The Beechworth Bakery Bears – an e-book progression

For a long time, now, I’ve been nagging at myself to do something to fix the Bears.

What has been nagging at me is that I haven’t been able to turn them into a generally accepted/acceptable digital copy. I’ll explain.

Without getting technical (which is a place where I trip over my own feet) I haven’t been able (to now) to create a digital version that kept the images where they should be, and the text where it should be.

The Kindle process of creating a pictures book works well – to a degree. It allows, for example, an arrangement whereby a 2-page spread is achieved (picture on one page, text on the other page, both pages visible at the same time, just like opening up a book.

My biggest concern with this is that the format is only able to be read on a Kindle Reader, and it is rigid (fixed) format. A digital edition is supposed to have reflowable and resizeable text, which the Kindle Kids edition does not. ANnexample, below:

^{Kindle Bears ‘spread’ 23/07/2021}

I think now that I have achieved a reasonable digital version in the industry standard (e-pub) format. It passes the quality tests and the images stay where they should. The text is reflowable. All good.

What I don’t like about it is that the image and its associated text don’t appear on the same page. Only one click of seperation, but still!

Looks like this:

^{E-pub Bears text page 23/07/2021}

^{E-pub Bears image page 23/07/2021}

Why bother? Good question.

There are advantages to an e-pub edition. For instance, popping in a Table of Contents and links, being able to distribute ‘wide’ to a larg range of retailers and not just Amazon/Kindle. Libraries generally don’t accept Kindle versions.

Also, though, I just want to master the best ways of delivering an image-heavy book in the edition and version that I choose. It is about control, I think.

Anyway, that’s today’s news. I’ll fiddle a little more, I daresay and then perhaps list it at Smashwords and Draft2Digital for wide distribution.

Just between you and I (and no-one else, please) I prefer a book.

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