What's a fair price for a 500-page trade paperback?

[Elok]

Works for me. I'll be dumping to Kindle shortly, where I supposedly get similar royalties but nobody pays to kill a tree. A very simple Googling gave me detailed instructions for stripping DRM from an ebook, so yeah, we'll be skipping that.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Somebody started a "Buy Elok's Book!" thread in the OT at AC2, and has not been perma'd yet.

It's a very good book.

[Lorizael]

Although my book is still preparing to be shipped. Are you binding it yourself, Elok?

[Elok]

It's a weakness of CS's print-on-demand technology. The book can be priced much lower because they keep no inventory whatsoever--but that means you have to wait for them to make one after you order it. It usually ships within 24 hours, in my experience. How long have you been waiting?

[Lorizael]

I placed the order Wednesday evening. I'm not really concerned; I'm sure it'll get here at some point.

[Elok]

I can't tell whether or not this would be characterized as "hard science fiction" (for Kindle categories). I was pretty obsessive about making everything but the gravitic handwaving crap somewhat feasible, but it's all background.

[Ming]

Trust me... it is NOT science fiction based on what you have told us

[Jon Miller]

update when it is on kindle

[Elok]

Trust me... it is NOT science fiction based on what you have told us

If you're thinking of her "miraculous" healing powers, they're really nothing of the sort. Her body has the hereditary ability to manufacture organic medical nanobots. The titular "curse" is that the constant metabolic strain of churning them out makes her weak and sickly herself. Which is why she's the only one left alive.

[Lorizael]

Having read the whole thing (or some draft of it), it's definitely SF.

[Elok]

So, I sent them an e-mail asking why my PDF kept converting to a single blank page, and taking half an hour to do it. They replied with something to the effect of, "yeah, PDFs kind of suck for this." I don't have anything but the PDF for this until/unless the PC gets fixed. Is it possible to manually convert a PDF into HTML or RTF? I'd have to ask them to give me my PDF back, since they don't have an option to re-dowload an uploaded PDF.

[BeBMan]

There are lots of converters from PDF to doc format, some online (which require you to upload - dunno if you want that), some freeware. But I dunno how good they are or if they also keep formatting if that matters to you..

[Elok]

All right, somebody on the BUncleforum kindly converted it to Word for me. There are some weird little glitches to be dealt with, but it mostly converted clean. The page headers are the biggest victims; they're totally fugly since the conversion mixed the left and right headers. My name and the book title are superimposed and the page number is on either side. As I understand it, page numbering is dynamic on a Kindle anyway, so should I simply strip the headers for the Kindle version? How about the blank pages used to space out sections, and ensure that every section begins on an odd-numbered page? Can/should those be axed as well? I don't know what makes for pleasant Kindle reading experience. Finally, I'd have to make the Table of Contents dynamic, so that it reassigns page numbers when you enlarge or shrink the font. Is a TOC meaningful for an eBook? It's a straight narrative meant to be read in order, so it was mostly a silly flourish. You can find the appendices in the back by simply flipping. The glossary I put at the very very end. Do I want a TOC?

If you read eBooks, let me know.

[Ming]

Yes... a TOC is critical. I read a ton on my Kindle. And while it automatically remembers where you are in the book, you sometimes get lost by hitting the slide at the bottom by accident. I use the TOC to find my place again. I've never read a book that doesn't have one, and I would be pissed if I bought a book that didn't have it.

[Elok]

Hmm. That could cause a problem, since the book isn't divided into conventional chapters, only into big sections. The first is about forty pages, the second ninety, the third over a hundred and the last somewhere around a hundred and fifty. With brief interludes between sections of maybe six pages apiece. Within the sections you have different documents to divide up the narrative--one from character A, one from B, one from C, another from B, etc.--but these are untitled and introduced with "Yunise's Diary, 1/3/34" and the like. Not useful for finding your place again. Will I need to arbitrarily subdivide into chapters, or introduce arbitrary, invisible "checkpoints" with TOC referents, to make it navigable for Kindle?

EDIT: On a related note, what's a good price for an ebook? I'm thinking between 4 and 5, since it's the size of a LOTR book and represents a fair amount of reading time. Amazon heavily encourages pricing between $2.99 and $9.99. Outside that range they slice your royalty percentage in half.