Gary Coover's Kindle Books

[pentaprism]

I bought Gary's Kindle-edition Christmas Concertina and Anglo Concertina in the Harmonic Style and am disappointed to find that they don't display on my Kindle Voyage:

 

Unavailable for Download

"Anglo Concertina in the Harmonic Style"

The item is not compatible with this device.

 

They display fine on my iPad. But iPad display is terrible in the sun!

 

Does anyone have the same problem?

[gcoover]

So sorry to hear there's a problem! I'm not familiar with the Voyage device, but here's the official response I got back from the Amazon/Kindle support:

 

Hello Gary,

 

Thank you for contacting KDP Support.

 

I understand that you would like to know why your book is not showing on the Kindle Voyage. This is because that the book is uploaded as a fixed layout book and there are limited devices available. Please view the link below with the list of devices supported for your file format:

 

https://kindle-content-cs-workdocs.awsapps.com/workdocs/index.html#/share/document/e450538d35e117bf0433f372d0d241d556e06cb2cbc23bddf4353b2d418919d8

 

In order to provide readers with the best possible experience, fixed layout books with Text Pop-ups (Children’s picture books and Print Replica books) are currently only available on Fire, Kindle Cloud Reader, Kindle for iOS, and Kindle for Android.

 

The buyer needs to view the book with an alternative device.

 

I hope this information is of assistance.

 

Have a wonderful day!

 

So, the books are uploaded with fixed pages (no flowing text) in order to keep the music and formatting from going kablooie, so it's pretty much just like viewing snapshots of each page that's in the paperback. At least it works ok on your iPad!

 

 

Gary

[lachenal74693]

4 hours ago, gcoover said:

...So, the books are uploaded with fixed pages (no flowing text) in order to keep the music and formatting from going kablooie...

 

I had the same sort of problem about 6 years when I tried to write a book in .epub format. I couldn't work out how to get diagrams

and text 'objects' (such as tables) to format properly to accommodate different screen sizes on different devices (not quite the

same  problem, I know). At the time, I think the sub-set of HTML (available to self-publishers) was limited, I don't know if that has

changed, but in the end I gave up and wrote the book using Open Office and creating a PDF file - which displays on every device

known to man, and is fine, except on devices with very small screens.

 

If the book is indeed '...uploaded as a fixed layout book...', maybe it would be worth Mr. Coover investigating the possibility of creating

a fixed layout PDF version? That way it might be possible to get get portability across many devices from supercomputers to the

tiniest 'phone...

Edited November 8, 2019 by lachenal74693

[pentaprism]

Thanks, Gary, for the investigation and the reply post.

 

As lachenal74693 suggested, PDF would work.But I’m not sure as how Amazon handles it on the business side.

 

Recently I’ve been videotaping/photographing my daughter and her team’s paragliding. There is much “dead” time between flights and I use the time to learn AC. The Kindle Voyage works great because it is compact, lightweight and most importantly of all, its display works in any lighting condition. My iPad Mini is also compact but to my old eyes is virtually useless in bright sunlight.

 

Incidentally, I have a printed copy of Gary’s Easy Anglo 123 (there’s no Kindle version). I scanned it and sent the PDF file to my Kindle. Works great!

[lachenal74693]

On 11/11/2019 at 8:47 AM, pentaprism said:

1) ...But I’m not sure as how Amazon handles it on the business side...

 

2) ...I have a printed copy of Gary’s Easy Anglo 123 (there’s no Kindle version). I scanned it and sent the PDF file

to my Kindle. Works great...

 

1) That was the unspoken sub-text in my post - I wonder if Amazon would be all that keen - presumably they can

best protect their 'investment' by only publishing stuff in their own proprietary format?

 

2) Yes. I've done this for various things - Japanese Chess books, music (tutors and scores), (some) mathematics

and physics, etc. These days, it's a no-brainer as far as I am concerned. Apropos the Japanese Chess thing, I did

it because at the time, there was nothing on Kindle except a version of a lousy 50 year old paper book which was

full of errors, so I simply wrote my own and made it available as a free document on a Dropbox archive, and via

the website of a fellow chess enthusiast...

 

Later edit: Developing that idea a little, I guess there's probably not much on Kindles for concertina (apart from GC's

books, that is). If a complete chess klutz like me can write a reasonable introduction to Japanese chess, there's no

reason why a medium-skilled 'tina player couldn't write a tutor for the instrument. I've recently looked at four paper
tutors and I can't see anything there which such a player couldn't emulate at a reasonable level of quality. I'd do it

myself, but I don't quite have an adequate knowledge of music theory - or the time...

 

"...I scanned it and sent the PDF file to my Kindle..."  Warning - if you do go down this road (for whatever sort of material),

PDF scans of existing paper pages can be much larger than PDF files generated from a 'book' (or whatever) which has

been created using a document preparation system such as Open Office (or Word, LaTeX, Lout, Scribe, w.h.y.). I've found

that scanning stuff in page-by-page as .tif or .png format and then using a xxx-to-PDF converter is the optimal way to do

this, and to get all the pages into a single document (sorry if this is 'obvious', but it took me a little while to get my head

around getting it 'right').

Edited November 12, 2019 by lachenal74693