There is no perfect

Wall of Navajo rugs, photo by lesliek, used with attribution, cc license

There is a story about Navajo (Dine) weavers: that they deliberately introduce an error in the weave, so as not to risk perfection. I did a little poking around the internet, but wasn't able to determine if this is a true cultural practice, or simply an apocryphal story. Regardless, it's an appealing idea, especially for someone as perfectionistic and self-critical as I am.

I pride myself on my careful eBook formatting. In fact, I even put together an illustrated how-to guide and have taught workshops at several SF&F conventions on eBook formatting, so perhaps I could be forgiven for thinking I was, while not an expert, at least competent. Over the past two years, I have devised and refined a workflow that creates both a well formed print version and a compliant eBook in both mobi and epub formats.

Or so I thought.

I had been flummoxed by returns on Amazon for my latest book, FUTURE TENSE. I posted about it on Google plus and I was extremely lucky that one of the readers took the time to leave a comment:  the mobi file was nearly unreadable on his Kindle because it cut off several letters on the right hand margins. He was able to read the book on his phone, and enjoyed the story, but had been frustrated by the formatting problem.

OY!

Believe me when I tell you I had tested the mobi file on multiple devices and on every reading app amazon has, including:

1st gen Kindle
Kindle fire
Kindle apps on an android tablet, PC,  and an iPod touch
all Kindle devices shown on the Kindle previewer (Kindle paperwhite, Kindle DX, Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Fire HDX, Kindle Fire HDX 8.9", Kindle for iPad, Kindle for iPhone)


(In fact, when I was working on the eBooks, I had more problems with the epub version, and the inability to get centered elements to center properly. Dealing with epubs is made more difficult by the lack of a good emulator for the Nook. But I am nothing if not stubborn, and was able to nail down that issue.)

Guess what physical device I didn't have? The Kindle keyboard.
Guess what device isn't emulated on the Kindle previewer? The Kindle keyboard.
Guess which device the gentleman who left the comment had? Yup. The Kindle keyboard.

Turns out, there's one line in my very simple css (cascading style sheet) that this particular device doesn't like. It's a setting for page width, that in the epub, ensures that centered elements are actually centered. I actually use a very simple stylesheet that I had thought I'd tested fully and adequately. I was wrong.

Here's the offending css:

 .body {
display: block;
width: 100%;
line-height: 1.2;
padding: 0;}

Taking out the width statement fixed the problem.

I was able to have a patient colleague test file after file until I found that one little width command. She celebrated with me when I sent her a clean, fully readable file.

My take home messages: 

• No matter how careful you are, it's nearly impossible to create an error-free product
• Testing on emulators is a first step, but not the only step. Until there are consistent standards across all eReaders, testing on as many physical readers as possible is the only solution
• Do your best and don't beat yourself up for mistakes, but correct them as soon as you are aware of them
• As soon as you think you've got a workflow that works, something in the industry will change
• Try to keep a sense of humor

(A final note: If any of you purchased the Kindle version of FUTURE TENSE in the past few weeks and haven't been notified by Amazon, please go to your 'manage my kindle' dashboard and update the file. I've corrected the error and the new version is live.)

After the Honeymoon is Over

It's been a little more than a year and a half since I took the plunge and bought my kindle.  Since then, I've read many dozens of books on the device, read others on my ipod touch via the kindle app, ibooks, and stanza.  Still other books I've read on my laptop.  Do I like the convenience of ebooks?  Sure.  It's especially wonderful for a book lover like me (and also as someone with no ability to wait!) to hear about something on NPRs "Fresh Air" and buy it *right now!!!* for my reading pleasure.

Another reason to embrace the ebook is space and portability.  My bookshelves are groaning.  There are 4 booklovers in this household--it's not hard to see the problem.

But, here is my true confession.  I vastly prefer paper books.

I am no luddite.  Hell, I have more gadgets and gizmos that all require different chargers and operating systems than the average bear. (Hmm--interesting visual image--an average bear with cell phone, ipod, kindle, tablet,GPS, and laptop. . . )  Moreover, I tend to be among the early adopters of technology. 

For the past month or so, I've been trying to work out what my resistence to ebooks is all about.  After all, I readily embraced digital music.  Now I look at the shelf space taken up by my CD collection and shake my head.  All that music and more can happy fit on my ipod.  And I can listen to the music far more easily, with more portability, and with sufficient sound quality to match the CD/stereo experience.  I've even happily watched episodes of favorite shows and movies on my ipod, streamed courtesy of netflix, without feeling nostalgic for video's, DVD's or good old network TV.

So why not books?

Part of the problem may be that the delivery of music and videos via handheld/portable device is really not that different to the end user whether the user is experiencing it through digital means or a more tangible method. The content on CDs, videos, and DVDs have all needed to be delivered to the consumer through some sort of translation device.  Hell, even a record needed a record player.

But a book can be utilized as is, without any added delivery device.  The delivery device is built into the item. 

An ebook is a fundamentally different way to experience a book in a way that an ipod is not fundamentally different in delivering music or video. Yes, I can absorb the content of a book in electronic form, using any number of delivery devices.  Indeed, I have over the past 18 months.  The convenience is unmistakable.  But the experience is nowhere as satisfying or pleasurable to me as holding a paper book in my hands and being able to kinesthetically flip through its pages.

I relate differently to the same book in ebook versus paper book form.

Perhaps I have reached my generational wall.  Perhaps if I had grown up with equating books with reading devices I would have a different experience.  Yet, when I think back, I have been interacting with computers since my early teens, learning to program in BASIC in the 1970s on a mainframe.  Using punchcards.   I am comfortable writing with a computer and follow dozens of blogs daily using an RSS reader, so it's not a problem of fear of device.

No, it is essentially a problem of relationship.  Books and I decided that we should see other people.  And I admit, it was exciting to flirt with kindle and ipod, but really, all I want to do next Saturday night is curl up on the sofa with a good book.  Maybe share a bottle of wine, some soft music, candlelight.

It's a date.

The Kindle--not just for reading books

Last month I bought the first generation Kindle. I knew I would enjoy the ability to have a personal library at hand at any given time, and that is definitely true. After finishing several ebooks, both fiction and non-fiction, I can definitely say that for me, content is king. Not that format isn't part of the deal, it is, but if I can get books easily and store them simply and without killing trees or using up all the shelf space in my house, that's a good thing.

Does it mean I'll stop buying and reading physical books? Not a chance. The local library and our indie bookstore are still some of my favorite places to be.

Now, the kindle is more than just a way to read books. I discovered how easy it is to use the kindle to annotate a file for critique yesterday. I will be participating in an advanced critique workshop for SF&F writers that begins sunday evening. In advance of sunday's first session, we are expected to read and comment on the synopses/pitch and first chapters from our classmates' 5 novels in progress. Typically I would do that either on my computer or through printing out the texts.

The former is hard on my eyes. The latter, expensive and hard on trees. I also knew I would have 4 dedicated hours to read and comment, trapped in a car repair purgatory, waiting for my husband's new hybrid truck to be fixed. (The perils of being an early adopter.) So I paid Amazon the princely sum of 10 cents and emailed 5 sets of documents to my kindle. Within 30 seconds, they arrived, formatted for the device and off I went.

The kindle isn't designed for annotating files, but it can be used that way. It's easy (though not completely efficient) to highlight and comment on text, using a combination of the scroll wheel and the small keyboard. I wouldn't want to write the great american novel this way, but adding comments and questions worked quite well. And with the wireless radio off, the battery life on the kindle far outstrips what my laptop can do. One more bonus--I'm less likely to be distracted by all the goodies available on my computer or on the web when I'm working from the kindle.

Sure it has the experimental browser and sure I can check email, but it's just inconvenient enough that I tend to not do it. When it comes to writing discipline, this is a *good* thing. (Who knew, the kindle as an efficiency device.)

When I got home from the car dealer (sans hybrid truck, as it needed to stay for emergency surgery), I connected the usb cable to my computer, copied over the txt file with all my annotations, and I'm ready to discuss the documents on sunday night.

I still love books, but the kindle is cool

After lusting after an e-reader since holding an early sony version a few years ago, I just bought a kindle. It was only partly an impulse purchase. Even though I'm a tech-nerd and love gadgets of almost all variety, I couldn't justify spending nearly $400. for a book reading device. But I am finding myself reading more and more content from my computer screen and it's an enormous strain on my eyes.

When I was editing "MindBlind" and "The House of Many Doors" this summer, I ended up lugging around huge binders full of paper copy. Heavy, awkward, and tree-killing. Being able to have the manuscripts in an easily readable electronic form would have been a god-send.

But still, I held out. I have a laptop, a tablet pc, and a palm. Did I really need *another* gadget? After all, I can read ebooks on the palm, albeit with a small screen that has the same transreflective problems as my computers.

But then the kindle 2 came out. And many of my fellow early gadget adopters were selling their kindle 1's to finance their tech habits. I picked up a kindle 1 on ebay this week.

I just read my first book all the way through on the device.

As promised, the look of the text on the screen is just like text on a page. Page turning did take some getting used to. It's not easy to flip through pages, other than one page at a time (though you can flip sections of pages and use the goto function) and the nature of the e-ink is that there is a brief 'flash' on the screen when the page turns. There is also a noticeable time lag between pressing the turn page button and the time the new page is displayed. In reading a paper book, you scan across 2 pages before needing to change the page. Here, you must actively turn pages (not scroll) at the bottom of every page.

These are not deal breakers, but the experience of ebook reading is a little different than reading a physical book.

I still got lost in the story and its characters.* The magic is in the content, not the media.

I'm heading out of town at the end of the week and I can take dozens of books with me in the space of a trade paperback sized package.

That's pretty cool.

Happy reading!

*The book I bought to read on my Kindle was Nalini Singh's "Angels' Blood." I enjoyed it tremendously, even without the new book smell or the feel of pages under my fingers.