Novel shipped to iBooks

For reasons unknown, my previous post about the shipping of the electronic version of my novel All the Earth is Mine [display] was premature. Finally, Smashwords has confirmed that they shipped it off yesterday to Apple. So, once again, I repeat my request to US readers to let me know, in a week or so's time, whether they can find my book in their iBooks catalog (which remains invisible for an individual such as me, residing here in France). If senders include an email address, I'll be pleased to forward them a PDF version of my novel.

Novel shipping to iBooks tomorrow

Normally, the Smashwords aggregator will be shipping my novel All the Earth is Mine to iBooks tomorrow, and it'll take a week for it to appear in Apple's catalog. So, it should be displayed around the first weekend of September.

Since I live in France, where I don't have access to the US iBooks catalog, I would be happy if an American friend were to let me know if and when my novel is listed.

Electronic versions of my novel

I seem to be moving towards the completion of the adventure of having my novel All the Earth is Mine published as an electronic book. I first tackled this question on June 2 by placing the following request in the Apple discussions forum concerning the Pages word-processing software tool:

Please point me to explanations concerning the transformation of a Pages document (a novel) into ePub format for the iPad.

Even though the two elements of my naive request (Pages and iPad) were located in pure Apple territory, the few replies were wishy-washy, as if nobody knew exactly how to advise me. Most likely, there were people who did in fact know the Pages/iBooks situation perfectly well, but they refrained deliberately from trying to guide me. In any case, I had the impression (and still do) that I was setting foot in a constantly-emerging domain, where little is hard and fast yet.

Since iBooks use the open ePub format, I started to examine its technical specifications, and investigate the tools and resources that might enable me to implement an iPad version of my novel. At that stage (middle of June), I didn't yet own an iPad, but I downloaded a free tool named Adobe Digital Editions that lets you read ePub documents on your everyday computer.

For a few days, I experimented with the idea of using the iPad as a platform for genealogical documents such as They Sought the Last of Lands, but I soon discovered that things get messy when you try to display densely-structured genealogical documents on anything other than a nice big computer screen, so I abandoned that idea.

On the other hand, I soon created an acceptable ePub version of All the Earth is Mine running on the above-mentioned Adobe emulator. Mastering the ePub format turned out to be much easier than what I might have imagined. Still, this experimenting didn't bring me any closer to the underlying pragmatic question of how I might get my novel accepted by Apple as a genuine iBooks publication.

A breakthrough took place when I struck up a relationship with a much talked-about Californian aggregator (intermediary between authors and the various eBook platforms) named Smashwords, run by a friendly and helpful guy named Mark Coker. I decided to collaborate with this firm. Now, there are three basic facts that a Smashwords author needs to know:

1 — An author doesn't pay Smashwords explicitly, but the company takes a cut of actual book sales.

2 — Smashwords uses a robotic converter tool named Meatgrinder, which produces output in several formats, for Apple's iPad, Amazon's Kindle, etc.

3 — The input supplied to Smashwords by a would-be author must be presented in the form of a technically-impeccable Microsoft Word file.

At the start of of my relationship with Smashwords, the third point almost floored me. Really, for an author like me who masters the ePub format (not to mention many elegant word-processing systems), must I really get back to using that archaic gas plant called Word? I was a hair's breadth away from telling Smashwords that I thought they were joking, and that I would look for a more sophisticated aggregator. But, since I didn't wish to be thought of as snobbish or bigoted, I went along with Mark Coker's suggestion of shelling out a hundred bucks to obtain a nice new copy of Word. [That was the first time in my life I've ever paid a cent to Microsoft. Several decades ago, when I used to do freelance journalistic assignments, it was rather the marketing folk of Microsoft who invited me on a helicopter ride to a luncheon in a fabulous castle in the Parisian region. But times have changed.]

Today, I understand that, if Smashwords demands an impeccable Word document as their launch platform for publishing, it's for two reasons:

1 — Word is indeed a high-quality word-processing tool, used universally, and

2 — Smashwords produces several different electronic varieties of each book they process, which means that they require a firm starting-point.

As of today, I can read a Smashwords version of the novel on my iPad:

A Smashwords version of the novel looks fine on my Amazon Kindle:

Apparently, there's another version that works on the Sony device. So, as an author, I can't complain about the ubiquity of the Smashwords approach towards electronic publishing. Let's see, now, what happens from a marketing and sales viewpoint…

Published by an aggregator

A few weeks ago, I'd never even heard of this newfangled word "aggregator". It sounds like a good chemical name for the kind of product that thickens soups and sauces (such as potato starch, which I use constantly). Apparently, modern usage has hit upon this excellent term to designate websites that bring together, for a specific reason, data from a multiplicity of other Internet sources. For example, Apple is using this word to designate a handful of selected websites whose role consists of channeling in all kinds of budding authors who would like to see their work published as iBooks to be read on the iPad. Today, in the case of my novel All the Earth is Mine, I find myself collaborating with such an aggregator… whose name has an American sledgehammer charm:

I wrote the final version of my novel using the sturdy Pages word-processing tool… which doesn't do much, but does it well. (That's the same friendly software I use for my genealogical monographs.) I tried vainly for years years to find an Anglo-American publishing house or literary agency that would deign to read my novel. I still don't understand why these tentatives were doomed to failure (it had nothing to do with the quality of my writing, which nobody ever got around to examining), but I've noticed that there's some kind of a Berlin Wall between the Anglo-American book-publishing world and our homely French maisons d'édition (publishing houses). For example, as recently as yesterday, I was amazed and furious to discover that it's impossible for a French resident such as me to buy Apple iBooks from England or America. Once again, I don't understand why… but it surely has something to do with a book-based cultural conflict between the New World and France. In any case, in the context of such a crazy war, I have no intention of enlisting as a soldier and donning proudly a uniform, as I would surely be mowed down stupidly in the trenches by the first blast of shrapnel.

I finally decided that so-called electronic self-publishing might be the best (indeed, only) approach for getting my novel into print. Last year, for months on end, I tried to urge readers of this blog to download (free) and evaluate a PDF version of my novel. Curiously, that tentative earned me zero feedback… which simply means, I imagine, that readers of Antipodes prefer blogs to novel, which is understandable.

At the beginning of June, I posted the following question in an Apple forum dedicated to the Pages tool:

Please point me to explanations concerning the transformation
of a Pages document (a novel) into ePub format for the iPad.

There were few reactions, and even fewer useful replies. There was even a massive dose of unadulterated twaddle from kind individuals who've made it their personal mission to reply rapidly, summarily and superficially to anything and everything that appears on the forum. [Hi Peter, Chris and Tom.] I had the impression that people who write stuff using Pages don't really intend to get themselves published. On the other hand, I became aware of the existence of a community of talented individuals (mostly women), specialists in page design and typesetting, who use the sophisticated Adobe InDesign product (which I know and adore; it's the page creator's Ferrari). But that's not really my kettle of fish. I have simple novelistic words waiting to get published. I'm not faced with the challenge of designing ads or magazine pages. So, I rapidly put a personal cross on that approach. (Do English-speaking people use that metaphor about putting a cross on something, or am I using Frenglish?)

Meanwhile, I discovered that it was not at all arduous to transform manually my novel into the celebrated Epub format fit for publication by iBooks. (The adverb "manually" doesn't really mean manually. It indicates merely that, instead of calling upon a hypothetically magic conversion tool, I carried out all the nitty-gritty conversion stuff myself, based upon my understanding of the various ePub/iBooks technical specifications, protocols and constraints… which I now master ideally.)

My attempts at creation of an ePub version of my novel were highly positive. The final product exists, and it looks good when viewed either on the Adobe simulator [download] or on a real-life iPad. Besides, I offer Antipodes readers a free copy of Earth.epub. Just give me your email address.

For the moment, I'm awaiting developments in the relationship between me and my aggregator. From an aesthetic design and typesetting point of view, the present state of my novel at Smashwords is frankly catastrophic. The book looks as if it has been typeset by a low-IQ monkey or an "intelligent " robot. Naturally, I've expressed my alarm to SmashWords. And I've volunteered to help out, if necessary. Normally, SmashWords people should know more about ePub and iBooks than I do. But the major question remains: Is SmashWords prepared to correct and beautify their ugly robotic version of my novel before (and if) they propose it to Apple? Let's see what happens…

Another cover design

Friends have pointed out various small but annoying problems of interpretation (which I hadn't suspected) with the cover projects I presented in my recent post entitled Cover for All the Earth is Mine [display]. Here's another simple idea, based upon a fragment of one of the wonderful paintings of the Holy Land by David Roberts, showing Jerusalem's Turkish minaret known as the Tower of David.

On the iPad, the novel will be displayed in double-page format. So, what you see here is the cover and the title page, side by side.

Cover for All the Earth is Mine

I've transformed my novel All the Earth is Mine into the ePub format used on the iPad. For the moment, I'm awaiting the attribution of a French ISBN publisher number. Then I intend to publish my novel, in one way or another, as an electronic book. Now I need help, urgently, in the choice of a cover. Here are five models, but I'm incapable of deciding which one of them (if any) to choose. I would appreciate your reactions.

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Model #1

My geopolitical fable envisages the transformation of the modern state of Israel into a floating island, and its voyages to all the four corners of the planet. So, my first idea for a cover was a relevant space photo.


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Model #2

I decided to ask my Choranche neighbor Tineke Bot, the celebrated Dutch sculptress, to take a look at my cover challenge. To guide her in what I was seeking, I concocted the following montage à la Chagall:


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Model #3

Tineke's first proposition is rather abstract:


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Model #4

Her second proposition evokes the turmoil of this gigantic upheaval:


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Model #5

Tineke's third proposition puts faces upon my heroes Jake and Rachel:


Please tell me what you think of these five models. Maybe further propositions would be welcome...

New bed companion

After spending an evening warming my toes in front of the fireplace, I can now jump into bed with an exciting new companion.

The Kindle is the electronic device proposed by Amazon. I've started to read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. It's certainly an elegant solution for reading in bed, since the device is so light that you hardly notice it.

By coincidence, on the same day the Kindle arrived (directly from the USA, with an American power plug necessitating a European adapter), the Barnes & Noble company announced their Nook reader, which has the advantage of displaying color.

I'm aware that this new field will no doubt evolve rapidly. In deciding to purchase a Kindle, I want to get a feel for the subject, to know what it's all about. In particular, I want to learn how to transform my personal writing into an e-readable format. I was thrilled to discover that certain software tools make it easy to transform PDF files into a format that allows them to be displayed on the Kindle. So, I've started to play around with a free Macintosh tool named Calibre with the intention of producing a Kindle version of my novel All the Earth is Mine.

Complete novel now released

I have decided to release all 16 chapters of my novel entitled All the Earth is Mine. Click the following button to access my website:

This website includes a freely-accessible guestbook (still empty) for readers' comments.

All the Earth is Mine — chapter 9

Chapter 9 of my novel has now been released. Click the following button to access the novel's website:

This chapter is entitled Violence. Everybody in Jerusalem is familiar with the vast colorful market named Mahaneh Yehuda, not far from the center of the New City. Lanes between the stalls bear the Hebrew names of fruit, but there are vendors of all kinds of foodstuffs (vegetables, meat, fish and pastry products) and household wares.

On a sunny afternoon, Rachel Kahn had taken the Luria children, David and Lisa, on a bus excursion to the Red Sea, leaving their parents to wander around Jerusalem like carefree honeymooners. Alas, a Palestinian terrorist chose that moment to strike the crowded market.

All the Earth is Mine — chapter 8

Chapter 8 of my novel has now been released. Click the following button to access the novel's website:

This chapter is entitled Earth. The time has finally come for Jake's first monumental earthmoving operation in the Holy Land: the transformation of the ruins of Herod's Promontory Palace at Caesarea into an artificial floating island.

At the same time that this extraordinary event is taking place, an even more spectacular project is announced, on the Sea of Galilee... where it is alleged that Jesus once walked upon the waters.

All the Earth is Mine — chapter 7

Chapter 7 of my novel has now been released. Click the following button to access the novel's website:

This chapter is entitled Water. Besides its major operations in the earthmoving domain, the Terra company from Western Australian has been active in the development of desalination plants. In Israel, their initial project of this kind is installed to the west of Eilat, at Taba, near the frontier with Egypt on the edge of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Meanwhile, Jake's preparations are advancing at Caesarea, while Terra has received an official request from Morocco concerning their giant canal project.

All the Earth is Mine — chapter 6

Chapter 6 of my novel has now been released. Click the following button to access the novel's website:

This chapter is entitled Associates. In order to acquire supplies of petroleum gas for his forthcoming project at Caesarea, Jake sails to Gibraltar and then on to an offshore platform in Moroccan waters.

Jake is somewhat surprised to discover that Moroccan authorities are perfectly aware of the technology he is implementing in Israel, and that it interests them in the context of a vast project aimed at developing the northern region of Morocco from a maritime viewpoint.

More precisely, Morocco calls upon Terra—Jake's earthmoving company, based in Western Australia—to draw up plans for cutting a canal through the northern tip of their country, linking directly the Atlantic to the Mediterranean... eliminating the need to travel through the Strait of Gibraltar. The general idea is that such a waterway will surely boost the economy of the great mountainous arc of Northern Morocco called the Rif.

All the Earth is Mine — chapter 5

Chapter 5 of my novel has now been released (a little later than promised). Click the following button to access the novel's website:

This chapter, entitled Installation, describes preparations for Jake's project concerning the ruins of Herod's Promontory Palace at Caesarea, on the Mediterranean coastline of Israel. In this aerial photo, the partly-submerged site is located in the upper lefthand corner:

All the Earth is Mine — chapter 4

Chapter 4 of my novel has now been released. Click the following button to access the novel's website:

This chapter, entitled Moving, introduces the logistics involved in transporting technological equipment from Western Australia to Israel. Jake has decided that the ideal solution consists of sailing there on a refitted trawler named Black Swan.

Besides Israel, the reader learns that another Mediterranean nation has a role to play in Jake's future operations: Morocco.

All the Earth is Mine — chapter 3

Chapter 3 of my novel has now been released. Click the following button to access the novel's website:

This chapter is entitled Ascension. The action starts in a magnificent cove on Rottnest Island, enclosing a rusty wreck. Jake has been experimenting with an amazing technique that uses a laser knife to cut out a block of seabed rock, which can then be made buoyant by the injection of a gas mixture.

Once perfected, this method is applied to float the wreck of the Gypsy.

In Israel, learning of Jake's technology, archaeological authorities envisage an application of this method to save for posterity the ruins of an ancient seafront structure: Herod's Promontory Palace at Caesarea.

Meanwhile, the Kahn sisters have invested in a cottage in the charming Jerusalem neighborhood of Yemin Moshe. Plans are also under way to export to Israel a method for desalinating sea water developed in Western Australia (as a sideline activity) by Terra, the family enterprise of the Rose/Kahn elders.

All the Earth is Mine — chapter 2

The initial chapter of my novel ended with a picnic excursion to sunny Rottnest Island, whose coastline is studded with wrecks. In a casual conversation with his brother Aaron and their cousins Leah and Rachel Kahn, Jake Rose (as he is called) evoked the challenge of inventing technology that would make it possible to raise the hull of a small 19th-century wreck named the Gypsy, and cause it to float like a raft.

I've just released chapter 2 of All the Earth is Mine. Click the following button to access the novel's website:

This chapter is entitled Discovery, evoking encounters with faraway places. Leah, Rachel and Aaron set foot briefly in the European context of their grandparents. Then they travel to Israel and start to explore the Jewish homeland as tourists.

Meanwhile, in Western Australia, Jake has become involved in academic research in the geological domain. At a practical level, he has been able to count upon assistance and technological resources from the family business: a mining company called Terra. The theme of his work is related to the question that came up during the Rottnest picnic: Would it be possible to find technical means of increasing the buoyancy of a subaquatic mass, transforming it into an artificial raft?

Little by little, Aaron and the Kahn sisters are enchanted by their encounter with the Jewish nation, and contemplate the idea of investing in a small house in Jerusalem, enabling members of the family to become acquainted with the Holy Land. An unexpected event adds momentum to the idea that the Australians could well establish a permanent relationship with Israel: Aaron becomes attached to a young Israeli woman named Anne Levi.

After these two initial chapters of All the Earth is Mine, readers should be able to sense that the novel has something to do with Jake's technological research in Western Australia, and that future happenings are likely to unfold in Israel.

All the Earth is Mine — chapter 1

I've decided to distribute my novel All the Earth is Mine through the Internet in the form of freely-downloadable PDF files, one chapter each week. In all, there are 16 chapters, so the full distribution will take several months. You can read these files directly on your computer, using a PDF tool such as Acrobat, but I think it's preferable—more comfortable from a reading viewpoint—to print them out on A4 paper, even though this will finally result in 300 printed pages.

Today, I'm releasing chapter 1 of my novel. To obtain it, click the following button, which takes you to the novel's website:

The main action of this initial chapter, entitled Origins, takes place on a magnificent antipodean island, Rottnest (which I know quite well), off the coast of Western Australia.

Readers will meet up with the hero of the novel: a student of geology and mining technology named Jacob Rose. In choosing his family name, I was no doubt influenced by my recollections of a splendid place in Jerusalem called the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden, created with funds from a US philanthropist named William Rosenburg [1899-1966]. I liked, above all, the way in which this name might be interpreted as if it were the opening words of a prophetic declaration: Jacob rose in the midst of his brethren!

Besides Jacob's brother Aaron, we meet up with their cousins Leah and Rachel Kahn. And we hear of the recent history of the Rose and Kahn ancestors who fled to Australia from Nazi-dominated Europe and went on to become prosperous industrial leaders in the mining field.

Above all, this initial chapter of All the Earth is Mine sets the maritime tone of the entire novel, which might be described in a nutshell as a fable about sailing.

Components are good for us

Imagine a skilled cabinetmaker who has always considered that the only way of installing good furniture in a new kitchen is to build each cupboard and table from scratch.

Intrigued by new kinds of hinges and drawers available in big hardware stores, he tries to incorporate them into his constructions, but something seems to have gone wrong. His cupboard doors no longer close correctly, and his drawers get stuck, because the woodworker is incapable of correctly integrating these new elements into his old-fashioned construction procedures. Then, one day, a friend invites the cabinetmaker along to an Ikea store, enabling him to discover a revolutionary approach to the installation of kitchens.

Today, concerning my operations as a Flash website developer [links], I'm very much in the same situation as the old-fashioned cabinetmaker. Since 2001, when I started to use Macromedia Flash, I've become quite proficient in the construction, from scratch, of websites based upon this approach. Meanwhile, the Flash tool has become considerably more complex. When I attempt to patch up certain aspects of my old websites, they refuse to function correctly in the new Flash environment. So, I tend to leave them alone, in their old operational state. Fortunately, today, there's an "Ikea solution" to problems of this kind. Instead of trying to patch up one of my antiquated tailor-made website elements, I can simply replace it by an off-the-shelf Flash component.

The reason I'm writing about this technical hitch [a non-problem, thanks to the concept of components] is that I've been held up recently, through bugs of the above-mentioned kind, in my preparation of two Flash websites that should interest Antipodes readers:

— One is an interface that will make it easier to access the Antipodes archives in a user-friendly fashion.

— The other will consist of free online access to my novel All the Earth is Mine, whose 16 chapters will be released on a weekly basis.

I'll provide precise details of these two services as soon as I've got them up and running.

Earthmoving

All the Earth is Mine is a yet-unpublished technico-political fable about large-scale earthmoving activities, primarily in Israel. I wrote a first version of this novel some fifteen years ago, before leaving Paris, and I completed this new typescript six months ago. Since then, I’ve been trying to contact literary agents in the US and the UK who might be prepared to read it, but I haven’t found anybody yet. So, up until now, I’m the only person on the planet who has read my novel. What a privilege! US publishing houses inform me that the best way of finding a literary agent is to use the hundreds of names, addresses and descriptions in an annual publication known as the Literary Market Place. Unfortunately, the purchase of a paper copy of this document runs into several hundred dollars, but I’ve noticed that I can pay just twenty dollars for a one-week subscription to an Internet version of this information, which would be an ideal solution for me. So, as soon as the holiday season ends, I intend to do this. In the course of a week, I should be able to download all the names and addresses I need. And after that, I’ll start a massive snail-mail operation aimed at finding an agent who’ll accept me.

This afternoon, I finally got around to discussing an infinitely more modest earthmoving operation with a local contractor, René. I would like to remove the present embankments located at both the northern and southern ends of the house. This would provide me with flat space to build a garage, and it would also eliminate the problem of trying vainly to keep down the weeds that grow on these steep embankments, close to the house. At times in the past, I’ve ventured onto these embankments with a hand-held weed cutter, but it’s a risky operation, to be avoided. At one stage, I used a ladder propped up against the embankments to plant all kinds of shrubs, but few of them survived. I have the impression that Mother Nature thinks you're joking when you try to grow plants on a steep slope. She looks down at me with a cynical smile and says: "Ok, my fine fellow. If you show me that you can lie down at such a spot, I'll do my best to make things grow there. But, if you're not able to lie down there, then plants won't be able to grow there either." In other words, you can't fool plants. They know the meaning of top and bottom, up and down. They know just as much about gravity as you and me and Einstein.

It’s all very well to simply let the grass and weeds grow wildly on these embankments, but this can turn into a fire hazard in summer. So, the ideal solution would consist of removing a lot of earth, starting well behind the house, in order to create more gentler slopes.

If I decide to accept René’s offer (which I should receive within the next few days), I’ll then need to demolish two buildings that I put up, several years ago, with my own hands, both of which would be in the way of the planned earthmoving operations: my wood shed and my hen house (see photos). I would rebuild a more sturdy wood shed alongside my future garage.

As for the hen house, I might be able to drag it further away from the house, and set it up once again... in which case I would use it to house creatures such as geese and peacocks. As part of my anti-cholesterol measures, I've given up eating eggs, and there's little sense in raising my own chooks (Aussie word for hens) for meat in a region such as this, where it's so simple to buy top-quality poultry.

René used a wheel device to measure distances enabling us to calculate the approximate volume of earth that needs to be moved. We reached a figure of about 550 cubic meters. Well, when you think about it, that doesn’t sound like a gigantic quantity of earth. It’s merely a square block, ten meters along each side, rising to a height of five and a half meters. Nevertheless, the visual consequences of scraping up that volume of earth on one side of the house, and depositing it on the other, are not likely to go unnoticed.

And what am I going to do with all that earth? People who live on the slopes of a mountain, as I do, have the wonderful possibility of increasing almost magically the area of flat land around their house... which is something unthinkable when you occupy a block of flat land with roads or neighbors on each side. We slope-dwellers simply use a common-sense method that was devised, at the dawn of agriculture, by people who wished to grow crops on hillsides. They would gouge out the earth and rocks so as to create a horizontal ledge spiraling around the slopes. And the gouged-out material would be used to form the outer rim of the newly-created flat area. In the nearby vineyards of Tain-l’Hermitage on the Rhône, there are splendid examples of this method. What this means, for me at Gamone, is that the 550 cubic meters of earth and rocks that René will gouge out of the hill behind the house will be simply dumped a few meters further on, in the direction of Gamone Creek, thereby augmenting, cubic meter by cubic meter, the area of what might be termed my “front yard”.

I get a tremendous thrill out of calling upon a splendid earthmover such as René (who once lived meagerly with his parents and brothers in the original house at Gamone, long before I arrived here) to reshape the surroundings... as he has already done, timidly, on two separate occasions. To my mind, René possesses the same kind of pioneering skills, aided by his heavy equipment, that enabled our predecessors to build (with a little help from a friend named Nature) a magnificent place such as Gamone.