All posts by David Kudler

Inside the Box: The Anatomy of an Ebook

Over the next few posts, I’ll be showing you how ebooks are coded and formatted. We’ll look at the anatomy of an ebook, and what makes it tick.

You’ve heard me call an ebook a website in a box. This time we’re going to talk about what’s inside the box.

First thing’s first: let me share an ebook with you. It’s the ePub file for a short story of mine called White Robes.

You’re welcome to read it, obviously, but for the purposes of this post (and the next two), we’re going to be opening up the box and dissecting the ebook.

This is the actual production file that I’ve uploaded to Amazon, by the way — it includes all of the coding and formatting that I typically include in creating an ebook. It will be the model that I’ll be using over the next few posts in discussing an ebook’s innards.

Continue reading Inside the Box: The Anatomy of an Ebook

Stillpoint Author News: An Interview, A Preview, and Appearances

Stillpoint Digital Press authors are keeping very busy! In addition to multiple appearances, we’ve got news to share about a great interview, a chance to vote in a red-carpet award ceremony, and a sneak preview from a much-anticipated book! Continue reading Stillpoint Author News: An Interview, A Preview, and Appearances

Stillpoint/Prometheus Authors at Arisia!

New England fans of speculative fiction, take note! Stillpoint/Prometheus authors Heather Albano and Kenneth Schneyer are appearing this weekend at Boston’s Arisia 2017 conference, “New England’s largest, most diverse sci-fi and fantasy convention”!

Keeping Time Kickstarter - Heather AlbanoHeather Albano, game writer and author of the recently published time-travel adventure Timepiece, will speak on three panels:

She’ll also be signing copies of Timepiece at the Dealer Room table of Broad Universe, an organization dedicated to promoting, encouraging, honoring, and celebrating women writers and editors in science fiction, fantasy, horror and other speculative genres. Go say hi, and pick up your signed copy!

CHECK OUT HEATHER’S SCHEDULE ON HER BLOG

 

Kenneth Schneyer, award-winning short writer and author of the collection The Law & the Heart, will be appearing no less than five times:

CHECK OUT HEATHER’S SCHEDULE ON HER BLOG

Check them both out—though you’ll have to choose this evening! In addition to being wonderful writers, they’re both wonderful speakers about their craft.

 

About Heather Albano and Kenneth Schneyer

Timepiece - now availableHeather Albano is a storyteller, history geek, and lover of both time-travel tropes and re-imaginings of older stories. You most likely know her from her game design work (which most recently included A Study In Steampunk, produced by Choice of Games, and contributions to TimeWatch and The Dracula Dossier, both published by Pelgrane Press)—but she writes non-interactive fiction too. Like the Keeping Time trilogy. Read more at heatheralbano.com

Stillpoint/Prometheus: Law and the Heart coverKenneth Schneyer forgot he wanted to be a writer for 25 years, until he was ambushed by a gang of plot bunnies in 2006. Since then, he has sold stories to many science fiction and fantasy magazines and anthologies, several of which can be found on Amazon. His novella “Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer” has been nominated for a 2014 Nebula Award and a Theodore Sturgeon Award for best short science fiction.

Ken attended the Clarion Writers Workshop at UCSD in 2009, and joined the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop in 2010. Mostly he writes science fiction and fantasy, but he’s been known to write crime stories, poetry, and anything else that strikes his fancy.
He was a theater major at Wesleyan and briefly a semiprofessional actor before attending law school at the University of Michigan. He teaches legal studies and humanities at Johnson & Wales University, and has published numerous articles on the constitutive rhetoric of legal texts.
Born in Detroit, he now lives in Rhode Island with one singer, one dancer, one actor, and something striped and fanged that he sometimes glimpses out of the corner of his eye. He’s interested in astronomy, history, politics, philosophy, presidential trivia, brain science, and practically everything else. He cooks better than most people you know.

About Arisia

ArisiaArisia 2017 is a volunteer-run convention that covers all aspects of science fiction and fantasy literature and media.

It is taking place this weekend, January 13–16, at Boston’s Westin Boston Waterfront.

MORE INFORMATION

Read the exciting prologue to Timepiece!

Timepiece — Read the Exciting Prologue

It’s June 18, 1815, Waterloo, Belgium, and if Wellington’s beleaguered British army doesn’t get help soon, all will be lost. The indomitable Duke of Wellington sends for reinforcements…

And the aid that comes is not General Blücher’s Prussian forces. Rather, the rescuers of the Empire are a nightmare regiment dreamed up by a mad Genovese scientist.

Read the exciting prologue to Heather Albano’s Timepiece: A Steampunk Time-Travel Adventure — the first volume in the Keeping Time trilogy!

READ NOW

 

Keeping Time
About Keeping Time

You only THINK you know
what happened at Waterloo.

The real story involved more monsters.
And a lot more time travel.

“Waterloo and time travel are made for each other and Heather Albano has done a wonderful job of giving us a delightful cast of characters, tasked with stitching together the proper nineteenth century while fending off several monstrous alternatives. Propulsive adventure with historical insight.” – Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars and 2312

Keeping Time: A Steampunk Time Travel Adventure Trilogy by Heather Albano

It’s 1815, and Wellington’s badly-outnumbered army stares across the field of Waterloo at Napoleon’s forces. Desperate to hold until reinforcements arrive, Wellington calls upon a race of monsters created by a mad Genevese scientist 25 years before.

It’s 1815, and a discontented young lady sitting in a rose garden receives a mysterious gift: a pocket watch that, when opened, displays scenes from all eras of history. Past…and future.

It’s 1885, and a small band of resistance fighters are resorting to increasingly extreme methods in their efforts to overthrow a steampunk Empire whose clockwork gears are slick with its subjects’ blood.

Are these events connected?

Oh, come now. That would be telling.

Timepiece Now Available

Timepiece - now availableTimepiece, the first volume in Heather Albano’s exciting steampunk time-travel adventure trilogy Keeping Time, is now available from Stillpoint Digital Press.

Timepiece is a steampunk time travel adventure about a girl, a pocket watch, Frankenstein’s monster, the Battle of Waterloo, and giant clockwork robots taking over London.
Science fiction master Kim Stanley Robinson called it “propulsive adventure with historical insight.” Continue reading Timepiece Now Available

Following Bliss: Joseph Campbell and Jackie

A current movie reminded me of a publishing story that I’d love to share with you.

For once, this isn’t about independent publishing: it’s about a big publisher struggling to find the right cover design.

Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell copyright © 2011 Joseph Campbell Foundation (JCF.org)

In 1988, Joseph Campbell had just died, but the series of television interviews that he did with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, became an enormous hit—the highest rated program PBS has ever aired, to this day. It was this series that introduced most of the non-academic world to Campbell and made a household phrase from his dictum, “Follow your bliss.” Continue reading Following Bliss: Joseph Campbell and Jackie

Wow! Keeping Time Kickstarter Funds 330%!

Stillpoint Digital Press’s Kickstarter campaign to complete Heather Albano’s steampunk time-travel adventure trilogy Keeping Time finished on December 20 with $3,325 in backing from 91 backers.

This enthusiastic response was over three times the amount Stillpoint and Albano’s goal.

Publisher David Kudler sent this message to the backers:

Thank you!
Thank you!

 We crossed the finish line at 330% of our minimum goal.

Thanks to all of our backers — not only for supporting this project, which was a wonderful act of giving (that we look forward to rewarding!), but for sharing it with your friends.

We’ll be in touch in the coming days to get information so that we can send you your rewards. If you have any thoughts or questions, please do comment here.

Happy solstice, and happy holidays!

David Kudler & Heather Albano

PS If you missed out, worry not! You can still pre-order your copies of all three books at StillpointDigitalPress.com/Keeping-Time

About Keeping Time

You only THINK you know
what happened at Waterloo.

The real story involved more monsters.
And a lot more time travel.

“Waterloo and time travel are made for each other and Heather Albano has done a wonderful job of giving us a delightful cast of characters, tasked with stitching together the proper nineteenth century while fending off several monstrous alternatives. Propulsive adventure with historical insight.” – Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars and 2312

Keeping Time: A Steampunk Time Travel Adventure Trilogy by Heather Albano

It’s 1815, and Wellington’s badly-outnumbered army stares across the field of Waterloo at Napoleon’s forces. Desperate to hold until reinforcements arrive, Wellington calls upon a race of monsters created by a mad Genevese scientist 25 years before.

It’s 1815, and a discontented young lady sitting in a rose garden receives a mysterious gift: a pocket watch that, when opened, displays scenes from all eras of history. Past…and future.

It’s 1885, and a small band of resistance fighters are resorting to increasingly extreme methods in their efforts to overthrow a steampunk Empire whose clockwork gears are slick with its subjects’ blood.

Are these events connected?

Oh, come now. That would be telling.

About Heather Albano

Keeping Time Kickstarter - Heather AlbanoHeather Albano is a storyteller, history geek, and lover of both time-travel tropes and re-imaginings of older stories. You most likely know her from her game design work (which most recently included A Study In Steampunk, produced by Choice of Games, and contributions to TimeWatch and The Dracula Dossier, both published by Pelgrane Press)—but she writes non-interactive fiction too. Like the Keeping Time trilogy.

 

Kenneth Schneyer on Timepiece: Savor every bite

Foreword to Timepiece by Heather Albano

Kenneth Schneyer

We asked author Kenneth Schneyer to write a foreword to Heather Albano‘s forthcoming time-travel adventure novel Timepiece, which comes out January 3, 2017. What he wrote was so delightful, we thought we’d share it ahead of time!

Keeping Time Kickstarter - A Time Travel Trilogy by Heather Albano Support Keeping Time Kickstarter!

Of course time travel represents an inversion of the way we experience the world. The arrow of entropy is reversed.  People gain knowledge of the consequences of their actions before they take them.  In this, it resembles both the prophecy story and the flashback: more than one author has imagined Tiresias and Cassandra as time travelers. Continue reading Kenneth Schneyer on Timepiece: Savor every bite

Stillpoint launches Keeping Time Kickstarter

Stillpoint Digital Press has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help complete Heather Albano’s exciting Keeping Time trilogy of steampunk time-travel adventure novels.

Support Risuko on Kickstarter!Running until December 20, the Keeping Time Kickstarter campaign will underwrite the publication of new editions of the first two novels in the series, Timepiece and Timekeeper. Stillpoint plans to release these titles in 2017 in both ebook and print editions. In addition,  January, 2018 will see the release of the previously unpublished  conclusion of the series, Timebound.

Rewards for backing the campaign range from copies of the ebooks to copies of the paperback edition or the Kickstarter-exclusive hardcover edition — or even getting to name a character in the final book.

Timepiece - final cover Timekeeper - no figures Timebound - no figures

Praise for the Keeping Time series

Continue reading Stillpoint launches Keeping Time Kickstarter

The Convertible Cloud: Ebook Conversion Online

This is the next in my on-going series of post on ebook creation; it focusses, obviously, on ebook conversion online. It was originally posted over at Joel Friedlander’s wonderful site for indie publishers, TheBookDesigner.com

The Convertible Cloud: Ebook Conversion Online

Previously, I’ve compared some of the computer apps that you can use to convert your manuscript into an ebook.

This month I’ll talk about online conversion tools — all of the ones I’m going to discuss are attached to the retailers and distributors that you are going to be interested in.

 

Eye of the Hurricane: Top Ebook Retailers

 

Let’s start with the most popular retailers and their conversion tools (or lack thereof).

 

Once again, I’m assuming that you’re in the US — which isn’t a given, I know. (Most of this information is true for non-US publishers as well.) Also, I’m defining “manuscript” as synonymous with “Microsoft Word document” (either .doc or .docx), since that’s the most common file format for authors to work with, and that’s the format I used in comparing the desktop conversion tools.

 

As before, these are the major retailers you will probably be looking at:

Continue reading The Convertible Cloud: Ebook Conversion Online