Mississippi, where I reaffirm that, yes, the South is alive and well. But despite the fact I meet with a generally favorable audience, that audience is limited in number, and depending on the distance from home, nightly accommodations, gas, and dining out sometimes nullify my sales. Coming out in the black or not, each fair’s expenses take a bite out of profits. On top of that, I have to load and unload a tent and tables and books and deal with the fickleness of the weather. Those factors produce wear and tear on a woman passing (all too quickly) into her golden years. Selling via craft shows is a tough row to hoe.

I realized some time ago that to reach a national audience, maybe even an international one, I needed to take advantage of the online marketplace. Reaching out to/or diving into this potential market is applicable to both my physical book as well as the digital version, but I do believe the digital format holds the greatest potential for sales over the internet. It’s just so easy to find and download a book to a reader. The effort can be accomplished in seconds, and ebooks, in most cases, are significantly cheaper than their paper counterparts.

So, from a basic website highlighting Loblolly Writer’s House, Charlsie Russell, and my first book, The Devil’s Bastard, seven plus years ago and a link to my Amazon Advantage Page where readers could purchase my paperback book, I ventured into digital editions with the appropriate links to online stores where readers could, if they desired, purchase my digital books.

Not sure what to do next, I went back to writing my next book. You can guess that not much happened—except for a new book to sell at craft fairs and subsequently put in digital format for upload and..., well, you know the drill. Now, enter the blog rage. I paid only cursory heed, unconvinced my time would be well spent putting forth opinions on anything folks would find remotely of interest. Okay, I had learned some stuff about self-publishing, and I’d listened for the past forty years to an increasing montage of liberals and the ignorant bash the South, their outrages becoming less and less congruous with historical fact, primarily because they neither know nor are they interested in history. [If you're looking for some sort of mutual compatibility between those two, stop. They're two different subjects, but both dear to my heart.] Maybe I could contribute something others would like to read. Not all folks mind you, but some, and that same “some” might like the kind of books I write.

With few sales garnered via Amazon and my website, I found an Ed2Go blog course that led me through the building of a blog on Google’s Blogger (that’s what you’re reading here). Then I got wind of a new ploy—tying Twitter to my blog and driving like-minded followers to first the blog and from there to my books. Proselytes professed to have made millions! I never believed I’d make millions, but I did believe I might find a readership.

More on my social media marketing strategy next week.

Thanks for reading,
Charlsie

The “Present Legacies” of Reconstruction

I recently read Hodding Carter’s The Angry Scar, an easy-to-read overview of Reconstruction written by a moderate Southerner with a knowledge of history and obviously possessed with an interest in the “whys” of what happened—particularly after Reconstruction—and into the twentieth century. I’ve had the book for several years, but about to delve into the sequel to my most recent novel, Camellia Creek, I finally took time to sit down and read it. One book in THE MAINSTREAM OF AMERICA SERIES published back in the 1950s, the entire set sweeps American history from the discovery of the New World up to, well, the 1950s. I intend to ferret out other books in the series to see if they are as good as this one. Then again, perhaps it is simply Hodding Carter’s writing I like.

An editor of the Greenville Delta Democrat-Times (Greenville, Mississippi), Carter wrote a slew of books. This particular work comes replete with an extensive bibliography for further reading. Yes, I like older works, written before the revisionist has polluted the record by the mores and values of his present day (and yes, I know that same revisionist would argue the older works are polluted by the heat and passions of times too close to events). But it is the heat and passions and truths, such as the people living during those times perceived them to be, that I’m trying to capture in my insignificant works of escape fiction.

Hodding Carter ends the forward of The Angry Scar thus: “...; and my overriding purposes have been to separate truth from myth and to link significant past events with the present legacies of those events. In attempting to do these things I have become convinced that it has been almost as unfortunate for our nation that the North has remembered so little of Reconstruction as that the South has remembered so much.”

Today, so much of the myth is irrelevant to where the focus of the argument should lie, and spouting it undermines the rightness of the South’s cause. It simply is not needed; substantiated truth more than fulfills that goal. For all the right reasons the South was right, and in my opinion the “present legacies” prove it.

During my pre-teen years, through high-school, college, and even into my early days in the Navy, I was a football fan. One might even say that football was the man in my life. (Bear with me here. I do have a point.) In late summer, I could “smell” football in the air and see it in the changing blue of the sky. Yeah, it was really the approach of fall, but to me it was football. The demands of the Navy interrupted my weekend-long sojourns in front of the television. Then I got married and had a real man in my life, followed by his children. My interest in football, if not the unrequited love, faded away. Occasionally, when talking with my oldest son, I’ll slip and place the Colts in Baltimore. Hell, Johnny U is still the quarterback.

 

Now, to my point:

In the last chapter of The Angry Scar, Carter highlights all the old “myths” I grew up with regarding the South’s fight for independence and the degradation and humiliation of Reconstruction and the justification for all that came after. It’s easy to read between the lines and suspect he’s putting forth those old arguments tongue-in-cheek, as if maybe he doesn’t quite believe them himself, or more likely that he does and they simply don’t matter anymore (the book was published in 1959 at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, and he was a Kennedy man). When I read those arguments, as real to me today as when I learned them growing up, I ask myself, “Are you in as big a time warp on this subject as you are in regards to the Baltimore Colts?”

Maybe, but I really do know that the Colts are in Indianapolis and Johnny Unitas is a football legend passed on to Glory. I’ve been out of the Navy and back home now for as long as I was in. I don’t live in a vacuum. I’m very much aware of the party that controls the White House and who or what controls the Congress of the United States; of universal suffrage and an electorate that votes into office corrupt men and women who pilfer the earnings of working Americans to feed their dissolute government handout programs and perpetuate the cycle of non-working recipients voting them back into office; of costs driven so high by the perverse injection of tax-payers’ dollars and federal regulations into private programs such as healthcare and higher education that even younger, working tax-payers are forced to accept government support in order to make ends meet.

I heard it said not long ago that public memory was around five years. So, theoretically, in five years people will struggle under the onerous weight of Obamacare as if it’s always been part of us, just like the huge socialist programs and federal interference enacted by LBJ fifty some odd years ago have “always” been part of us as has the misinterpreted “retirement plan” known as Social Security inacted under FDR and the income tax under Woodrow Wilson. Those programs are all twentieth- and, now, twenty-first-century Constitutional violations attributed to democrats, but the republicans have done nothing to eliminate them. This huge expansion of Federal control links directly to the South’s defeat a century and a half ago. That concept is regarded as a joke these days, yet things just keep getting worser and worser.

This brings me back to Hodding Carter’s forward—the North’s remembering so little, the South’s so much. It’s good to remember for the sake not only of the South but even more so for the Republic. As critical as the delegation of powers between the three branches of the Federal government, so too was the delineation of powers between the federal government, clearly limited by the Constitution, and that of the States—broadly interpreted by the Tenth Amendment and insisted upon by the states upon ratification of the Constitution. No, I do not believe the War was over slavery. I do believe people use such lofty arguments to excuse the things they do, but I do not believe populations kill and sacrifice their lives for philanthropic purposes. Economic self-interest, offensive or defensive, couched as such, yes. I do believe the South seceded to protect its economic interests in the face of a hate-filled section of the nation that enacted repeated threats to Dixie’s interests (not to mention darker, more nefarious threats to her people) for the betterment of its own. And yes, I do believe the South had a right to secede to protect its interests, its way of life, and its people. No, I do not believe the South started the War, despite the provocation at Sumter—Lincoln, not Jefferson Davis, chose war. And yes, I do accept Lincoln prosecuted the War better than did Davis (oh duh).

And finally, yes, I do have lofty dreams, which any of you who know the history of then and of the time since can understand, if not necessarily appreciate. Those are no less than the nullification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the striking of paragraph 2 from the Fifteenth, and repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment. That should put the correct powers back into the states where they belong, end that “anchor baby” bullshit, and cut off the exorbitant capital the Federals require to fund their give-away programs and the corresponding bureaucracy to operate them, while at the same time holding the States hostage for taxpayers’ dollars. Of course, to be on the safe side, the sixteenth amendment should probably be replaced with something else clarifying that income tax is not apportioned—it wasn’t in 1789 and it isn’t today—to keep Congress from continuing to pilfer the working man’s dollars by perverting Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. And just another little point regarding the sixteenth amendment—the controversies regarding the actions of way too many state legislatures reported to have ratified that thing makes it, in my humble opinion, worthy of nullification vice repeal—can states nullify what they passed in violation of their own constitutions? I don't know the answer.

Good luck with all that, right? Tongue-in-cheek aside, I wonder what Hodding Carter would think of the looming power of the Federal government, fueled by a corrupt democracy, today?

 

Yep, those “present legacies” just keep getting worser and worser.

 

 

 

By That, He Meant Brazil, Right?

      I fear not. I think he really was making a perfidious reference to the Deep South of the Southern United States. That would include my Mississippi, folks, and I’m not taking it lying down. 

I recently visited North Carolina, a state with which I have ancestral ties that go back so far as to exist only by word of mouth, that being the existence of a redheaded, blue-eyed Scotsman (that would be the Russell side) who came from the “Carolinas.” Ever so often he returns, my daddy told me as I was growing up. My grandmother Russell had two redheaded sons (my father wasn’t one of them) and I, too, gave birth to him twice, but my sons don’t bear the surname Russell; that’s my maiden name. Though I’d always suspected the “Carolinas” in this case referred to North Carolina, tentative research strongly indicates the family did indeed travel from North Carolina into Tennessee, then Georgia, briefly Alabama, and my branch has been in Mississippi for four generations now—six if I count my non-Russell offspring and their offspring. 

But, let me get back on point. My visit was to Buncombe County in western North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, Ashville specifically, a lovely, quaint little city favored by artists and flocked to by tourists and historically by those in need of the healthful mountain air to relieve whatever ailed them. I went with my daughter’s mother-in-law to visit old friends she wanted to see there, and they, knowing my interest in history, made a point of taking us to some of the local historical sites. What provided fodder for this particular blog were comments made by a tour guide at the birthplace of Zebulon Baird Vance, 37th and 43rd governor of North Carolina. His first term was during the War for Southern Independence, and he is beloved by the people of North Carolina for being “War Governor of the South.” 

Zebulon Vance was the second son of David Vance, a veteran of the Continental Army that sent the Loyalists packing at King’s Mountain. The elder Vance either built or bought the house in 1795. The family ran a wealthy, slave-owning farm. Here is what got my goat. This young man, our guide, went off on a brief tangent highlighting how slavery was different in North Carolina, where more valuable skilled slaves were the norm vice the less valuable field laborers from the more southern states, where labor was cheap and the slaves were “worked to death” then replaced. He threw his hands out in front of him and said, “No big deal.”  

I beg your pardon? Where did this double-standard, hypocritical, hogwash come from? Quentin Tarantino? Perhaps it was Harriet Beecher Stowe, but to believe the latter, I would have to credit the young man with having made some effort to research the history of slavery. I, in fact, use those same words—“worked to death”—referring to slaves, in my most recent novel Camellia Creek, spoken from the mouth of a hate-filled, bigoted abolitionist witch who didn’t know what she was talking about. There were plenty of skilled Negro slaves in the Deep South, and all slaves, skilled or not, certainly were costly, considering the slave-trade ended in 1808. Even assuming we in the Deep South were sub-human and cared nothing for human life, working slaves to death would have been economic suicide. I’m not saying such never happened, but it was not the norm and would have been as likely to happen in North Carolina as Mississippi. 

I was hoping the thoughts espoused by the tour guide were his own, but subsequent discussion with my host indicates this “slavery in North Carolina was kinder, gentler” has become a common thread among those who wish to apologize for slavery’s existence in that state. Of course, I don’t know that those North Carolinians, whose roots go back to the beginning, really swallow that “bunk”, pun intended. I hope not. My host, who is not a Southerner, snickered when he gave me that “kinder and gentler” line. I can only surmise that such tripe handed out during tours is the result of federal funding or is an effort by the politically correct crowd to whitewash something it appears to be ashamed of. To those individuals I say whitewash it if you feel a need, but do it without defaming your sister states, whose ancestors were sure the devil no worse than yours, no matter where they hailed from.  

Better yet, I would argue that when giving a tour of Governor Vance’s birthplace, place emphasis on the man himself and the time he lived, rather than gloss over it. He was a man who believed a state was sovereign, vis-à-vis a central government, in all things except those limited areas where said central government held precedent (a prominent characteristic of a number of North Carolina statesmen going back long before the War). Something all state governors should remember now, something governors in the North should have remembered then and the dark years following the War--something they all should have remembered in the 1960s. That belief is what the people of North Carolina fought for (in numbers that exceeded all others, I should add, all the while resisting Confederate conscription policies in the name of those same rights), not slavery. That autonomy as well as the inviolability of the Constitution are what were lost with the South’s defeat, and as regards the health of the Republic, those two things alone eclipse the radical and irresponsible dissolution of an institution doomed to extinction within a relatively short period of time. For all the right reasons, the South was right, something Southerners should remember and be proud of instead of hanging their heads in shame and prevaricating in the face of liberal propaganda and federal extortion.

 

 

  

If Only I’d Known at the Start, How Simple It Would Have Been: KindleGen

I think I’ve figured out KindleGen, the Amazon-approved creator of .mobi books for its Kindle devices. As it turns out, KindleGen is, in my opinion, simple. Simpler, in fact, than MobiPocket Creator. I wouldn’t have said that when I started, but my difficulties were the result of “mechanics” and not the program itself.

I began my effort trying to use KindleGen’s “command prompt” feature and after two days of failure, used what some bloggers consider the easier process of uploading the book files into Amazon’s Kindle Previewer. After an hour or so of trying to figure out how to use the Kindle Previewer in this capacity, I did build my book. After sleeping on what I’d done and considering the files used during my success with the Previewer, I returned to the “command prompt” screen and tried that method again. It worked, too.

I’m gonna briefly describe my ordeal, then show you the steps I used to create my book using both the Previewer and the “command prompt” line in my computer. Keep in mind, this post isn’t meant for those who understand the workings of computers and command prompts or even the placement of files in folders, though you folks might enjoy a good laugh from the read. Any helpful comments from that audience are appreciated, too. No, this post is intended for folks like me who are “clueless” when they read a blog or forum post that takes for granted the reader understands what the writer is talking about, without step by step instructions. I hope my new-found discoveries prove helpful to some of you out there. I use the term “discoveries” on purpose, because I do not necessarily understand what I have done.

KindleGen is a free download from Amazon (more on that below) and uses a “command prompt”. You may remember the “command prompt” from the dawn of personal computers, when the owner had to boot-up the computer on a black screen using letters and symbols (i.e., < > : \ \). Despite the fact that computers now magically boot-up themselves without the help of the computer helpless, command prompts are still in vogue with those who know how to use them (not to mention know where to go to find that black screen). I’m told the “command prompt” is a powerful feature in the right hands. As regards, myself, however, I spent the better part of two days  struggling with the guidance provided by the ebook formatting company eBook Pioneers in its March 2013 blog  and could not get Camellia Creek to build. I did attempt the methodology used by a couple of other bloggers, similar to, but different from that of eBook Pioneers. The results were no better.  

I had created five files to “build” my book: the .html of my book; its .opf; its toc.ncx; cover graphic; and logo graphic, and I figured they all needed to be in the “prompt” line. I considered with each fail that I was not listing my files in the “command prompt” correctly or I was placing them incorrectly in folders. I also thought the problem might be Windows 7. I swear, as many times and as many permutations I completed trying to make that “command prompt” work I was sure I had to have the “prompt” line right at least once. As stated in my last post, I finally zipped up Camellia Creek’s five files and uploaded that to the Kindle Direct Publishing’s digital text platform (DTP). Hardly mastery of KindleGen and most unsatisfactory for one who considers herself a serious publisher, albeit of only my own stuff. Misfortune offered me an opportunity to redeem myself. 

While uploading Camellia Creek to the DTP, I noticed on my publishing page that Epico Bayou (which had gone “live” over a year before when I uploaded the MobiPocket-created .prc), for some inexplicable reason, had fallen into a “draft” status. Like my recent experience with Camellia Creek, I could not get that original MobiPocket Creator-crafted .prc to re-upload and when I zipped up Epico Bayou, replicating what I’d done with Camellia Creek, Epico Bayou’s navigational table of contents (the .ncx file) didn’t work. I wanted to sit down and squall. Instead, I resolved to master KindleGen and at the same time fix Epico Bayou’s shortcoming.

My effort to build Epico Bayou using the KindleGen “command prompt” mirrored that of Camellia Creek two weeks earlier. Nothing I did worked. The “command prompt” window couldn’t “find a file” (always the last one in the list—I know because I switched them around). I now know there should not have been a “list” of files, which brings me back on point. I didn’t know how to write a command prompt.

At the beginning and the end of that eBookPioneer blog referenced above, the author suggested the easiest thing to do was to forgo the “command prompt” evolution and upload the files, along with the KindleGen execute file, kindlegen.exe, in the Kindle Previewer. I’d seen this sentiment expressed by others on the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) forum.  So, I opened the Previewer.

Where? Where, when I open the Previewer, was I supposed to load the darn files? There was nothing that said “build book.” Nobody had explained how or where to drag and drop those files into the Previewer, and it took a little guessing for me to finally figure it out.

I clicked on “open kindle book,” primarily because there wasn’t much else to click on. What opened, of course, was the library listing the books that are already in my Previewer. I went one folder up: Local>Amazon>Kindle Previewer and it is that window into which I dragged my book file—that is the “Kindle Previewer window,” right? Clear as mud! Then I clicked my book file to open. Low and behold, the .html file and the .opf file appear in the folder. The others aren’t there.

Now, I already suspected from other vague comments in the forums that the .opf file was the key, so I clicked on it and, much to my amazement, a window opened up and said the Previewer was compiling a book. Sure enough, seconds later the window changed, said a book had been created and to view it, click here [not a live link]. I clicked and was taken to a window that showed me Epico Bayou as a .mobi book, and when I opened it—now in the Previewer—not only was my old, familiar Epico Bayou there, its .ncx worked.

I wasn’t completely out of the woods. Though I had Epico Bayou in the Kindle Previewer, I still had to find that file in my browser so I could upload it to Amazon’s DTP, and the address given in my browser showed that it was residing down a long link of folders, some of which were unfamiliar to me, so I couldn’t follow them back to find where the book was stored. That meant a search. I did find it, quickly as it turned out, in My Kindle Content folder. In one forum, a fellow stated he found his in My Publications. I have a My Publications file, too, but as I said, Epico Bayou.mobi was in My Kindle Content folder. Obviously, where a Previewer-created book resides is not set in stone. Just to see if the Previewer method would work a second time, I made Camellia Creek into a .mobi using the same methodology. It took seconds. Previewer stored that baby away in My Kindle Content, too.

Realizing the .opf file is key to building the book compelled me to try the “command prompt” again—hey, I’m slow, not stupid. This time, I put my five files (.html, .opf, .ncx, cover, and logo graphic) into one file and added the kindlegen.exe to it. Here’s the prompt I used: 

      C:\users\Charlsie>c:\KindleGen\kindlegen.exe C:\KindleGen\EBWord.opf  

I hit “enter” and the screen filled with line after line of data and at the end it said “book built successfully.” I blinked in astonishment, then looked over at the open window displaying my book’s files. Sure as shootin’ there sat EpicoBayou.mobi in the folder with a little blue book symbol on its left. I opened it in Previewer, and its .ncx worked, too. 

Now, I think the “command prompt” window is simplest. 

Okay, let’s go through both methods step by step, but before I start, I’m making the assumption you are building an ebook for uploading to the Kindle Direct Publishing’s DTP and have created the required files needed to work on all Kindle devices—that is your goal, right? If you have only a book file, you probably won’t encounter the problems I did, anyway.

The files I’m referring to are your book itself (mine is in .html format); your book’s .opf file; your toc.ncx file (this is a table of contents that makes navigation through the book easy for the reader and creates the “tick” marks at the bottom of the kindle screen so the reader knows where he is in the book); and all graphics saved as .gifs (Kindle wants .gifs, not jpgs). If you need further reference regarding creation of the ancillary files, see my old blogs dated 1 December 2011-3 February 2012. 

Previewer Method: 

1. Create your book files and put them together in one folder:

    a. All graphics, saved as .gifs

    b. The book itself (I do mine in .html)

    c. Your .opf file

    d. Your .ncx file 

2. Download your free KindleGen at: 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765211 

 

KindleGen is a .zip file. Unzip it and copy and paste the kindlegen.exe file to the book folder you made above. While you’re at it, make several copies of that .exe file and store ’em for future Kindle books. 

3. If the KindleGen Previewer didn’t come with the KindleGen download, find it here: 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765261  

4. Open Kindle Previewer. 

5. Go to “open kindle book” on homepage of Previewer.  

    a. You should now be in your library. 

    b. Go one folder up. The browser at the top of the window should read something to the effect: Local>Amazon>Kindle Previewer. No matter what comes before it, you want the window for the “Kindle Previewer”. 

6. Drag and drop/copy and paste your book folder into this screen of the Kindle Previewer. 

7. Click on your book to open it. You’ll see the .html (or whatever format you have your book in) and the .opf. 

8. Click on the .opf file. A window will open telling you Previewer is compiling the book. 

9. When the compilation is done (seconds), a window will come up and tell you the book has been created and to click here to review it. Go ahead, feast your eyes on your new baby. 

 10. Back in the book folder, you’ll see that another file has been created called book’s name converted.opf. That’s your book.

Command Prompt Method

1. Download KindleGen here: 

     http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765211

2. Make sure you have the Previewer and if not, download it from here: 

     http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765261

3. Go to Computer or My Computer by clicking the Start button at the bottom left of your computer screen (or you can use the icon on the Desktop). 

4. Amongst that list of program files and users, make a new folder and call it KindleGen. 

5. Return to your KindleGen download and open the folder (it’s zipped). 

6. You only need one file out of this folder—kindlegen.exe. 

7. Copy it, then go back to your KindleGen folder in your “Computer” folder and paste kindlegen.exe there. 

8. Find all your book files: .html, .epub, whatever you’ve called it; .opf; .ncx; graphics; and anything else you have associated with your book. Copy and paste each into the KindleGen folder with the kindlegen.exe.

9. Go to All Programs/Accessories and open Command Prompt 

 10. A black screen will appear with a starting line something to the effect of : 

        C:\Users\Charlsie>

                          ↑ This name is probably you or whoever owns the computer you’re on 

 11.  Now add the highlighted section: 

  C:\Users\Charlsie>C:\KindleGen\kindlegen.exe  C:\KindleGen\EBWord.opf

                                                substitute the name of your .opf file, of course ↑

 12. Hit enter and the book should build and will, within seconds, appear in your KindleGen folder as title of your book.mobi. 

 13. Click on it, and it will open in the Previewer

I chose to put my KindleGen folder in Computer because that’s where eBook Pioneers suggested I put it way back when I started this evolution, but you can put it wherever you want. And you should probably be more specific with the name of the KindleGen folder so you will one day be able to distinguish one book folder from another (i.e., KindleGenEpicoBayou, KindleGenCamelliaCreek, and so forth); just remember to type it as such in the “command prompt” line when you build the book.

New Adventures in Mobi Creation

No, not the whale, but the program that creates the digital book for Amazon’s Kindle (though at the moment I’m ready to put the great white whale’s last name to the whole evolution and refer to it by the crude vernacular). Since readers have their accounts set up and click a button to download their Kindle Book to their Kindle device all in a matter of seconds, an author needs her book in the Kindle Store. To get it there, she must create her masterpiece in .mobi format.

Getting my latest novel, Camellia Creek, a gothic mystery/suspense set against the backdrop of  Presidential Reconstruction at the end of the War for Southern Independence, into mobipocket, .azw format, took days, untold hours I wish I’d actually recorded so you could more clearly understand how absolutely anal I am. For those of you who have looked at my blog for “technical” advice, no matter how unintentionally spurious, you know that over a year ago I blogged extensively about my creation of the files required by MobiPocket Creator to build a mobi book. With those files—sitting in the folder for each individual book in the “My Publications” folder associated with MobiPocket Creator—I managed in 2011-2012 to upload my first four books and get them in the Amazon Kindle Store. Camellia Creek, thought I, will be a piece of cake.

Wrong. Oh, I created the files easily enough based on templates I’d created from my first four books—the .html version of my book, the .ncx file, a proper version of the .opf (MobiPocket Creator creates an .opf file automatically from whatever data one feeds it—if one feeds it no extra data, it creates it from the .html file itself and it always overrides whatever .opf file you place in the folder so you have to keep checking and cutting and pasting your good one over the one it makes. Suffice it to say, that evolution is time consuming and frustrating.). Then I added my only two graphics—the cover and my logo.

For four days I tried to get MobiPocket Creator to build my book. Now, I didn’t sit in front of my computer uploading and re-uploading the same files over and over during that time with the expectation of one time getting a winning result. That folks, is the definition of stupid. I’m just sorta stupid for sticking with it all that time. I’d make changes to the .opf and tried different renditions; I checked and rechecked all my files, my headers, my content, my “#$!%” html. I even removed MobiPocket Creator and reinstalled it—on both the computers I own with access to the internet. One thing I did discover was that every time I took the “failed” build and removed the .ncx from the mix, the book built. I knew the problem was with the .ncx or the .opf (which references the .ncx). I went to the online forums and studied and tried to replicate individual methods of inserting files into MobiPocket Creator and overcoming the Creator’s frustrating habit of messing up my .opf. At one point I created a .zip file of Camellia Creek’s files and attempted to insert that into the My Publications folder. That didn’t work either—works for epub, but not mobi. I kept the .zip file anyway.

Finally, on the fifth day, I removed the publisher version of  MobiPocket Creator and downloaded the “Home/Family” version. The MobiPocket Creator website said it was simpler to use. Personally, I didn’t see much difference from the “use” angle, but one thing that simple little sucker did when it, too, failed to build on my first try was point out one tiny error in the spelling in the “content src” for chapter seventy-four in my .ncx. I’d spelled “seventy” “seveenty”. I fixed it and Camellia Creek build on the next try, .opf, .ncx and all.

I don’t know that the misspelling caused all those wasted hours, not to mention stress, but the results rendered after its fixing indicates that was the problem. So why didn’t the “publisher” version point it out to me when the “simpleton’s” version was so quick to do so? Maybe the publisher’s version thinks publishers should know how to spell or are such thorough proof readers there is no way they’d let a screwball thing like three “e”s in seventy get by—this in a work of 79 chapters and an epilogue (Camellia Creek is twice the length of my previous books).

Oh, and now comes the really, really good part. I start uploading to Amazon—I get to Part 5 at the “Upload Your Book” window. The little pinwheel is purring, there’s a window there that says “uploading your book, this may take a few minutes” and wahlah—the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) platform rejects it. The window says, simply, that I used software other than that approved by Amazon. I’m confused—I sent them the .prc. KDP didn’t need to build my .prc. I SENT it one already done, darn it! And fifteen months earlier the KDP platform had accepted four of my .prc books built the same way—ok, this one was built with the “simpleton’s” Creator, but what the heck.

I go to the “formatting guide” offered in the rejection window. Sure enough, .prc’s aren’t listed. I go to the Amazon “techies”. “Yes they are,” the “techies” say. Two day’s later the “techies” have it figured out—I needed to use KindleGen to build my .prc, not MobiPocket Creator.

During that two-day interim, I went back to that “zipped” file I’d fortuitously saved during my nightmare of working with the publishers version of MobiPocket Creator and uploaded it at Part 5 of the Upload Your Book window. It uploaded fine. Camellia Creek is at the Kindle Store.

Next, my pathetic adventures using KindleGen.