I just looked at all those ‘Follow’ buttons on the right side of my blog page and felt guilty. Why should anyone follow me? I don’t know where I’m going.
Happy New Year
Category: Technology
In Praise of Calibre
Calibre is a free program that lets you download, read and convert ebooks and even send them to another device. The converting might be the best bit of all.
A publisher sent me a book to review in mobi file. I sent it to my kindle address. All I got on my kindle was a silly icon in the top left corner that I could do nothing with. I checked online and this sort of thing seems to happen a lot with books not bought from Amazon even if they are in mobi. Amazon likes you to buy your books there and is not big on sharing. (Most other ebook sellers make them available in multiple formats)
The solution is to put the book on Calibre and convert it, rather madly, from mobi to mobi. Calibre (on whom a thousand blessings) then has an easy two click way to send it to your email kindle address and when it arrives it’s a readable book not a silly icon in the top left corner of the screen. Hurrah!
It may be that some files have DRM or other protection that messes up kindle transmission so it isn’t necessarily Amazon’s fault. In any case, Calibre was made for sharing and it’s absolutely free, though they like donations and deserve one from me today. I just sent them $10 via Paypal.
This ‘give the service free and rely on donations’ model might work for me. $10 is about 30 x 35 cents and I will have to sell 30 books to get it. I wish I could. I can only give them away. Which reminds me that my books are now available on Group Giveaway at Instafreebie with lots of other good books. Click on blue for the Gothic Horror Giveaway featuring Arnos Hell and on this other bit of blue for the Horror and Thriller Giveaway featuring Five Little Horrors. Consarn Christmas and Other Stories features on the rather nice Best of British Science Fiction Giveaway which starts tomorrow.
Calibre also have an Audio Library, bless them.
P.S. I can’t afford a WordPress plan with a Patreon button but if anyone is grateful after reading one of my free books and wants to give me money the Paypal address is bigfootmurf@hotmail.com
Smashwords have a system where you can pay what you think the book is worth. I’m not sure how that works out for authors.
Is there a Mailchimp for chimps?
I think I sent my first newsletter today to people who joined my mailing list through Instafreebie and got free books. I think I sent one. I may have sent two.
Around lunchtime, I sent a welcome to the mailing list. Then I noticed you can set it up to automatically send a welcome when someone else signs up. I may have accomplished this but I’m not at all sure. Mailchimp is complicated. But then, so are Smashwords Meatgrinder and WordPress when you first use them.
They should have chimp friendly versions of all these sites to help old people who can’t cope with new technology.
I don’t intend to pester my mailing list with incessant egotistical news but I will send a notification when I have a new book out.
