Bringing Pick Your Path Books to E-Readers

When e-readers came out, it seemed that choose your own adventure style books would be an obvious choice.  Rather than having to go to a certain page that corresponds with your choice, you simply press a button.  It would be the book version of a video game.

It turns out, it wasn’t that easy.  Since there are no page numbers in e-readers, one cannot program the book to go to a certain page.  It has to be programmed in.

I met some people online who were making a program for this, and I joined them in creating content to go into their application.  Since I’m building on the Relic Worlds universe, I made three books that followed Lancaster and Little Jack.  The program turned out to be a failure for several reasons, but I had put so much time and effort into these, I didn’t want it all to go to waste.  So I set about finding a way to make them work with e-readers.

At first it was beyond me.  Their program had been quite complicated; an entire app dedicated to choose your own adventure style books.  I needed a programmer, or at least a pre-made template.  I looked high and low and couldn’t find anything.  The answer seemed so close, yet so far away.

Then I was talking with a friend of mine, Brent McKibbin, who’s a bit of a tech genius, and he said it was pretty simple.  All it took was making the various pages you needed to go to into chapter numbers.

You see, all e-readers have a table of contents page.  Each entry has a link to its corresponding chapter.  So you already have linking pages from there.  In a choose your own adventure style book, all you need to do is put those links in the choices readers make.

The first step, of course, was to create the choose your own adventure.  (I call mine Pick Your Path to avoid copyright infringement.)  I will be posting a blog with a link here at a later time going into detail about how I lay out and create a choose your own adventure style book.

Second, I lay it all out on the pages.  After every list of choices I have a page break.  At the start of every segment, I have a new page number.  I do not put page numbers on every page.  This makes finding them easier.  After writing the segment, I place the choices, providing the page numbers they correspond with.  This will, of course, become the paperback version, as the page numbers and choices with the page numbers will correspond correctly to a physical version of the book.  (Note, only place page breaks after choices.  Never place page breaks anywhere else.

Third, I select the first sentence of every segment and make it a chapter heading.  (I’ll put the technical aspects of this in another blog and connect it here.)  I title each chapter heading after its corresponding page number.  (Leave the page numbers there for now.)

Fourth, at every choice, I select the choice and link it to the page number it’s supposed to go to.  I then delete the page number listed after the choice.  (But I still leave the page numbers at the tops of every page.)

Fifth, When I have gone through and linked every choice with a page, I then delete every page number from the tops of every page.  Now, when a reader reads my book, they’ll go through the beginning, then reach the point where there are choices and it’ll stop.  The choices will be highlighted, and when the reader touches one of them, it’ll take them to that choice.

At this point, readers will be able to swipe to the next page past the choices.  This can be left there with an explanation at the beginning that readers aren’t supposed to do this.  However, it can be blocked through technical means.  This is a bit more complicated, which I’ll go into in the technical entry.

Early Vlogbrothers

I've been going through the history of the Vlogbrothers videos.  I think their work is important to study for anyone doing independent work in any field, (although, ironically, John Green has been critical of self-publishing, which I think is a bit hypocritical since his success is due largely to independent video production.  But I guess that's TOTALLY different.)

Anyway, so I've gotten through all of 2007 when they began, and I started 2008.  It's interesting to note the number of viewers for each.  Though they run one of the most popular shows on Youtube, some of them don't have a huge number of viewers, particularly in these middle years when they didn't have a huge amount of attention yet, and they're not the beginning that people go back to see for nostalgic reasons.  But here is one that's a spike.  I find these spikes interesting because they show something that people have looked for or stumbled upon for whatever reason.

Narrating your own book

When I decided to do my own audiobook, I dove in head first.  I didn't think it would take a really long time, so I set up my booth the way my neighbor instructed, (he was a sound engineer for Tower Records,) and started going.  It took me a year and a half to complete, (much of it being in editing, taking out my stammers.)

When I was finally ready to upload, I came across Audibles advice for authors preparing to narrate their own work.  I wish I had seen it earlier.

http://www.acx.com/help/authors-as-narrators/200626860

Going to be in Nebraska for a Couple Weeks

I'm going to Nebraska for a couple weeks to do some signings, talking, teaching, and even take place in an 1800s period base ball game!  Here are the dates:

Friday, October 10 - 9:00 am - On the radio on Friday Live on NET radio, being interviewed by the great Genevieve Randall.

Saturday, October 11 - 1:30 - 3:00 - Appearance at A Novel Idea.  I will be signing copies of The American Game and Relic Worlds, and will be beginning to take pre-orders for the upcoming Two Gun Hart, which is due out next March.

Sunday, October 12 - 1:00 - ??? - Signing copies of The American Game at Arbor Lodge in Nebraska City.  I'll also probably take part in the vintage base ball game taking place on the yard.

Friday, October 17 - 1:00 - 2:30 - Speaking at the OLLI at UNL.  Taking place at NET.

Sunday, October 19 - 1:00 - ??? - I'll be at Bennett Martin Library for the 12th Victim talk.  (I actually won't be speaking at this one, but it should be an interesting event that I recommend everyone go to.)

Putting Together an Audio Book

Audible now distributes independently published audiobooks, which is great news for us independent authors.  Now all we need to do is read our books into a microphone to distribute them, right?

Turns out, it’s a bit harder than that; at least for those of us who have a bad stammer and aren’t used to acting.

The first thing we did was made my computer cabinet into a mini studio.  My neighbor at the time I did this happened to be a semi-professional recording artist.  Though I didn’t have a recording studio, I have doors on my cabinet that can be closed in around me, and when he put blankets on each door and above me, the recording into a mic in front of my screen looked great.  I read the book off the monitor as I spoke just above the microphone.  (Staying above it reduces pops; as does having a sock over the microphone.

Reading wasn’t so difficult; although I struggled with my mild form of dyslexia, stumbling over my words constantly.  I would have to fix it in post.  This involved going through after I was completely done and cutting every point where I stammered.  Recording took weeks, but post took months; so much so that the entire process took me more than a year and a half.  Now I know why audiobooks are so expensive.

I had done this one myself instead of getting an actor because I wanted to see the whole process.  (Also, for some reason, when I started it I thought it would go faster that way.  And I’m in the book, so I figured it would sound better when I said “I” to actually be the one speaking.)  I learned partway through that you can go to Audible and hook up with a reader through them.  Audible even splits the profits between you.  That’s what I will be doing from now on.