Thursday 2 September 2010

Down to Earth 2nd September 2010.

After the euphoria of yesterday it’s down to earth with a bump, if you will pardon the deliberate cliché.

The list of technical requirements to upload our work to Content Reserve is daunting to say the least. Let me give you a sample – and I mean a sample:

1. We have to supply metadata (that’s title, author, description etc), in a specific spreadsheet format according to their template. Only thing is they haven’t sent me the template yet – ask the support department for it.

2. The book covers have to be sent to them at a particular minimum size (which is larger than the maximum size used by every retailer we deal with direct. The problem with resizing jpegs to suit is every time you do this the image quality may degrade. Especially when you are increasing as opposed to decreasing. The size they want is in fact larger than the size they use so it’ll be resized a minimum of twice.

3. All files must follow a strict naming convention – using the ISBN numbers as the file name followed by the file type as the extension. Not a problem you’d think – except do they mean a 10 digit or a 13 digit ISBN – and do you leave the dashes in or take them out? Not clearly explained – ask the support department.

4. Epub files (Apple, Adobe Digital Editions etc) – please submit a set of between 5 and 15 files for quality check before proceeding. You are not told where to send them – you guessed it ask the support department.

5. Microsoft Reader files – you need to set certain security parameters that don’t exist in the program we use to create them. Going to have to investigate those.

6. PDF files – remove all existing security features – they’ll add the DRM to replace them.

7. Kindle files – please send files with level 4 security only (this prepares them for DRM but prevents you from opening them on your own Kindle or mobipocket reader to check them first).

I don’t have a problem with them wanting things their way, after all so does everyone else – it’s simply a rather long list and it’s going to take some considerable time to resolve all issues – especially if they decide the Epub files don’t match their quality conditions. As far as I’m aware, from the retailers who give us feedback and our own site sales we haven’t sold a single Microsoft Reader version, so I suspect point 5 will become depreciated.

Seeing we are talking upward of 90 existing books at the moment, and many more in the pipeline, several of which will be published before this process has been completed, I could very well be here till Xmas....

No comments:

Post a Comment