Hot off the ePresses!

After waiting a little too long for my self-publishing publisher iUniverse to offer a separate add-on for Kindle formatting, I have taken the bull by the horns and created a brand-spanking new Kindle version of “Silver Shoes.” I own the digital rights (all rights, actually), so why not? I did it via their suggestion, too. When I first published my book back in March of 2009, they offered only a generic eBook as part of their publishing package along with hardcover and trade paperback editions. Kindle and all digital-media formats are now offered as part of their standard packages at no extra charge. But for “older” published books like mine from 2009, they haven’t stepped up to the plate with an add-on line item, even at an additional charge. The eBook version of “Silver Shoes” available since Day One is in the Adobe PDF format, and most new readers (not the older ones, sadly) can import PDF files via USB ports and other such “hard transfer” options just fine.

Still, it wasn’t Kindle. You couldn’t increase font size, change viewing orientation, background color, create bookmarks, and a variety of other handy options that avid Kindle readers have come to enjoy and expect from their eBooks. So here it is at last!

“Silver Shoes” Kindle cover!

You may notice that the book cover (or eCover, in this case) differs from the hard-copy editions … or “dead-tree books,” as I’ve heard them lovingly called for some time now. That is because as long “Silver Shoes” stays in print through iUniverse, they own the rights to the original cover art. I had them design the actual illustration of the tornado barreling down a Kansas highway after sending them a crude mockup of how I wanted it to look. But it’s my title treatment and lettering. I designed those after rejecting their first attempt (it was very Art  Deco lettering and looked too much like MGM’s 1939 “Oz,” which wasn’t right for my story at all). Still, the beautiful original background artwork is theirs until I terminate my agreement with them, which I can do at any time. At that point, I have an option in my contract to buy the artwork outright at a predetermined price (not a bad rate at all, actually). But I can’t do that until their editions are pulled from publication … which I have no intention of doing right now.

So I used the poster artwork logo that I created with the silver lettering and the eerie rays of light shooting through them. If you’ve read the story, you know exactly where this comes from. It looks pretty dang good, I think. Certainly good enough for a Kindle cover!

Everything else is the same. All the text, that is … with one nice exception: I was able to correct the handful of typos discovered after the initial publication. I’m happy to report that “Silver Shoes” contains very few typos in the hard-copy editions, but it does have a few … and they’ve now been fixed for the Kindle edition.

The book just went “live” on Amazon.com today! So the internal “convenience” links to the hardcover and trade paperback editions aren’t listed yet as optional formats for purchase. And the product reviews aren’t there yet either. By the way, a huge thank-you to any and all of you who took the time to write and publish a review of my book on this site—I couldn’t be more pleased with them! Some of you I know personally, and some I don’t. So thanks to everyone for the encouraging words and comments! The added information I mentioned will be up and running in the next three to five days, or so Amazon tells me.

But the Kindle book itself is ready for purchasing and downloading now! It’s a fast, easy, and convenient way to own a copy of “Silver Shoes.”

Also, for those of you who don’t own a Kindle …
you can download your FREE Kindle reader now!

Available for your Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Just click the hyperlink here for the device you want, and you’ll be reading Kindle books in minutes. Lots of free classics (in the public domain) right off the bat, too!

UPDATE:  At last! iUniverse has created a cohesive and comparable Kindle version of my book, so I have removed my original Kindle version and linked to theirs. All covers and text now match, regardless of format. Progress is being made!