For the past few weeks, often bravely battling on despite
the wintery weather, I have been playing with sorbets and granitas. It’s hell
writing cookbooks! Now, at last, I have tried all my ideas, taken pics, written
about the recipes, eaten the results and finally published a little ebook which
looks like this!
It is really as an addendum to my ice cream book because
there were some ideas and recipes I wanted to include but they didn't fit.
There is, however, even more to this story. After writing my
ice cream book which I originally titled “Lush Ice Cream without a Machine” but
have now slightly re-named as “100+ Luscious Ice Creams without a Machine”, it
occurred to me that I know several other useful, super-flexible base recipes. I
have therefore devised a cunning plan.
I have decided to publish a few more eBooks each one
dedicated to one of these key recipes under the series title “Suzy Bowler’s Key
Recipes”.
So, after I uploaded “Sorbets and Granitas” I adjusted my ice
cream book a little, to bring it in line with this new series of which, to be
fair, it was the first. Don’t worry if you've already bought it, all the recipes are the same, I've just added links
to this new book and more photos. Click here to have a look at it in detail or even buy it – surely it will be spring soon!
For some reason this caused me all sorts of problems and I
spent the whole day “sitting on the settee” (as my darling calls it even though
I was on a hard wooden chair) trying to upload it to Amazon. I still don’t know
what the problem was. Sometimes the photos were in the wrong place when I
previewed the book, sometimes it just wouldn't upload. I did exactly the same
as I usually do and as this is my 5th self-published ebook (read about the whole set here) I
have uploaded, so far), I am befuddled.
Anyway it worked in the end and I have no idea why it did,
either! I think it was probably a glitch on Amazon rather than something I was
doing wrong – I’m never wrong!
So as I am never wrong here, briefly, is how I (usually
successfully) prepare, convert and upload my ebooks.
To prepare a book for Amazon Kindle
~ Have the finished
document in Word.
~ Add any photos in
their correct place using the insert photo method (not copy and paste or
anything else!). Pictures should ideally be in the proportions 9:1I. I usually
make mine 900 pixels wide but sometimes less than 1100 pixels high, that just
means it doesn’t fill the page.
~ Modify the
“Normal” Style to Times New Roman, font size 12, single line space. Within
Normal set the Paragraph style to 6 points after a paragraph and 6 points
indent, if you like, for a new paragraph.
Save these modifications.
~ Highlight the
whole document (press cntrl A) and set it all to Normal.
~ You will now have
to go through the document re-setting such things as centring, bold and
italic. Don’t have any unusual fonts or
anything larger than 14.
~ If in some places,
such as lists of ingredients in my case, you don’t want a break after a line or
paragraph press Shift/Enter instead of just Enter.
To convert a book for Amazon Kindle
~ Save the prepared
document as Web Page, Filtered to Desktop.
You will then see this …
~ Say YES.
~ Right click on the
document on your desktop (as it is now in HTML it will be have the same icon as
your browser), go down to Send To and select compressed zip file.
~ If your document
included photos open the zip file that has appeared on the desktop using
Windows Explorer.
~ There should also have
appeared a separate folder on the desktop containing your photos. Drag and drop
this into the zip file you have just opened with Windows Explorer.
To upload a book to Amazon’s Kindle
~ Go to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing.
~ Sign up, log in
and follow the instructions!
Easy Peasy (Usually Pusually)!
Free Book!
Speaking of self-published books, if you’d like a copy of my
“219 Cooking Tips & Techniques you might find useful” pop over to Sudden Lunch and click the link in the sidebar.
There is an option to sign up for my Sudden Lunch! posts to be delivered
straight to your inbox, it’s not compulsory but you might like them!
