Pigs, Gourds, and Wikis

Cross-platform multiple indents in ebooks

2012-02-08T19:39:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I worry that I don't do enough real world work to know what the actual problems that ebook production people face. So when someone poses an interesting question on #eprdctn, I like to take a look.

Today, @ebookartisans was trying to get multiple indents to work on old Kindle, new Kindle, ADE, NOOK, and iBooks from a single EPUB file (obviously KindleGenned into a mobi for Kindles). She was using a combination of code from Joshua Tallent and myself. It turns out my code only works on first level indents on Kindle. Unfortunately, Rick Gordon (another #eprdctn regular) reports that the NOOK won't look at any code that comes after a media query, and so she was having trouble getting NOOK to do what she wanted.

Does this give you flashbacks of hacks for hiding CSS from IE? Well, it's the same show, so many years later. So, if you remember, you're getting old like me.

Thankfully, we have somewhat better tools this time around, in the form of media queries, which I started explaining a few weeks ago.

The problem with indents is that Kindle has some built-in funky behavior. So, if you were setting up the code just for old Kindle (e.g., not Fire) you might use the following:

<style type="text/css" media="amzn-mobi">

.level1 {text-align:left; text-indent: -30px; }

.level2 {text-align: left; text-indent: -60px; }

.level3 {text-align: left; text-indent: -90px; }

</style>

You'd also have to add extra spaces in front of each level2 and level3 (and successive levels) to give a left margin to the first line. This is Joshua Tallent's hack (actually he uses  , but @ebookartisans says that doesn't work on NOOK):

<p class="level3"><span class="spaces">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>•&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The mean aunt had her own traumatic childhood, deserving of treatment in a Roald Dahl novel.</p>

Though I salute Joshua's ingenuity, I admit I hate the spaces, and would only use such a hack in extreme need. Instead, I'd advise against using multiple indents. But in case the need arises, we'll forge on!

Since NOOK completely ignores the "not amzn-mobi" media query and any CSS that follows it, the trick is to put the NOOK (and other ereader code) in a stylesheet without a media query, and before the aforementioned old Kindle stylesheet. I'll also slip in some code that hides the extra spaces everywhere except in old Kindle.

<style type="text/css">

.level1 {margin:0 0 0 2em; text-indent: -2em;}

.level2 {margin:0 0 0 4em; text-indent: -2em;}

.level3 {margin:0 0 0 6em; text-indent: -2em;}

.spaces {display:none}



</style>

<style type="text/css" media="amzn-mobi">

.level1 {text-align:left; text-indent: -30px; }

.level2 {text-align: left; text-indent: -60px; }

.level3 {text-align: left; text-indent: -90px; }

.spaces {display:inline}

</style>

Here's where you have to keep track of CSS inheritance rules. Remember that later CSS overrides earlier CSS as long as it has equal importance. So, the text-indent in old Kindle will override the earlier CSS. That's what we want for text-indent but not for margin-left. So, just add in margin-left: 0; for each style in the Kindle stylesheet:

<style type="text/css">

.level1 {margin:0 0 0 2em; text-indent: -2em;}

.level2 {margin:0 0 0 4em; text-indent: -2em;}

.level3 {margin:0 0 0 6em; text-indent: -2em;}

.spaces {display:none}</style>

<style type="text/css" media="amzn-mobi">

.level1 {margin-left:0;text-align:left; text-indent: -30px; }

.level2 {margin-left:0;text-align: left; text-indent: -60px; }

.level3 {margin-left:0;text-align: left; text-indent: -90px; }

.spaces {display:inline}

</style>

That code works in old Kindle, Kindle Fire, NOOK, ADE, and iBooks:

It doesn't take a sharp eye to see that the words in the first line don't quite line up with the second and subsequent ones, AND differ from ereader to ereader. There is no tab in EPUB (or HTML), and each ereader seems to measure spaces its own way. If you want the lines perfectly aligned, you'll have to use a regular old list. It looks beautiful as long as you don't need to control what the bullet character looks like, as old Kindle will only give you a bullet:

Did someone say "EPUB in the Wild"?

Here are both the EPUB file as well as the Mobi file that I generated from it with Kindle Previewer 3.

Bookle, an EPUB reader for Mac

2012-02-07T12:28:00.000-05:00

TidBITS and Peter Lewis have teamed up to fill an aching void in ebookland: an EPUB reader for the Mac—not the iPad, but the Mac. It's called Bookle, and it's really nice. You drag your DRM-free EPUB files to the Dock icon to load them into Bookle, and then start reading. Navigation is particularly fine with a trackpad, where you can swipe from chapter to chapter, and then scroll up and down for the contents of each.

I think what I love so much about the swiping is that it is almost like leafing through a print book. It feels right.

I can see Bookle being particularly helpful for proofreading ebooks before they're published since it's based on the same WebKit that iBooks is. The only significant differences I found between Bookle's representation of my books and iBooks' was that Bookle doesn't shrink images to fit the viewport, like iBooks does. That said, I haven't done enough tests to illustrate that point conclusively, but I have noticed it with covers, for example.

It doesn't do Fixed Layout (at least not properly), and it doesn't have Search, and you can't write notes or add Bookmarks, but given the fact that Apple may release their own desktop ereader app at any moment, I was impressed that they did all they could. You can vote for your preferred additions on Bookle UserVoice Forum.

Spanish Publisher Guild Misleads on Ebook Piracy

2012-02-07T11:44:00.000-05:00

Nota: Se puede encontrar una traducción al castellano de este artículo en Canal PDA.

Update: The Spanish Publisher Guild corrected their report this morning.

It was not my intention to find errors in the Spanish Publishers' Guild recent report on reading practices in Spain during the #edigital chat this morning (held Tuesdays, 16h CET, 11am EST, 7am PT). But there on the front page was this assertion:

“73% of the ebooks read were downloaded or downloaded for free from the Internet, only 36.9% of those polled said they had payed to download an ebook.”

So, I dug inside and found this, worded very similarly:

This one says, “One significant datapoint is the way in which digital readers obtain their electronic books (ebooks). 73.1% of the books were downloaded or downloaded for free from the internet; 37.3% got them from family members or friends, via usb, cd or mail; and another 36.9% downloaded them or downloaded them from the Internet by paying for them.”

The first thing I noticed was that 73.1% + 37.3% + 36.9% does not equal 100%. Something's not right.

So I asked the Guild where the numbers came from, and they said the question asked was:

“We asked “How do you obtain the books that you read in your electronic book [sic, perhaps they meant reader?]' From there we got the reported results

In other words, 73% of the ebooks read in Spain were not downloaded for free. That's a completely erroneous and faulty conclusion, stated twice in their report.

Instead, the truth is this: 73.1% of those polled said they had downloaded ebooks for free, 37.3% reported they had gotten ebooks from a family member or friend, and 36.9% had purchased ebooks for download. We don't know if other people polled obtained their books by other means.

As Ignacio Lirio pointed out, there's a big difference:

“73% declare they've eaten chicken <--> Chicken is 73% of the diet of the people”

Frankly, I'm surprised the number is not higher. Who, among ebook readers, has not downloaded a book for free? Gutenberg has 38,000 of them. I've certainly downloaded several myself.

I find this manipulation of data really unconscionable and asked the Guild to correct their report:

“I believe you have the duty to correct the erroneous conclusions reached on the cover of your report”

To date, I have had no response. I also asked for a comment for this article, but none arrived.

And why does the Spanish Publishers Guild want you to think that Spain is teeming with ebook pirates? I honestly don't know. Your thoughts welcome.

Update:

The FGEE fixed their report this morning, with nary a tweet. Nor did they rename the link or the document. I found out from someone who tweeted a French report about this post.

So, now that we can look at the numbers, what do they tell us about the way people in Spain get books, both print and electronic?

First, lets talk about the already familiar numbers: 73% of responders have downloaded books for free from Internet, 37% have gotten them from friends and relatives, and 37% have bought them. Since people obviously get books from various sources, they could check multiple answers, and thus the numbers don't add up to 100%.

And then we see something very interesting: 37% of ebook readers buy electronic books compared with 43% of those polled who said they had bought non-textbook print books. Those numbers are not that different. If we don't assume that 57% of the non print book buyers are thieves, why would we assume that of the non-ebook buyers?

And then look at this. 28.5% of those polled visited a library. (This is very low compared with the US, where the number is about 75%.). When you look at young people between 14 and 24, the number climbs to 60% who go to the library, for free! The poll does not explain how many people borrow books from their friends, but I suspect it's also a sizable amount.

Like Mark Twain said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

A Range of EPUB Tools, more thoughts on OpenOffice and Writer2ePub for EPUB

2012-02-03T14:14:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I posted a quick how-to on how to create an EPUB file out of a Word (or Word type) document using OpenOffice and the Writer2ePub extension.

There were a number of comments about why I didn't explain other, more powerful tools, and also others that questioned even using OpenOffice.

And it made me think a lot about the range of tools available and how best to talk about them. Some EPUB tools are very costly—there are turnkey automated systems in the hundreds of thousands of dollars—and some, like OpenOffice are free. Similarly, the power, flexibility and number of features changes drastically from one end of the spectrum to the other, not always in a direct correlation to price.

I am a long-time InDesign user. I use it for my work and consider it an essential part of my tool chest. I had PageMaker so ingrained in my fingers that after a long hiatus (during which I was a happy FrameMaker user) when I returned to InDesign I automatically pressed Command-D to place an image, even though that was not the command in Frame and I hadn't used PageMaker for years. So, it's completely natural for me to think about InDesign and include it in my workflow.

But my profile (computer book author and publisher) may not match that of each of my readers. Many people who are creating ebooks today are not interested in print, which is InDesign's forte. And they're not interested in InDesign's price, which is around $700.

Do I recommend using OpenOffice to create ebooks that you're going to sell? I don't. It would be a little bit like trying to sell spiralbound copies of a print book straight off of your home printer. You might be able to eke out a decent looking thing in OpenOffice, but you'll need to do a lot more than I explained in my post yesterday. Which probably begs the question: Can you create a professionally designed ebook without touching the code? Again, I don't think so.

But maybe you don't need a professionally designed ebook. Maybe you want to “rip” a quick EPUB out of a Word file to bring with you on your phone. Maybe you want to share your growing manuscript with a friend. There are plenty of situations where OpenOffice + Writer2ePub might be just what you need.

And it's important to know what tools are out there, especially if they're free. One of the brilliant things about ebooks and independent and self-publishing is that it's open to all. I would hate people to think that they had to buy a $700 program before they could create an ebook.

There are more tools that I want to talk about. Pages, Sigil, Calibre, BBEdit, Smashwords' Meatgrinder, KindleGen maybe even iBooks Author—are there others you depend on? Each one has strengths and weaknesses, and each might be the best suited for very specific situations. I will spend some time in the coming weeks going over each of these.

For now, know that you *can* create EPUB files from Word using a completely open-source and free combination of software. It won't create the kinds of files you can get from InDesign (or other tools), but it's better than nothing. Just.

Quickest, easiest, cheapest way to create an ebook?

2012-02-02T17:31:00.000-05:00

Update 2: More thoughts on OpenOffice and Writer2ePub for EPUB

Update: I've added the OpenOffice document, including images, the EPUB file generated with the Writer2ePub extension, and the Kindle file generated from that EPUB file with Kindle Previewer 3 at the end of this article.

I've been writing about creating ebooks for a while and it occurred to me that I've tried to cover a lot of the edge-case scenarios: nice formatting, drop caps, special fonts, audio, video, fixed layout, poetry, and more. But what if you had a drop-dead simple book and you wanted to create an ebook in the quickest, easiest, cheapest way?

Here's what I'd recommend. First, download OpenOffice. It's free and available on multiple platforms.

Next, download the Writer2ePub extension. It is also free. It was written by Luca "Luke" Calcinai, and like a good European, he offers documentation in several languages. Install the extension by choosing Tools > Extension Manager from inside OpenOffice and then clicking the Add button and finding Writer2ePub.

Once it's installed, you'll see that there are three new icons on your OpenOffice desktop:

Next step, write your novel. I'll wait.

OK, you can open any Word document in OpenOffice. You could even copy someone else's if you have to. That's what I've done. Mark Twain's “The Jumping Frog”.

Now paste it into a new document in OpenOffice.

You could just hit the export to EPUB icon already, but as much as I want to give you simplest way, I can't go that low. (If you can, just skip on down to the bottom.)

Select all of the text and choose Text Body from the style menu.

Next, select the title of your book and choose Heading 1 from the Style menu.

Now, select each chapter title in turn and choose Heading 2 from the Style menu.

Now, add your images by choosing Insert > Picture > From file, and then locate the image you want to place. You can resize it by dragging the corners. Hold down Shift to maintain the original proportion.

Add any final formatting you wish. Feel free to make some of your text bold or italic, or what have you. Remember this is the easy-peasy system so I'm not going to go into special effects.

The actual EPUB part

Now, save your document. All you non-savers go right ahead and do it anyway, Writer2ePub won't let you proceed until you do. (Choose File > Save.)

Now click the leftmost Writer2ePub icon (the one that's all green). The metadata window will appear.

My recommendation is that you fill out all of the metadata, but Writer2ePub will work with just the title. (Note that when I tried to add a cover, it gave me an error upon validating my EPUB later on.)

Click OK to generate the EPUB file.

First you'll get a little alert that confirms your EPUB was created and tells you just how long it took.

And if you look in the folder that contains your OpenOffice file, you'll now see your new shiny EPUB:

Mine passed ePubCheck with nary a peep. Here it is in iBooks:

Now, there's a LOT more that you can do. You could add a cover, you could format the book much more nicely with drop caps and background colors and sidebars and centered images, you could add video and audio and all those things that I teach you in my books. But if you just want to convert your Word document into EPUB, you could do a lot worse.

Here are the sample files that I used in this article just in case you want to take a closer look:

The OpenOffice file (Twain.odt), in this case Mark Twain's The Jumping Frog.
The EPUB file generated with Writer2ePub extension (Twain.epub)
The Kindle file generated from the EPUB file with Kindle Previewer 3 (KP3-Twain.mobi)
And a zip file that has all of the above plus the image files (Writer2ePub-example.zip)

Using InDesign to adapt plain text for EPUB

2012-02-02T15:31:00.000-05:00

There was a chapter that I ultimately decided to leave out of “EPUB Straight to the Point” that I've been wanting to publish for a long time. It explains how to use GREP in InDesign to massage a plain text file so that it's easier to format. It shows how to get rid of extra line breaks, extra spaces, and how to convert special plain text formatting (underscores and carats) into their modern day counterparts, bold and small caps.

You can download it here in EPUB format or in Mobi format, and soon, from the iBookstore. I hope you find it useful. The example files can be found on my website and are the same ones I used for “EPUB Straight to the Point”.

I have a whole collection of EPUB and Kindle related books now. Here's a quick rundown:

EPUB Straight to the Point, which explains how to create ebooks in EPUB format using Word, InDesign or from scratch. It gives a thorough description of the ins and outs of the EPUB file format as well as many HTML and CSS tips for formatting your ebooks so that they look their best in whatever ereader your audience has. It also contains instructions for converting to Kindle format. $20, direct from my website. Includes EPUB and PDF editions.

From InDesign CS 5.5 to EPUB and Kindle, explains the new EPUB related features in InDesign CS 5.5. I start by explaining just what EPUB related affects you can and cannot achieve with InDesign and then explain how to get the most out of InDesign when creating EPUB and Kindle files. $10, direct from my website, includes EPUB, Kindle/mobi, and PDF editions. Also available in Spanish.

Fixed Layout Miniguide, explains Apple's "subformat" for creating fixed layout ebooks. Fixed layout ebooks are great for children's books, photography books, travel guides, cookbooks, and any other book in which you wish to maintain the same layout as the print edition. I would caution publishers not to use fixed layout as a way of avoiding redesigning for e-publication. I am not at all fond of fixed layout books with tiny, illegible text. $4, direct from my website, includes EPUB and PDF editions and example files.

Audio and Video in EPUB shows how to incorporate both audio and video files in "enhanced" ebooks. The techniques described in this miniguide work for both iBooks and NOOK, though only Apple will let you upload audio and video-enhanced ebooks to its store. $5, direct from my website. Includes EPUB and PDF editions, and example files.

Read Aloud EPUB explains how to add an overlay so that the ereader (either iBooks or Kobo Vox) can read the story out loud while simultaneously highlighting the corresponding words. Again, this is an advanced subformat (read: not part of EPUB standard) developed by Apple, but that already works in Kobo Vox. $5, direct from my website, includes EPUB and PDF versions, and example files.

Barcelona Beyond Gaudí is an example of a fixed layout photo book that contains Javascript interactivity and geolocation. It works only on iBooks (better on iPad than iPhone). $3, direct from my website, contains EPUB version for iBooks only.

Using Zapf Dingbats in EPUB is a free EPUB minibook that contains tables of symbols that can be inserted into EPUB on iBooks. Free.

There are also several money-saving bundles available.

Now in Spanish: De InDesign CS 5.5 a EPUB y Kindle

2012-01-31T10:03:00.000-05:00

I've been wanting to offer translated versions of my books for a long time, and today I'm happy to announce that “De InDesign CS 5.5 a EPUB y Kindle”, the translation into Spanish of “From InDesign CS 5.5 to EPUB and Kindle” is now available directly from my website. Like the English version, it comes with EPUB, Kindle/mobi, and PDF DRM-free files. You can also buy it from the Apple iBookstore and shortly on Amazon as well.

It has been a much longer and more difficult process than I thought; one more piece of evidence that even though these new tools let us do everything ourselves, it still takes a long time.

I have a fair bit of practice in this field. I used to run a publishing house in Barcelona and managed the translation of Macintosh-related books into Spanish.

Please note that I don't do the translation myself. Thankfully, my expert cover designer, Andreu Cabré, is also a native of Barcelona.

I'll admit that it's a bit of an experiment. Can this work? The publishing industry says that Spanish-reading ebook customers are all pirates. I don't believe it (and have the sales of my English books to Spain and Latin America to prove it), but I'll let you know. All I can say is, if it does work, I'll translate more books!

And I confess I would really love to translate my books into Catalan as well. Would you buy them if I did? Are there other languages that you'd like to see. Let me know!

Here's the Table of Contents for De InDesign CS 5.5 a EPUB y Kindle:

Tabla de Contenidos

De InDesign a ebook en 10 pasos

Planificar el libro

¿Qué se puede hacer en un ebook?

Cabeceras y texto al pie de página

Números de página

Fuentes

Tamaño de texto

Formateo adicional

Espaciado, saltos de página y viudas

Alineación

Columnas

Capitulares y versalitas

Caracteres extranjeros y demás símbolos

Imágenes

Bordes y colores de fondo

Tabla de contenidos e índice

Separación en sílabas

Enlaces

Tablas

Sonido y vídeo

Crear el libro en InDesign

Crear una plantilla

Guardar una plantilla

La importancia de los estilos

Crear una portada

Generar una portada a partir de la primera página

Imágenes y el orden de exportación

Usar objetos en línea para controlar el orden de exportación

Objetos anclados colocados a medida

Usar artículos para controlar el orden de exportación

Colocar y exportar sonido y vídeo

Crear vínculos

Crear hipervínculos

Crear referencias cruzadas

Crear notas al pie de página

Formatear notas al pie de página

Crear una tabla de contenidos navegable

Generar una tabla de contenidos

Mapear las etiquetas para la exportación

Especificar los metadatos

Exportar a EPUB

Añadir más metadatos

Generar una portada

Ordenar el contenido al exportar

Márgenes, listas y ADE

Opciones para exportar imágenes

Tamaño de imagen y alineación

Formatos de imagen

Navegar el panel Contenido

Las opciones de CSS

Usar un CSS existente

¡A punto para exportar!

Reventar un EPUB

Porqué aún hay que reventar archivos EPUB de InDesign

Problemas nuevos

¿Cómo se revienta un EPUB?

Abrir archivos EPUB en BBEdit

Convertir a Kindle/mobi

Crear EPUBs compatibles con Kindle

Texto normal

Saltos de página

Espaciado

Ceñido de texto

Bordes y color de fondo

Fuentes

Portadas

Tabla de contenidos

Indicar el lugar por donde se abre el libro

Imágenes

Convertir un EPUB para Kindle a Kindle/mobi

Usar fuentes incrustadas en iBooks

Recursos adicionales

Índice

Fixing the layout of a reflowable ebook in iBooks

2012-01-24T15:53:00.000-05:00

Now I feel less guilty about looking at iBooks Author.

At the end of my last post, I asked if you could add the code that iBooks Author adds to vertically or horizontally block the layout of a regular flowable book. And it turns out that you can!

This is pretty interesting. Remember that with a regular fixed layout book on Apple, you can't change the font or the font size (or the theme). With flowing books you can. But what about if we created a hybrid: a flowing book that only displays in a single large vertical page (portrait orientation) no matter how you hold the iPad.

The trick is to add the orientation lock code to your com.apple.ibooks.display-options.xml file without specifying that the book be fixed layout:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<display_options><platform  name="*"><option  name="orientation-lock">landscape-only</option></platform></display_options>

Imagine the poetry example that I gave last week. If we use the above code on that book, it only shows in a single vertical page, even when the iPad is held horizontally.

But you can still change the font and font size!

I'm wondering if there are a lot of new features in iBooks 2, revealed in the code in iBooks Author ebooks that we can take advantage of for regular EPUB-compatible books.

More soon!

iBooksAuthor and Fixed Layout

2012-01-24T15:36:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, I couldn't resist at least looking at the code :)

I keep hearing people refer to iBooks Author books as Fixed Layout, but from what I've seen, they are anything but: hold the iPad vertically, and you get one format, hold the iPad horizontally, and the layout shifts to fit a landscape view.

Today I prematurely posted, given that information, that iBooks Author does NOT create Fixed Layout. According to Apple's spec, that's technically true. A regular iBooks Author book does not contain the com.apple.ibooks.display-options.xml file and as I mentioned, changes depending on how your reader holds the iPad. The curious thing is that the book is paradoxically both Fixed Layout and Flowing: the former when it's held horizontally, the latter when you hold it vertically.

Here's a single book with its different views according to how the iPad is held:

In a vertically oriented book, you can change the font size, but not the font. Note that some images completely disappear in Portrait mode. Not sure if there's a way to insist that they appear, but they are definitely not there.

In a horizontally oriented book, you can't change even the font size.

But iBooks Author has an option in the Inspector palette called “Disable portrait orientation”. If you check that option, you will create a virtual fixed layout book (albeit only in landscape orientation), though again, the com file will only contain this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<display_options><platform name="*"><option name="orientation-lock">landscape-only</option></platform></display_options>

So what's the advantage of using "Disable portrait orientation"? I guess if you don't like the way Apple adjusts the layout for portrait orientation, this would be an easy way to get rid of it, and to create a sort of fixed layout.

What I'm really curious about is if there's a way to force regular flowing books to a certain orientation using this code. Previously, it only worked with Fixed Layout books. Apple is really blurring the lines.

That said, if you've read my earlier posts on iBooks Author, you know that I am very reticent about agreeing to Apple's exclusivity agreement, and so I haven't delved into it very far.

Ten reasons I can't recommend or use iBooks Author

2012-01-20T11:04:00.001-05:00

Update 3 Feb 2012: Apple updated the End User License Agreement (EULA) on Friday, February 3 to make clear that they were not attempting to control the content of books created with iBooks Author, but rather the formatting itself:

Important Note:
If you want to charge a fee for a work that includes files in the .ibooks format generated using iBooks Author, you may only sell or distribute such work through Apple, and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple. This restriction does not apply to the content of such works when distributed in a form that does not include files in the .ibooks format. [emphasis mine]

So, cross #2 of my list below. The rest remains the same, unfortunately.

I haven't stopped thinking about iBooks Author since I saw it announced yesterday morning. There are so many pieces to the story that I thought I'd take another stab at explaining them all.

First, a quick recap. Apple yesterday launched a powerful WYSIWYG tool, iBooks Author, that creates electronic textbooks quickly and easily. That's the good news. The bad news is that the End user license for iBooks Author requires that all books created with iBooks Author be sold exclusively through Apple's iBookstore, and the books that iBooks Author (which I'm going to call iBA books) creates are in an Apple proprietary format, based on EPUB3, but distinct from it, and called "ibooks".

Why might that be a problem?

1. Apple has the final say in what can be sold on the iBookstore. Each book must be approved by Apple. If Apple doesn't approve your book, you can't sell it anywhere else.

2. It's not at all clear how far Apple's control of an iBA book's content goes. If you create an ebook in iBooks Author, can you then copy out the content and create a Kindle book in some other tool? What if you create an iBA book from an existing Kindle-published novel? Can Apple require that you remove that book from Amazon?

3. It's not at all clear that Apple's exclusivity benefits kids, schools, or teachers. iPads are expensive, and Apple's exclusivity will mean that schools will be entirely at the mercy of a single company, for its approval of content, pricing and availability of devices, and tools for making textbooks. In the US, content in textbooks is currently controlled by local schoolboards. I don't want to cede that role to Apple.

4. iBA ebooks will work only on iBooks on iPad (I don't think it works even in iPhone/iPod touch). Although Apple had promised support for EPUB in its initial release of iBooks for the original iPad in April, 2010, it has now broken that promise. Apple and Steve Jobs have long wanted to control all the hardware and software so that they were perfectly integrated. One of the first thing Jobs did upon returning to Apple was kill the clones. Now they want control over the content as well.

Currently iBA ebooks will work only in iBooks. Will iBooks stop supporting EPUB created with other tools?

5. It fragments the ebook ecosystem and requires new publishing tools and workflows for publishers. iBooks Author does not create EPUB files and it cannot import existing EPUB files. It certainly can't export to any other format. I don't know any publishers who are looking for extra formats in which to publish their books.

6. Apple's iBookstore currently serves only 32 countries out of the 205 existing countries in the world. Not included? Brazil (nor all of Latin America), Russia, India, Japan, China (nor all of Asia), New Zealand, South Africa (nor all of Africa).

7. Apple iBookstore is not that great. It's hard to find books in the Apple iBookstore, sometimes even if you know the title! There are few recommendations, few reviews. And there are hardly any books, especially outside the US. Sure Apple wants to compel people to put books into the iBookstore, but is it in our best interest?

8. It's bossy. I bridle at anyone telling me where I can sell my books. Even if I only wanted to sell through the iBookstore I would be annoyed at Apple making me sign a paper to that effect.

9. It's unnecessary. Even if iBooks Author generated EPUB standard supporting ebooks, there's not an ereader in existence that could have viewed them. They would have blown the competition out of the water, without any coercion required.

10. Books are special. This is about books (for teaching our children!) which in my opinion should not be controlled by any company or government. What I have loved about the web and ebooks is that anyone can create and publish them without anyone else's approval. Books are information, are democracy, are freedom. No one has a right to control them.

Before you go off to the comments to tell me how I have a choice and I can just not use iBooks Author, stop yourself. I know I have that choice. I also don't need to hear about how iBooks Author is a free program and I should therefore not have any opinion on what it can or cannot require. Besides the fact that free is a relative term here (given Apple's 30% take for starters), I'm not talking about what is legal but what I think would have been right, what would have been smart, what would have really had a transformative affect on publishing, technology, and education. Apple could have done so much better. I was rooting for Apple, and they took the low road.

iBooks Author is beautiful but you can only use it to sell through Apple iBookstore

2012-01-19T12:19:00.001-05:00

The license agreement to Apple's new iBooks Author tool for creating electronic textbooks has a very peculiar clause:

If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this software (a “Work”), you may only sell or distribute such Work through Apple (e.g., through the iBookstore) and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple.

I find that clause unacceptable and ridiculous. If I create a book, I want to be able to sell it anywhere I want, not only through Apple. I no more want to restrict my sales to their store than I want to restrict them on Amazon or anywhere else.

Frankly, I even find it insulting.

You can find the full license agreement by going to the iBooks Author menu, choose About iBooks Author, and then click License Agreement in the About box that appears.

Note that it didn't have to be this way. The files that iBooks Author creates are pretty reasonable EPUB files (masked with the .ibooks extension) and can be read in NOOK and other EPUB readers. You can unzip them and see the EPUB files inside.

I am very disappointed.

Media Queries for formatting Poetry on Kindle and EPUB

2012-01-15T14:04:00.000-05:00

What a tangled web we weave! Amazon wants to maintain support for its legacy ereaders, we all want to support different size ereaders, but nobody supports the code the same way. What to do? One solution is to use media queries, something I've been meaning to explain for months.

A media query lets you create multiple sets of CSS (just what you want to do, right?) and then apply the most appropriate set automatically according to the ereader the ebook is opened in. So, in a single ebook file, there would be various choices of CSS, perhaps one best suited for old legacy Kindles, another for KF8, another for really small screens like iPhones, and yet another for the full-color 9.7” iPad. The ebook would adapt to its environment, giving each user the best possible experience.

That's the theory anyway.

Of course, there are a couple of caveats. Media queries only affect CSS, not HTML, which limits to some degree what can be changed for those ereaders that don't understand a lot of CSS (yes, I'm talking about clunky old mobi). And not all devices of the same screen size support CSS the same way. Ebook designers, like web designers before them, will continue to make multiple versions of the same ebook until the code is standardized. (And don't expect ebook reader manufacturers to adhere to standards without a lot of prodding.)

But media queries do help. Let's see how they work.

Suppose you want to format poetry in your ebook. Poetry is tricky because each line's length must somehow be respected, even in a screen where the line does not fit. The typical solution is to divide each line of poetry into multiple lines, with the 2nd and subsequent lines indented below the first. No matter how narrow the ereader screen, the reader will still be able to identify each line of poetry as a unit.

Let's look at Whitman's O Captain! My Captain! on the Kindle App in a landscape-oriented iPad. (All of these screenshots are from Kindle Previewer, just so I don't have to copy them to a bunch of different devices.) Notice that no matter how short, each line of poetry is displayed on its own line. Poetry doesn't reflow. It's hard to tell from this screenshot, but note that Kindle automatically indents lines of text 40px for Kindle and Kindle for iPad and iPhone, but not for Kindle Fire!

If we turn the iPad sideways, or make the text bigger, or both, the lines suddenly don't fit. Not only that, the automatic first line indent that Amazon adds makes poetry look particularly bad. It starts being hard to tell what is the second half of a long line, and what is an individual shorter line.

Here's what it looks like on a legacy Kindle (what I'm calling "old mobi"):

Not pretty.

And here's what it looks like on Kindle Fire. Remember that Kindle Fire doesn't have an automatic first-line indent:

The combination of automatic full justification with no first-line indent and no adjustment for the poetry lines looks particularly bad on the Kindle Fire. It's just a sea of text.

What's the solution? The convention for formatting poetry is to indent the part of the line that doesn't fit. What layout folks call a hanging indent.

You can do this pretty easily with CSS. Add a left margin of say, 2em, which will push the whole line over and then add a negative text-indent of -2em so that the first line starts at the flush left as usual. In this way, each line of poetry will start at the left margin, but any part of the line that overflows will be displayed indented on the second and subsequent lines. Here's the CSS code:

p {line-height: 1;padding:0;margin:0}
p.firstline {margin-top:2em; margin-left:2em; text-indent: -2em;}
p.line {margin-left:2em; text-indent: -2em;}

And here's what it looks like on the Kindle Fire:

I'd certainly want to adjust the general formatting a bit, but now the lines of poetry are at least inteligible.

But if you open it up with a legacy Kindle, it looks pretty bad:

And it looks equally bad on Kindle for iPad:

What's going on?? It turns out that old mobi handles values for text-indent in a very strange way. If you don't set a text-indent value, old mobi automatically indents 40px. If you set a positive text-indent, it will use that instead. (You can use px or em, but if you use em, only whole numbers will work.) But if you set a negative text-indent, it actually creates a hanging indent, with the first line flush left and the second and subsequent indented as much as the absolute value of text-indent. Go figure. That's weird and unexpected, but if you set the left margin at the same time, it all gets mucked up and the details are way too boring to explain. Trust me, you don't want to go there.

To create a hanging indent on old mobi, you use just a negative text-indent, but no left margin. It shouldn't work, but it does.

h1 {text-align: left}
p {line-height: 1}
p.firstline {margin-top:20px;text-indent:-40px}
p.line {text-indent:-40px}

And here's what it looks like on a legacy Kindle:

That's fine, but look at the same code on a Kindle Fire:

Because of those negative-indents and the lack of an automatic left margin, or whatever hack old mobi used, now our text is cut off. Unacceptable.

So, Kindle Fire and decent EPUB ereaders that support CSS like iBooks want a left margin and a negative text-indent, but old mobi can't handle that combination, being able to use only the negative text-indent.

The answer is to serve different CSS to different ereaders, by way of a media query. I'm going to show you how to do it in an internal stylesheet but the same principles would hold in an external stylesheet.

First, create a regular stylesheet with no media attribute that will contain the styles that should be applied to all versions of the ebook.

<style type="text/css">
    h1 {text-align: left}
    p {line-height: 1;padding:0;margin:0}
</style>

Next, create a second stylesheet with media="not amzn-mobi" in the opening style tag. The stylesheet should include all of the styles that should apply to all ereaders except legacy Kindle. Amazon says you should use media="kf8" but that's just because they imagine a world where all ereaders are either Kindle Fire or legacy Kindle. Let's just say that most people's worlds are bigger than that.

<style type="text/css" media="not amzn-mobi">
    p.firstline {margin-top:2em; margin-left:2em; text-indent: -2em;}
    p.line {margin-left:2em; text-indent: -2em;}
</style>

Finally, create a stylesheet just for legacy Kindle, adding media="amzn-mobi" to the opening style tag.

<style type="text/css" media="amzn-mobi">
    p.firstline {margin-top:20px;text-indent:-40px}
    p.line {text-indent:-40px}
</style>

Here's what it looks like on Kindle Fire:

And here's what the very same file looks like on a legacy Kindle:

Success!

And just in case you were worrying, here's what the EPUB file looks like in iBooks on the iPad:

Indeed, it looks fine, because iBooks' support of CSS is pretty good.

A technical note. There was some concern that you couldn't serve different indents to Kindle Fire and to legacy Kindle because the legacy Kindle code uses the width attribute (in a bizarre way) in the HTML, and not the CSS. But the technique described above works because KindleGen converts the CSS in a good EPUB into the weird, hackish old mobi code—complete with width tag—that legacy Kindles love, but creates "KF8" code for the new Kindle Fire, which, as I mentioned Thursday, is virtually the same as the original EPUB. And EPUB readers will get the original, good, EPUB file. So everyone's happy.

Except designers who have to do twice the work. Think standards don't matter? Think again.

One final note. I've been saying that the KF8 files that KindleGen generates from the original EPUB are practically identical to that original EPUB. That's true only for the CSS that KF8 supports. I haven't tested it extensively, but I suspect KindleGen will just ignore the CSS it doesn't support. And I have yet to determine (nor have seen elsewhere) just how well Kindle Fire supports CSS in the first place. I need a couple more days!

KF8 is nothing more than EPUB with mobi

2012-01-12T17:41:00.001-05:00

OK, if you've been reading me a while, you know that I mostly specialize in EPUB, that I have a background in HTML, and that I know the basics of converting EPUB to mobi.

Today, as the Kindle Format 8 specifications were made public, the #eprdctn Twitter group filled up with complaints about what the new Kindle Gen and Kindle Previewer 3 were doing to people's ebooks. It sounded worrisome.

So, I took my “From InDesign CS 5.5 to EPUB and Kindle” book, which I had previously converted to mobi with the old Kindle Previewer 2, and converted it with Kindle Previewer 3 [Note that the new Kindle Previewer 3 contains the new Kindle Gen 2, with a GUI interface. Though it's ostensibly just for viewing mobi files, it also converts them without having to resort to the command line.] And then I unpacked them with my new toy, mobi_unpack, and compared the files inside.

Inside there are old mobi files and new KF8 mobi files (and the original EPUB!).

I started with the old mobi files. What I didn't realize is that Amazon has been generated non-standard hideous code for their ebooks for years. It's like MySpace in here. Look:

Here's my original code:

<p class="caption">The Articles panel starts out empty. You have to add articles to it manually either by dragging frames to it or by clicking the plus sign.</p>

And here's how KP 2 converted it to old mobi:

<p height="0em" width="0" align="center"><font size="-1" face="sans-serif" color="#000000"><i>The Articles panel starts out empty. You have to add articles to it manually either by dragging frames to it or by clicking the plus sign.</i></font></p>

And here's how KP3 converts it to old mobi:

<p height="0em" width="0" align="center"><blockquote width="0"><font size="-1" face="sans-serif" color="#000000"><i>The Articles panel starts out empty. You have to add articles to it manually either by dragging frames to it or by clicking the plus sign.</i></font></blockquote></p>

All I can say is ew. ? Really? What is this, 1997? Not only is this garbage in your HTML, when it should clearly be in the CSS, but it's old, and deprecated. Even when I set the Doctype to HTML4 Transitional, about as loose as you can get, the document created with the brand new Kindle Previewer 3, released today, had 3482 errors and 239 warnings. It does not validate. It's garbage.

The only differences I found in files converted with the old Kindle Previewer and the new was that they no longer add !important as an extra value for the align attribute (makes me shudder just to think of it, and I can't imagine it ever did anything in the first place), and the addition of blockquote tags, who knows why (as in the above example).

That was the old mobi content.

You can also find KF8 content in the Kindle Previewer 3 converted mobi file.

First I compared the CSS. It's very similar.

The only difference I found was that in the KF8, the max-width property was eliminated. I imagine as I investigate more, I'll find other things that KF8 won't accept. I'll let you know.

Now on to compare the HTML.

I see that KP3 changes <a id="Anchor-123" /> to <a id="Anchor-123"></a>. Not monumental. Not even significant.

And there were a bunch of spacing things, but really, if people are noticing differences upon viewing documents, I don't think it's because of the conversion.

The KF8 inside the mobi is practically identical to my original EPUB file.

But then, I opened up the new KF8 mobi file in my Kindle Fire. I found one small difference with the indenting.

The things is, I'm not sure that's KF8's fault. I think it's probably the fault of mobi, which had some weird indenting behavior that I distinctly remember fiddling with a lot to get the original effect (right). And it looks like it breaks in KF8, which, as I noted above, is much more standard and looks just like my original EPUB.

So, I just need to fix the indenting.

All in all, I didn't see a lot of difference in the way this file was displayed, between the old mobi and the new KF8 mobi. Indeed, I think the move away from that disgusting code is a major improvement.

And the KF8 file looked exactly the same on my old Kindle 3 also. No change that I could discern. (In other words when you serve a KF8 file to an old Kindle, it keeps looking at the same old clunky mobi code that it always has, and the book doesn't break—anymore than it did before.)

I still want to go through each property, bit by bit, to see what's supported and how, but so far, I'm hopeful.

Now, why they just don't call it EPUB, since that's what it is?

Fixed Layout in KF8 for Amazon Kindle is Disappointing

2012-01-12T16:01:00.000-05:00

To say I'm very disappointed in KF8 would be an understatement. One major source of that disappointment is in the requirements for Fixed Layout, which differ markedly from that used by iBooks on iOS and Kobo Vox. In other words, you can't use the same files.

I used KindleGen2 to convert some of my fixed layout EPUBs to mobi, and then I opened up the mobi files with mobi_unpack to see what had happened. (Well, I looked at them in the Kindle Fire too, and though they did open, I'm almost embarrassed to show you screenshots here. Certainly, not acceptable for sale.) So much for "easily portable with minimal effort".

Original on iPad:

After conversion with KindleGen2 on Kindle Fire, that single page is displayed on several:

So what happened inside? Mobi, from what I'm learning (just a beginner still), is a database, with no individual files, and thus no individual file names. mobi_unpack is a Python script that goes through the mobi database and generates what would be individual files from the data.

There are a couple of interesting things here. First, there are non-KF8 mobi files and KF8 mobi files. I'm guessing that's so your mobi file will work in both KF8 compatible devices as well as legacy ereaders. Second, the original EPUB is also included (shown at the bottom, in a zip file), completely unaltered, which presumably means it sits unaltered in the actual mobi file as well, and adds to its size. Finally, there is an EPUB file that is generated from the KF8 files which is a lot smaller than the original EPUB because KindleGen reduces the size of the images. The mobi_unpack script generates this standard-format file so that you can use it to create new versions of the book. It's not an Amazon thing.

So, let's really look inside. The new specs say require a lot of things I don't see in the file that KindleGen2 created. My intepretation of that is that KindleGen2 doesn't create a fixed layout KF8 mobi from my fixed layout EPUB, it just creates a flowing KF8 mobi file.

But what if you create your own fixed layout file?

First of all, Amazon wants you to add a bunch of meta tags to the OPF file (and not to the com file, as Apple and Kobo do). These meta tags determine if the book is fixed layout, what the viewport size is, and in which orientation it should be locked, as well as what kind of book it is (for children?), and whether or not you're using "region magnification". The first three are required, which means that you can't have a book that can be viewed in both portrait and landscape modes. You have to choose.

Next, and most inexplicable of all, it says you should create a single page for pages in portrait mode, and a single HTML page for a two page spread in landscape mode. (Again, this necessitates completely redoing your original Fixed Layout book.) OK. What I completely don't understand is, if you're designing a two page spread in a single HTML page, why on earth do they want you to create it in two separate blocks that you then float next to each other? It seems like a lot of busy work.

Why not just create a single image on your single HTML page for the two page spread? Is there some benefit to dividing it up into two chunks of code on the single HTML page? I don't see it, if there is.

After much wrangling, I was able to manage to create a Fixed Layout in KF8 format and view it on the Kindle Fire. Here's the original on the iPad:

Here's what it looked like after I recoded it to work on the Kindle Fire. Note that the Javascript does not work but the link to Google Maps does. And you can't miss all that lost white space due to the letterboxing.

And let me tell you, it was a pain.

And led to my post from yesterday about aspect ratio (what timing, huh?) Because there was no way I was going to crop all of my pictures from that book so they would fit an entirely new aspect ratio, they simply would not have fit. Indeed, when I think of the way most people take pictures in 4:3, or similar, I consider the Kindle Fire's aspect ratio to be very problematic for the kind of books that might showcase photography in fixed layout. I'm not sure if kids' books are often found in an aspect ratio of 1.7, like the Kindle Fire.

So yeah, I'm disappointed. Just the same, I probably will get around to explaining how to do it all. And I promise more on regular flowing books for KF8 as well. Soon.

I don't care how big that tablet is, diagonally

2012-01-11T13:10:00.000-05:00

Aspect ratio is as or more important than generic "size".

Back in highschool in the protean days of computers (we had a terminal with no screen that connected to a mainframe somewhere), I remember guys hanging around—and I'm afraid they were almost exclusively boys—comparing computer stats. Hertz and bytes and oh man, it was so dull. I could never really get into it, I wanted to know what the computers did, not what they were made of.

Lately, all I hear is if there will be a new “7" tablet” or a “9.3" tablet” or whatever. But as I compare ebooks on different devices, I find they're all missing the point. Let's take my current collection of ebook readers. If you look up the specs, you'll find that all are described in terms of the length of the screen from one corner to the opposite diagonal:

iPad: 9.7” (1024 × 768 pixel, 7.75×5.82 in (197×148 mm) => 4:3 or 1.3 aspect ratio
iPhone: 3.5” (960-by-640-pixel resolution at 326 ppi) => 3:2 or 1.5 aspect ratio
Kindle 3: 6” = 4:3 or 1.3 aspect ratio
Kindle Fire: 7”, 1024 x 600 => 1.7 aspect ratio
NOOK Color: 7”, 1024 x 600 => 1.7 aspect ratio
Kobo Vox: 7”, 1024 x 600 => 1.7 aspect ratio
(I also have a black and white NOOK.)

Those numbers don't begin to give the information that ebook readers and designers need to know. What proportion or aspect ratio does the screen have? What will a book filled with images look like? Will we ebook designers have to redesign the books for every tablet with a different aspect ratio?

It's not the same looking at a book on an ereader with a 1.3 aspect ratio (like the iPad)

Note that on the iPad, the image measures 7.5 x 5.7".

Now look at the same book on the Kindle Fire, which like the NOOK Color and Kobo Vox have a screen that measures 7” on the diagonal with an aspect ratio of 1.7:

The image on this screen only measured 4.75 x 3.5” partly because the screen is physically smaller but also because it has to be shoehorned into a different aspect ratio. Notice the lost space on the right and left.

There is a less pronounced effect on the iPhone, that has an aspect ratio of 1.5. You see some lost space to the right and left, but not nearly as much.

I've tried to show the screenshots proportionally to their actual size. The width of the iPad screenshot is 400 pixels. The iPad is 7.75” wide in landscape mode. The width of the Kindle Fire screenshot is 320 pixels, since the Kindle Fire is 6” wide in landscape. (400 / (7.75/6)). The width of the iPhone screenshot is 155 pixels, since the iPhone is 3” wide in landscape (400/ (7.75/3)).

So, you either have to adjust the images to take advantage of the aspect ratio of a given screen, or the images will be even smaller than the screen requires. Ugh. And unless you make separate files for each kind of tablet, you'll always suffer from some sort of letterboxing.

For non-fiction, I'm also concerned about the trend toward tall and skinny. It makes it really hard to add interesting layout, graphical features, tables, and the rest without making the text impossibly small.

“When I lived in Barcelona, it never felt like Spain to me”

2012-01-09T12:18:00.000-05:00

(I recently was interviewed in one of Barcelona’s principal newspapers, Ara, by Adam Martín. Here’s my translation of the article into English.)

Prize-winner Liz Castro is an American woman in love with Catalonia. So much so that she publishes books about Catalonia in the United States with her publishing house, Catalonia Press. Òmnium recently awarded her the Joan B. Cendrós prize.

Adam Martín | Posted on 9 January 2012

She made a quick trip to Barcelona to collect her prize and we met briefly on the night of Santa Llúcia [the awards ceremony]. A few days later, via Skype, she explains how she came to know Catalonia. I can't think of a more appropriate format for an interview of the author of a bestseller on HTML programming which has sold more than a million copies.

Your last name, Castro, doesn't seem very American.

I'll tell you the story, but it's kind of long. My great-grandparents were from Andalusia and immigrated to Hawaii in 1907 to work in the sugar plantations. The two families met on the boat, worked in the same places and then later moved to the same town in California [where I was born].

So you have roots on the Peninsula.

Yes. And all my life I wanted to learn how to speak Spanish, because I wanted to conserve something of my father's family. And when I went to college, I studied Spanish. And then found myself in a Catalan class.

In a university in California?

Yes, with a professor from Brazil, funny, huh? And he was very Catalanist: he made us read the Avui newspaper [the first Catalan language newspaper begun after Franco died], and sing “Baixant de la font del gat” [a Catalan nursery rhyme song] and even Els Segadors [the Catalan National Anthem]. And he told us a lot about linguistic policy. At the university I also studied a fair bit of sociolinguistics, and I was very interested in bilingualism, figuring out why, when there is more than one language, one is used more often than the other.

And you had never been to Catalonia?

I had been in Spain a few times, in Madrid, and I had spent a week in Barcelona, but I didn't know much about it. I did come in contact with Catalan, but in a very superficial way: at the house of some friends of a friend and they were watching Dallas in Catalan.

Why did you fall in love with Catalan?

I attended the Summer Catalan University in Prada [set up during the Franco era so that Catalans could keep studying about Catalonia and in Catalan], sort of by accident, and I was really blown away by the sense of identity, of nation that people had: they knew who they were. Maybe I was looking for that. I wanted to know more. I was 21 years old. And I remember that people treated me like a movie star: "An American who speaks Catalan, that's awesome!" they said. That was in 1986, when they're weren't that many of us [Catalan speaking foreigners].

And then you moved to Barcelona.

I had $800 saved up, and I packed my things and decided to move to Barcelona. I estimated my savings would last for about two months. I didn't want to be a tourist there, I wanted to be part of the city and live like a Catalan. I found an apartment in Vallcarca and then found work right away in a Macintosh software start-up, also by accident. And all of a sudden, I had enough money to stay for longer than two months.

What surprised you most about the city?

I didn't understand when people slept, because we went out every night. And the schedule, in general. I sang in the Orfeó Català [a choral group] and our rehearsals started at 9:30 pm! In the US, that would be absolutely unheard of, no-one goes out for a rehearsal at that time of night! And I also realized how social everyone was: they spent hours and hours chatting, at lunch and at dinner, and after lunch and after dinner, the sobretaula. [Sobretaula is the Catalan word for the time you stay at the table and talk after you finish a meal.] In English we don't even have a word for that.

How long were you here?

Six years. During the last three, I ran a small publishing house for which I found interesting Mac related books, secured the rights, had them translated into Spanish, and then sold them all over Spain. And then a publishing house in the US offered me a job in the US and I decided to go home.

Your ties with Catalonia continued?

Well, I brought a husband home with me, and he's from Barcelona! [laughs]. We have three kids and we return each year and make an effort so that they speak Catalan. Last year we spent the whole year in Catalonia so the kids could go to school there and really learn the language well.

And how did you start publishing digital books about Catalonia in a market that seems a priori not very interested?

It is and it isn't. Everyone I know probably knows more about Catalonia than they might have chosen to if they didn't know me... But now there are lots of tools for spreading information! Facebook, Twitter. It just seems so unfair what happens in Catalonia. People from the US go there and they don't have a clue what Catalonia is about. One of the things that I felt when I lived there was that it wasn't Spain, Spain was someplace else. Madrid was Spain, but not Catalonia.

How can digital books and the internet help?

They make tools available that help every person be able to tell his or her own story, and explain whatever they want. The gatekeepers are disappearing; you don't have to convince anyone to publish what you're thinking about, you can do it yourself.

What have you published with Catalonia Press?

Two books: one by Matthew Tree, Barcelona, Catalonia and one by Toni Strubell and Lluís Brunet, What Catalans Want. Now the access to publishing is so much simpler and I can help people know Catalonia much better. It's a small thing that I can do. And I need to. A few days agao, there was a terrible article about [the budget and] the autonomous communities in the New York Times. Whoever wrote it had no idea what they were talking about!

Selling ebooks outside of the US

2012-01-05T19:20:00.000-05:00

If you're thinking about self-publishing, make sure you don't forget to look beyond the borders of the United States.

I started selling the electronic version (only) of my EPUB Straight to the Point book when it was published in late 2010. The print version was available through my publisher, Peachpit Press, and through traditional and online booksellers. The response was very encouraging. The first thing that I noticed was that people were buying the book from far away. A fair number of my first sales were from Australia, South Africa, and Europe, where it might have taken the print book several more weeks (months?) to arrive.

In February, 2011, I published my first miniguide, Fixed Layout EPUB. Originally, I envisioned it as an update to EPUB Straight to the Point, and so I decided to offer it for free to anyone who had already purchased that book. For those who were just interested in the Fixed Layout EPUB miniguide, they could buy it for $4, and then apply the $4 to the purchase of EPUB Straight to the Point. I sent out an email to all of the people who had bought the book directly from me. It got a huge response, and indeed, I continue to get a few requests for the Fixed Layout miniguide pretty much every day.

Between May and December, 2011, I published three additional miniguides, Audio and Video in EPUB, Read Aloud EPUB, and most recently From InDesign CS 5.5 to EPUB and Kindle. I love the idea of writing very short, focused, timely, inexpensive guides on the latest ebook production techniques. I don't have to spend months and months, and the information is fresh. Instead of giving these away, I have sold them for nominal amounts that make it easy for people to keep up to date with the latest EPUB information. With each new book, I send out a mailing to everyone who has bought any of the previous ones. They have proved very successful.

I never meant to self-publish. But the more books that I sold directly to readers, and the more names and emails that I collected, the more it seemed to make sense to continue to offer EPUB information to these folks. As a long time user of FileMaker, I've been able to massage my data to see just which books people are most interested in, and also where I sell the most books. I love looking at this information so I thought I'd share it with you. If you're a self-publisher, look closely at how many readers are NOT in the US. Click on the graphic to magnify.

Indeed, more than 50% of my readers are outside of the US. More than 30% are in Europe. Almost 10% in the UK alone. Notice that although everyone says that Spain is full of pirates, there is little difference between sales to Spain and to France, which is similar in size. I am convinced that the way to compete with pirates is not on price, but rather on service and ease of use. Oceania, between Australia and New Zealand makes up amother 7%, Canada 5%, Asia 6%, and a sprinkling in Africa, Central and South America, and the Middle East. (Yes, my regions are pretty arbitrary.)

Now you see why I talk a fair bit on Twitter and in my blog about marketing outside of the United States. Ebooks are clearly a worldwide phenomenon and particularly for my readers, timeliness is one of the key features of my books. But neither Amazon nor Apple sell all over the world.

I didn't want to limit myself to the US, and I also definitely didn't want to depend on a single retailer. So I decided to sell my books both through those channels, and also directly to readers, using a fulfillment service called Kagi, based in California. Kagi stores my book files, charges customers and collects sales tax and/or VAT, and then emails a unique download link to each customer. It's not perfect—I've heard complaints that the system is sometimes slow—but it's definitely a start. And I love being able to get my files up just when I want to, without having to get Amazon or Apple to approve them.

Wikipedia wants to delete me!

2011-12-29T23:53:00.001-05:00

I doubt my notability all the time, but despite that fact, it's also true that I've sold more than a million books and helped a lot of people learn how to create web pages and ebooks. Just last week, I got a major prize in Barcelona for my publishing work about Catalonia.

However, this evening Dori Smith let me know via Twitter that someone on Wikipedia had marked my entry for deletion due to questions about my notability.

If you think I'm notable enough to be in Wikipedia, you can add sources about my notability to my current page and/or to the AFD page.

Here's what others say:

Omnium Cultural: “The jury for the 25th Joan B. Cendrós Prize has awarded the prize for work about the Catalan nation published outside of Catalonia to the North-American publisher Liz Castro [El jurat del 25è Premi Joan B. Cendrós ha atorgat el premi per a treballs publicats o emesos fora dels Països Catalans sobre la nació catalana a l’editora nord-americana Liz Castro.] Full translation here

Self-publishing guru Joel Friedlander: “Liz Castro’s EPUB Straight to the Point is a fantastic resource with clear instruction and should be in the ereader of anyone whose work involves dealing with EPUB and iBooks.”

Communication Arts magazine: She is the author of the bestselling HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition: Visual QuickStart Guide which together with its earlier editions has sold more than one million copies in more than fifteen languages. She has also written books on Blogger, iPhoto, Perl and CGI, and XML. The guides are written and published for inexperienced Web designers who want to start from the beginning and contain information in bullet points and note form for easy reading.

Vook calls me an "industry expert"

TidBITS: If you're thinking about making a book in iPhoto, my fellow Peachpit author Liz Castro has created a wonderfully useful Web site where she obsessively documents each and every iPhoto book theme

Vilaweb [major Catalan news website] interviewed me in February, 2011: “Recently, Castro published EPUB Straight to the Point (Peachpit Press), a guide for writing books for digital readers like the iPad. She is also the author of the bestseller “HTML, XHTML, and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide” of which six editions have been published and the seventh is being prepared, and more than a million copies of which have been sold. She also wrote “Creating a Web Page with HTML” and “Publishing a Blog with Blogger”, among others. [“No fa gaire va publicar 'EPUB Straight to the Point' (Peachpit Press), una guia per a escriure llibres en pissarretes digitals com l'iPad. És autora del 'best-seller' 'HTML, XHTML, and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide', amb sis edicions (la setena, en preparació) i més d'un milió d'exemplars venuts. També ha escrit 'Creating a Web Page with HTML' i 'Publishing a Blog with Blogger', etc. ”]

Peachpit Press: Elizabeth Castro is the author of all edtions of the best-selling HTML for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide. She is also the author of Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide and XML for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide--both bestsellers! Liz also founded Pågina Uno, a publishing house in Barcelona, Spain.

The American who talks the most about Catalonia!

2011-12-16T16:56:00.000-05:00

Anyone following my Twitter stream today wouldn't be able to avoid noticing that I'm pretty riled up about Google's bizarre and rather random translating of Catalan street names into Spanish. I talk about Catalan a lot on my blog and on Twitter.

Last winter and spring, while I was living in Barcelona, I started a new enterprise dedicated to translating interesting books about Catalonia into English, so that I could share the place I love with the non-Catalan speaking world. First, I published a collection of essays by long-time Barcelona resident but English son, Matthew Tree, called “Barcelona, Catalonia: A View from the Inside”. And in July, we presented Toni Strubell and Lluís Brunet's, “What Catalans Want”, their brilliant collection of essays of leading Catalan politicians, academics, economists, and media experts on whether Catalonia could be the next new state in Europe.

The other morning I got a call from Muriel Casals, the president of Òmnium Cultural, a Barcelona-based organization dedicated to promoting Catalan language and culture. It turns out that each year, Òmnium holds a grand gala event—La Nit de Santa Llúcia—in which they present the most prestigious book awards in the country.

Imagine my surprise when she told me that one of the prizes was for me, and if I could go to Barcelona to receive it! They are awarding me the "Premi Joan Cendrós" for works about Catalan and Catalonia published outside of Catalonia. I am totally honored and excited.

So, those of you who sometimes get overwhelmed by my Catalan-related tweets, I thank you for your patience. And I hope you have a better understanding of what's going on there. Every country, like every person, deserves to be recognized for who they are. Catalonia is a vibrant, unique place, and it's not Spain.

There's a lot more work to do. I'm not done yet.

_________

Here's a translation of the article on Òmnium Cultural's website: (links added by me :)

The American publisher Catalonia Press has won the 25th Joan B. Cendrós Prize for its books and writings about Catalonia published outside of Catalonia. The prize will be awarded during the 61st Night of Santa Llúcia.

The jury of the 25th Joan B. Cendrós Prize has awarded the prize for her work about Catalonia published outside of Catalonia to the American publisher Liz Castro. Castro, a writer living in Massachusetts, has become known in the last few years for her work promoting Catalonia and talking about its linguistic, cultural, and political situation through her publishing house, Catalonia Press, as well as the internet, where she reports on Catalan news in English.

The jury, consisting of Antoni Bassas, Joan Becat, Laura Cendrós, Josep Gifreu and Vicent Partal, paid particular importance to the various digital books that Catalonia Press has published in order to spread information around the world about the reality of life in Catalonia. In that vein, the jury wanted to highlight the publication this year of “What Catalans Want”, a collection of interviews about the situation in this country, written by Antoni Strubell with photographs by Lluís Brunet, as well as “Barcelona, Catalonia”, by Matthew Tree.

The prize award ceremony will take place on December 20th during the 61st Night of Santa Llúcia in the Auditori de Barcelona [National Theater]. The Festa de les Lletres Catalanes [Catalan Literary Festival], where the winners of the Sant Jordi, Carles Riba, Mercè Rodoreda, Folch i Torres i Joaquim Ruyra prizes will be announced and awarded returns again this year to the Catalan capital with a unique show created and directed by Paco Mir, of the group Tricicle.

Google Maps invents own Spanish names of Catalan streets, rendering the program useless (and incredibly offensive)

2011-12-16T14:08:00.003-05:00

This morning on Twitter, I saw that Google had decided to replace Catalan placenames with crazy, sometimes random, translations into Spanish. The hashtag #googlecat has quickly become a TT (trending topic) on Twitter as people around Catalonia are outraged that Google has decided to call Catalan places however they like.

Pretty incredible. You, dear non-Catalan reader, might think it's much ado about nothing, really, how much difference is there between "Plaça Catalunya" and "Plaza de Cataluña"? Who cares? But there are very large issues here, which I hope to address one by one.

First, the names of streets, squares, and roads are all in Catalan in Catalonia. If you're looking for a street, the only street sign you will find will be in Catalan. Google Maps won't do a fat lot of good to you if it's giving you a translation into Spanish. For example, one of the streets near my apartment is “Carrer de Sant Domènec" (or Saint Dominic street) but Google has it labeled as "Calle de San Domingo".

(Then, there's the added weirdness that you can't actually say "San Domingo", it would be "Santo Domingo".) There are many, many other bizarre translations. Things like "Verga María" [Cock Mary] (and I don't mean roosters) for "Verge Maria" [Virgin Mary]. Or changing the name of the town, “Sant Boi de Llobregat” into "San Baudillo de Llobregat".

Think it won't matter, that Catalan and Spanish are "close enough"? Try "Calle del Oxidado" instead of "Carrer Rovellat". Or "Rambla de la Colina" instead of "Rambla del Turó". Let's just say I wouldn't rely on Google Maps to get around Catalonia any more.

Vilaweb was finally able to get a first explanation from Google Spain about the problem. “The problem has to do with a database that was supplied by a third party and the technicians are working on updating it."

Ultimately, to Catalans who are continually feeling mistreated by the Spanish government, who will not stand up for the Catalan language in Spain, the European parliament or anywhere else, it feels like a crass political move by Google. Perhaps it's just a technical error, but I just don't have that faith anymore.

Interesting that names in English have not been translated into Spanish, as in Plaça John Lennon, which turned into "Plaza John Lennon" but not "Plaza Juan Lennon".

Check into Twitter and follow #googlecat to see egregious examples and anger. Follow Vilaweb for the latest news.

Creating Custom Sample EPUBs for Apple iBookstore

2011-12-15T16:04:00.000-05:00

When readers go the iBookstore and happen upon your book, they can download a sample to get an idea of what your book is like.

The sample file is downloaded to their iPad (or other iOS device) and the prospective customer can read a few pages of your book. When they get to the end of the sample, they are invited to purchase the book:

Apple will automatically create a sample file from your EPUB when you upload your book, using either the first chapter or 5% of the total word count, whichever is more.

If you'd like to offer some other quantity or selection of sample content, you can create a custom sample EPUB file.

First, make a copy of your final EPUB. You obviously don't want to work on the original! Make sure to delete the .iTunesMetadata.plist file if iTunes has unhelpfully and surreptitiously added it to your file.

Next, decide how much of your book you want to offer as a sample. I like to offer enough of the book to get a taste, but not so much that they don't need to buy my book! :)

Eliminate the files that shouldn't be part of your EPUB. For example, you might delete all of the XHTML files from Chapter 2 onward. If you have particularly long chapters, you might not even want to include the entire first chapter. In that case, eliminate the part of the XHTML file that should not be included in the sample. In this case, make sure that the code in the remaining file still validates (e.g., has all of the appropriate closing tags).

The next step is to go through the XHTML files that will be included and search for IMG to see which image files you'll need to keep. Then go through your OEBPS folder and actually eliminate the image files that are not used in the sample. Repeat this step for any other extra files (audios, video, pdfs) that may not be a part of the sample.

Since you've removed both XHTML files and media files, you'll have to remove their declarations from the <manifest> in the content.opf file. I keep my images folder open, gather the declarations for the "good" images at the top of the manifest, and then delete the rest with one fell swoop.

Don't forget to remove references to the non-included XHTML files in the spine and guide sections.

Next, get rid of all the links that refer to documents not included in the sample. For example, you might have a TOC that links to every chapter in your book.

Here's what the code looks like in my book:

<a href="EPUBwCS55-body-1.html#toc_marker-2-1-8">Columns</a>

And of course, each entry may have a different class, a different destination, and a different title.

I use GREP to quickly remove the links. And the links end up looking like this:

Columns

You can't have any links to files that are outside of your sample EPUB.

Hmm. Now that I think about it, it makes more sense to make the links remain, but go to the final page. I haven't tested it (and it may be two weeks before my next books is live on the iBookstore), but this is the GREP I will use:

(That lovely thing says "find a single link and remember the clickable text and then replace it with a link that goes to the buy button at the end of the book but keep the clickable text the same." Don't you love GREP?)

And here's how my code will look:

<a href="EPUBwCS55-body-1.html#com_apple_itunes_epub_end0000">Columns</a>

Notice that I'm changing all the links from the deleted files to the same target "EPUBwCS55-body-1.html#com_apple_itunes_epub_end0000".

Finally, the hardest part is to adjust the toc.ncx file so that the Table of Contents items in the non-included chapters appear in gray—so the prospective customer knows what will be available in the full book—but don't generate errors in EpubCheck (as the actual links would).

Here's a part of the toc.ncx file from my recently published “From InDesign CS 5.5 to EPUB and Kindle”:

<content src="EPUBwCS55-body-6.html#toc_marker-7-3-1"/>
...
<content src="EPUBwCS55-body-6.html#toc_marker-7-3-1"/>

But the "EPUBwCS55-body-6.html" document is beyond the scope of the sample. Change it as follows:

<content src="EPUBwCS55-body-1.html#com_apple_itunes_epub_end0001"/>
...
<content src="EPUBwCS55-body-1.html#com_apple_itunes_epub_end0002"/>

where “EPUBwCS55-body-1.html" is the last available file in your sample EPUB, and “com_apple_itunes_epub_end0000” ends in a unique, sequential number. Start with 0001 and increase by one for each grayed out link.

You'll also, at the end of the final document in your Sample EPUB, have to create a bunch of a tags whose id is equal to each of the com links you created:

Make sure you have as many ids as you do numbered coms in your toc.ncx file.

Any link that has the com_apple_itunes_epub_end0000 link will appear in gray in the navigational TOC.

Once, for Barcelona, Catalonia, by Matthew Tree, I grayed out some interior items because I wanted to include the afterward. It worked fine, though it might feel a little confusing to someone paging through the sample.

I usually have to run EpubCheck about six times to catch all of the missing bits. It probably won't take you as many passes, but I recommend you use it to make sure you've caught all the changes.

Once you've zipped your Sample EPUB up, you can attach it to your ebook in the Assets panel of the iTunes Producer window:

If you've got any suggestions for how to choose the content for a Sample, I'd love to hear what strategies you've used or considered.

Luxembourg's low VAT could give Amazon and Apple the edge in Europe

2011-12-14T12:04:00.001-05:00

A hugely important article crossed my Twitter stream this morning, thanks to Sacha Heck. It said that Luxembourg plans to apply its reduced 3% VAT to ebooks [fr]. At first glance, you might think it shouldn't matter a whole lot how the tiny country taxes ebooks, but it turns out that the rule in Europe is that VAT is applied according to the seller's country (not the buyer's). That means that any company who sells ebooks from Luxembourg will only have to collect 3% VAT.

Next consider that although the reduced rate VAT is applied to print books across the EU, up til now they have insisted on classifying ebooks as services and applying the regular rate. That regular rate ranges anywhere from a current low of 15% (in Luxembourg, surprise!) to 25% in Sweden. The Huffington Post cites this application of the regular VAT rate on ebooks as one of the major reasons Why the UK is behind America for Ebook and E-reader Adoption.

This has two major effects. First, it makes it harder for publishers to deliver ebooks at competitive prices with respect to their print books. And second, ebook sellers in countries with lower VAT will have a huge competitive advantage over local sellers in countries with higher VAT. Sometimes the difference between print VAT and ebook VAT is as much as 20%.

Take Spain for example. The regular VAT is 18%. So an ebook that "costs" 20€ without VAT will cost 23.60€ including VAT. But if you buy that same book in (or from!) Luxembourg, it'll only cost you 20.60€. That's a big difference. Add that to the fact that many (most?) European countries have fixed pricing rules on books and you get a significant competitive advantage.

France has been threatening to lower the VAT rate for ebooks for months, promising to bring it down to 5.5% in January. But in the UK, just yesterday in an article in The Register Treasury Minister David Gauke said their hands were tied: “Under EU law, VAT on electronic books must be charged at the standard rate.”

Luxembourg doesn't seem to think so. But who's going to sell books from Luxembourg? Shoot, where is Luxembourg*? The answer is Amazon and Apple, of course, who already have their European headquarters (and tax homes) there and anyone else who wants an immediate advantage over their competitors. Amazon has made a fortune in the US by carefully avoiding having to charge customers sales tax. (In the US, you don't have to charge sales tax to residents of states where you don't have a tax presence yourself.) It clearly hopes to follow the same strategy in Europe.

(Photo by Wesley Oostvogels, used with Creative Commons permissions.)

Luxembourg, of course, is in the center of Europe, occupying about 1000 square miles, and home to half a million people.

From InDesign CS 5.5 to EPUB and Kindle

2011-12-09T17:25:00.001-05:00

I am proud to announce a new Straight to the Point Miniguide: From InDesign CS 5.5 to EPUB and Kindle. The digital edition bundle—which includes EPUB, Kindle/Mobi, and PDF formats—is available right now, and it will be available in print soon.

This new miniguide, 76 pages in length, explains all the new features that Adobe added to InDesign CS 5.5 and how to take advantage of them when creating ebooks, both in EPUB and Kindle formats. It is not a beginner's book and assumes that you have some basic knowledge of both InDesign and EPUB itself. If you have my EPUB Straight to the Point, I think you’ll find it very useful.

The digital editions of From InDesign CS 5.5 to EPUB and Kindle cost $10 but for a limited time, I'm offering a 30% discount on my website to anyone who has already bought my EPUB Straight to the Point book (in any format and from any vendor). Just send me a proof of purchase (a receipt is good!) and I’ll send you a coupon. If you bought EPUB Straight to the Point from me, you should have a note from me in your inbox with the coupon inside.

Here's the table of contents so you can have an idea of what's inside:

InDesign to ebook in 10 steps

Envisioning your book

What can you do in an ebook?

Running headers/footers

Page numbers

Fonts

Text size

Other text formatting

Spacing, page breaks, and orphans

Alignment

Columns

Drop caps and all caps

Non-Latin characters and other symbols

Images

Borders and background colors

Table of contents and index

Hyphenation

Links

Tables

Audio and video

Creating your book in InDesign

Creating a template

Saving a template

The importance of styles

Creating a cover

Generating a cover from the first page

Placing images and controlling export order

Using inline objects to control export order

Custom positioned anchored objects

Using articles to control export order

Placing and exporting audio and video

Creating links

Creating hyperlinks

Creating cross references

Creating footnotes

Formatting footnotes

Creating a navigational TOC

Generating a TOC

Mapping tags to export

Specifying metadata

Exporting to EPUB

Adding more metadata

Generating a cover

Ordering the contents upon export

Margins, lists, and ADE

Options when exporting images

Image Size and Alignment

Image formats

Navigating the Contents panel

Looking at the CSS options

Using Existing CSS

Ready to export!

Cracking open EPUBs

Why I still crack open InDesign EPUB files

New issues

How do you crack open an EPUB?

Opening EPUB files in BBEdit

Converting to Kindle/mobi

Creating Kindle-friendly EPUBs

Body text

Page breaks

Spacing

Text wrap

Borders and background color

Fonts

Covers

Table of contents

Marking where a book should open

Images

Converting a Kindle-friendly EPUB to Kindle/mobi

Using embedded fonts in iBooks

Additional Resources

Index

I hope you find this new miniguide useful. Let me know what you think!

I've just added a Complete EPUB Package to my website. Digital editions of all four miniguides, EPUB Straight to the Point, and Barcelona Beyond Gaudí for just $39.

And that lovely cover was designed in Blender, Cheetah3D, and Photoshop by Andreu Cabré.

iBooks 1.5 increases page size by about 15%

2011-12-07T06:45:00.001-05:00

Apple released version 1.5 of their iBooks ereader app last night. The biggest improvement to iBooks 1.5 is undoubtedly the new Full Screen mode. To access it, click the Font menu, and then click Theme in the pop-up menu. Then turn on Full Screen at the bottom of the extended menu.

Full Screen mode hides the faux pages, the faux spine, the space between those faux pages and the edge of the screen, etc. and increases the size of the page about 15%.

Here's what my upcoming book on InDesign CS 5.5 to EPUB and Kindle looks like with and without the chrome in vertical orientation:

Notice that there's hardly any difference vertically. Though you can see the line endings change ever so slightly, I couldn't measure any difference. The old page measured 560px wide by 760px, and the new page measures 560px by 850px high.

And here's what the horizontal two-page view looks like now, with chrome:

and without:

Of course, the pages reflow when you go from Full Screen to Normal view, and so it's hard to compare two pages that are exactly the same. In my test, my book takes up 205 pages in normal view and only 178 in Full Screen, a difference of about 15%.

With chrome, a small page (in horizontal view) measures 400px by 540px high. In Full Screen mode, the page now measures 410px by 600px.

iBooks also removed three existing fonts—Baskerville, Cochin, and Verdana—and replaced them with new ones with curious, or at least lesser known names: Athelas, Charter, Iowan, and Seravek. I wonder if this is a licensing thing? Here's what they look like:

Athelas:

Charter:

Iowan:

Seravek:

They've also changed the highlighting system slightly, and added a Night-reading theme which darkens the background so it's easier on your eyes and your sleeping companions. Indeed, it not only darkens the background, it eliminates it completely. Watch out if you have any images with white backgrounds, the white will stand out:

That will have to be fixed! (I'm hoping to get From InDesign CS 5.5 to EPUB and Kindle out the door today or tomorrow... more details soon.)

Kindle Store and Kindle Direct Publishing open in Spain and Italy

2011-12-01T10:38:00.001-05:00

Wow, Amazon has just opened both the Kindle Store and Kindle Direct Publishing in Spain and Italy.

This means that people in those countries can self-publish their ebooks to the Amazon ecosystem and it also means that existing self-publishers on Amazon KDP, including folks in the US, will receive 70% of royalties from sales in Spain and Italy (as well as San Marino, Vatican City, and Andorra). Up until now, only sales to customers in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Great Britain, Guernsey, Germany, Isle of Man, Jersey, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Switzerland, and the US received royalties of 70% (sales to customers in other countries only receive 35%)

Amazon has translated most of the self-publishing help files into Spanish and Italian, simply click on the language button at the top of the Kindle Direct Publishing site:

I would recommend going carefully through the legal and tax information. Amazon recommends taking advantage of the tax treaties between countries in order to avoid double-taxation. Such a tax treaty exists at least between Spain and the US, I'm not sure about Italy.

For starters, Amazon says there are 22,000 books in Spanish for Kindle on the Amazon Kindle store. And I just found 1028 Kindle books in Catalan, 68 books in Galician, and 138 in Basque. There are 16,262 in Italian. Amazon says in its documentation that it only allows books in Spanish, French, German, English, Portuguese, and Italian, but that clearly is not the case, at least not for big publishers.

Too bad I can't buy any of them. Looks like you have to have an account on Amazon.es in order to buy them. That's pretty ridiculous, this is the perfect opportunity for a small publisher to reach out to the world. My books published in the US are available on Amazon.es, now I would like to see those Catalan books available on Amazon.com. Please?