EdwardCook.com
Thoughts and Happenings
iBookstore Progress
Aug 28th
Well, it looks like things are improving for those who want to make submissions to the iBookstore. In my earlier posts I complained that the second book I tried to submit kept giving me an import error, and despite many contacts with iBookstore support, they could never really tell me how to fix the problem or really where to find the problem–just that somewhere in the ePub was an “unallowed character.” I finally decided to lay the whole thing to rest for a while, but then the other day my interest got sparked again and I decided to see if I could figure out where this unallowed character was. I began searching online for tools that would help me in the search. Before actually downloading or buying any of the tools I found, I decided to try submitting the book one more time to see if Apple’s reporting of errors had improved to the point where they would tell me where to find the problem. And lo and behold! After changing NOTHING in the submitted file, my book was accepted and is now showing up as “pending” in my iTunes Connect account! Hopefully within a few days it will be available for purchase in the iBookstore.
Divisive Leaders
Jul 24th
In our adult Sunday school class we’ve been doing a somewhat in-depth study of 1 Corinthians. We’ve progressed as far as chapter 3 and this coming Sunday (well, tomorrow actually!) we’ll be looking at verses 10 and onwards. It’s a very powerful passage. My main purpose for this blog post though is to quote something I found on Bible.org by Bob Deffinbaugh. Those who know me well will know immediately which “leader” came to mind when I read his comments. Here’s what he says:
I know of several men whose failures have caused great damage to the church and to the cause of the gospel. There seems to be one common element in these disasters—the men who fell were so powerful, and their control so great, that they seemed almost “unstoppable.” The reason for this: these leaders were so elevated and revered in the minds of their followers that they were considered beyond the temptations and sins of mankind. When men are elevated too highly in the minds of their followers, the people begin to think their leaders are infallible, that they are above the sins we see in ordinary people. And so they refuse to believe the evidences of sin, even when they are compelling. Even if they are guilty of known sin, no one seems to feel sufficiently qualified to attempt to rebuke or correct them.
The problem of esteeming leaders too highly starts very subtly and innocently. It begins with a deep respect and appreciation, often because this individual has led them to Christ, or that he (or she) has significantly contributed to their spiritual growth. This one person is given excessive credit for the work of God and elevated to a position of authority above what should be given to men. Allegiance to this leader becomes a status symbol in which followers take great pride. Out of this misguided allegiance, they feel obligated to ignore or even oppose other Christian leaders.
Elevating any human leader more than we should is a huge mistake, and can have devastating consequences in our spiritual lives, as Paul tried to show the Corinthians.
Abraham Lincoln
Jul 9th
Last night we visited the Lincoln Amphitheatre in Lincoln State Park, Lincoln City, Indiana. I had been to the amphitheatre a couple of times several years ago to watch a play about Abraham Lincoln’s early years, concentrating on the time he spent in Indiana, and also a rendition of Fiddler on the Roof. The theatre closed down in 2005, but was reopened last year. I have to say that I was a bit disappointed. The actual play was not as good as the one I remembered seeing there some years ago. The current one is too difficult to follow. It begins with Lincoln’s assassination, and then has flashbacks to his boyhood years in Indiana, combined with flashbacks of his presidency and the Civil War. The cast did an excellent job. I just think the script was not the greatest. Seems like maybe they tried to cram too much into a short space, or having two storylines running together was confusing or something. On the upside, they did throw in a lot of good quotes from Lincoln, which were interesting (but mostly already forgotten!), and the guy who played Lincoln as president did an excellent job. Also, it seems like the acoustics weren’t as good as what I remember from before. I had a really hard time telling what people were saying. You had to listen very carefully and watch their mouths move. And to make matters worse, a pretty good thunderstorm came through, which made it even harder to hear for a while. Oh well. My kids all said they enjoyed it so I suppose that’s worth something.
July 4th Party, 2010
Jul 5th
Below are a few photos snapped at the July 4th party, 2010, which as usual was held in the hay field on the Hilltop. Click on a photo to enlarge it. Click anywhere to close the enlargement.
Update on iBook Submission
Jul 3rd
Here’s an update to my June 5th post about submitting to the iBookstore. Pastoral Letters was finally accepted and as of today I’ve sold 13 copies, which means I’ve sold several more to iBook users than to Kindle users, and in a much shorter timeframe. So prospects are good for that title. The Way of the Cross is a different story. I’ve submitted it about 8 times now, and each time get a mysterious “import error.” I’ve written to iBookstore support a number of times, and finally got a response from a rep called Sandi who said she would look into the error and for me to check the status again on Tuesday, July 6th. As I sell a lot more of Mantle’s book than I do of the McCheyne title, prospects are good that once it goes live I could see some good sales numbers. I’m toying with whether to sell the ePub versions of both these books from the Kingsley Press web site also. People could download the files and then sync them to their iPod Touch or iPad using iTunes.
Fun at Holiday World
Jun 30th
Yesterday our family went to Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana, for a day of family fun. The weather was absolutely perfect. We had tried to assemble a group to go with, but weren’t successful. (Last year we had a group of 30+ so go figure!) We went all around the park trying to take in all possible rides and then told the kids they could go back to whatever they liked the best. Hot favorites were the Raging Rapids (which Lydia insisted on calling the Raging Rabbits), the Frightful Falls, the Bumper Cars (Alan), and the Carousel. We arrived before they opened and left at closing time, so I’d say we got our money’s worth. The kids had the time of their lives. Angela and I had both gone with the determination that this was going to be all about the kids, not us. I don’t remember one cross word between any of us. It was certainly a day to remember. Check out the pics with this post.
Prayer Meeting
Jun 24th
Last night was my turn to take Wednesday night prayer meeting. The crowd was at an all time low due to so many being out at camp meetings, etc. but nevertheless we had a good time. My topic was “Loving God with All Your Mind” (click on that title to read the full text). I had originally thought about finishing what I started in my last year’s talk, which was about the Lord’s Supper, but decided against it. Then I toyed with talking about Repentance. I really wonder if we don’t have a very shallow idea of repentance these days. I began reading several books on the subject, but the more I read and researched, the more the topic seemed to wither away on me. Then somehow I stumbled on to this idea of loving God with all our minds, and the more I thought about it and studied into it, the more it came alive. I read through the whole of J. P. Moreland’s book, Love Your God With All Your Mind and scanned Gene Edward Veith’s Loving God With All Your Mind. I wished I had more time for Veith’s book but I discovered it too late. Anyway, my turn at prayer meeting is over for another year!
Submitting books to the iBookstore
Jun 5th
On May 27th I read on MacNN.com that Apple were allowing smaller, independent publishers to submit their books to the iBookstore. I followed the provided link and was soon giving Apple all kinds of personal and financial information like my social security number, bank account number, and other stuff they claimed they needed in order for me to sell books on the iBookstore. I had to agree to all kinds of terms and conditions. I had to prove I was an existing publisher and submit example ISBNs.
Finally, everything was complete, and I was informed that it could take anything from several weeks to several months to be approved as an iTunes content provider. As it turned out, I waited all of five minutes, and received an email telling me I’d been accepted and that I could now sign a contract, download the iTunes Producer software, and start preparing my titles for submission to the iBookstore.
I have to say that the process of actually preparing the books for the iBookstore was fairly smooth because in the case of Pastoral Letters I already had a suitable ePUB file due to my submission to the Kindle Store. And that experience helped me greatly in preparing The Way of the Cross for iBooks.
iTunes Producer is a typical piece of Apple software. It guides you through the process of preparing your title for submission. The only problem I had at this point was that the filename for my The Way of the Cross ePUB had a period in it and this is not allowed. However, I didn’t learn this through a nice, informative error message. I just got a very vague message saying my book couldn’t be submitted and asking me if I wanted to submit an error report to Apple. Well yes, of course I did. How else was I going to know what the problem was? After submitting the error report three times (for good measure), I decided to read it, and figured out that the extra period in the filename was what it was hollering about. I took that out, resubmitted, and the book was accepted. Or was it?
Apparently not. I waited a while to see if the books would just show up in the iBookstore on my iPad. They didn’t. I logged into my iTunesConnect account and clicked on “Manage Your Books” and it said “You have no books to manage.” Really? I thought you told me I successfully submitted two titles?
Waiting still didn’t get me anywhere, so I wrote to iBookstore support. I got a very brief reply from one of their techs saying that there was a file in the ePUB archives that was not listed in the ePUB manifest. Hmmm. Well I’m sure glad the iTunes Producer told me that! Turns out that only Pastoral Letters had the offending extra file. I removed it, resubmitted the book, and it’s now showing up in my iTunesConnect account as “Pending.” The Way of the Cross is still missing in action though. I’ve written to iBookstore support twice to ask them why. So far I’ve heard nothing.
So, either the folks at Apple are having problems with the iBookstore or they are being overwhelmed with submissions now that they’ve opened it to more publishers. We’ll just have to wait and see.
eBook Progress
Jun 3rd
I’m pretty sure that when Steve Jobs announced earlier this year that Apple’s iBooks application for the (then) upcoming iPad would use the ePUB format I’d never heard of it before. eBooks I had purchased up to that time were usually in .prc or Kindle format (.mobi).
For months now whenever I have logged into my Amazon Advantage account (I sell books through Amazon.com and they keep a small inventory of each title) I’ve been reminded that I should be making all my published titles available to the multitudes of folks who are reading books on their Kindles. So I finally gave in and started looking into it. Come to find out that one of the best ways to get books onto the Kindle platform if you are using InDesign CS4 (I am) is to export the publication to ePUB first, and then use a program called Calibre to convert to .mobi, which is the Kindle’s native format.
It all sounds so easy doesn’t it. You open your book in InDesign, go to File>Export for Digital Editions, choose your export options, and click Go. Ahhhh. If only!
The first thing I learned is that you really should break the document up into separate InDesign documents for each chapter. Not trivial when you have created each of your books as one long document. Breaking them into chapters makes it easier for ebook reading devices to load the pages to be displayed. It also means that during the export, InDesign will create a table of contents that will be used by the ebook reader to provide easy navigation for your readers.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I successfully converted Pastoral Letters to Kindle format and within a few days it became available for sale on Amazon’s Kindle Store. I downloaded a free sample (first 10 pages) so I could see how it performed on the Kindle app for iPad. I quickly found some shortcomings in the formatting and made some edits and re-uploaded it. After that, I purchased my own copy. Cool.
Since then I have uploaded a second book to the Kindle Store, The Way of the Cross by J. Gregory Mantle. As of this writing it has been accepted by the review team but will not appear on the store for another 24-36 hours. I sell ten times more of these on Amazon.com than I do of Pastoral Letters, so it will be interesting to see how they sell in Kindle format.
In my next post I’ll tell about my experiences submitting books to Apple for the iBookstore.
iLove my iPad!
May 24th
What’s not to like about a device that lets you surf the internet, check email, read ebooks (including Kindle books from Amazon.com), and play games; and do it all on a gorgeous touch screen that can be viewed well at almost any angle?
I guess as a publisher/distributor of books produced with paper and ink, I shouldn’t be so into the whole electronic book craze, but I am. I’ve been reading ebooks on my iPod Touch for a year and a half now with apps like eReader and the Kindle app. And the same goes for the Bible: I almost never read a paper and ink Bible any more. And the iPad just made it easier and more enjoyable than ever!
One of my favorite books of all time is A. W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God. Just the other day I downloaded a Kindle version of this book for $0.99. That’s crazy! And with the Kindle app, I can make notes and highlights. And guess what, if I make a highlight on my iPad, that highlight gets transferred to my iPod copy of the book! It also remembers where I finished reading. So if I am on page 65 when I finish reading on the iPad in the morning, if my wife picks up the iPad in the evening, I can resume reading the book on my iPod and it will take me to page 65 automatically. I don’t even have to remember where I was or put in a bookmark. I don’t know about you, but to me that’s awesome.
The iPad is also the best platform, in my view, for Bible reading and study. How else could you have a boat load of Bible translations and hundreds of reference works, commentaries, Bible dictionaries, etc. all at your fingertips on one touchscreen device? I have two Bible programs, one from Logos and one from Laridian, called PocketBible. They are both great programs in their own right. Both are “universal” apps, which means they run on iPod or iPad (when you launch the program, they detect which platform you are on and adjust accordingly).
One of the best features of the iPad is the amazing BATTERY LIFE. Apple claims the battery will last up to 10 hours. Users everywhere are reporting that this is a conservative estimate and that they actually get more than that. What’s amazing is that this applies no matter what you are doing. In other words, you still get 10 or more hours of battery life even if you watch videos or play games all day (not that I would ever try either one). I haven’t verified the battery life for my own unit because I typically don’t spent more than a couple of hours per session (usually much less).
All I can say is, get your iPad today! 
