4/20 toon

The Ebook is here, the Ebook is here!

Yay! After several months of development and testing I have the second in the series of Cartoons That Will etc and so on. It's way beyond the first in terms of styling and layout. I wrote a custom stylesheet which can be reused on other books. It's well formed, validated and compliant for both iBooks and Kindle specs, which have a few differences between them. I had to create two versions of the book for either format. I changed some of the small decorative images from iBooks which display differently in the Kindle version. With the help of the Kindle Previewer I could see what it will look like in several Kindle devices (styles do not all make the transition to the older devices) and also for the iPhone. KP is also a great way to do the final conversion file too by the way. I have the Kindle for Indesign plug-in for export to Kindle but found it not to be all that big a help as I have to crack open the e-pub and do some editing usually to the innards before I have the finished file ready for the conversion. I recently acquired a cool script that lets one crack open or unpack a .mobi file to see what's really in there. It is quite informative too. What I find is a regular .epub file along with two other folders called Kindle7 and Kindle8 with copy files of the original e-pub. That works for them I suppose but it also balloons the file size by 30% which is a big deal as Amazon will charge you a 15 cent per meg download fee for every book. This means that if you are doing an image heavy book which cartoon books are by nature there will be no way you can get the full 70% earnings they tout in their royalty price ranges. You just have to take that into account on your book price. I learned a lot about e-pubbin this winter and am already on to fixed layout books. I finished my training for those and have a client already with a kid's book job. Next stop is the ISBN store to purchase my random number strings for the book identifier number. Then it's right to iTunes Producer to upload and then to Kindle Direct for same. Dudes; I'm a bona fide one-man publishing act. The great thing about e-pub is that it makes every one of us a publisher. However you get your book file the next step is all your own. That is the intent of the folks who created the e-publishing model. It is supposed to be something that would enable the common person to be able to publish to a mass market without interference from the entities who used to control the whole publishing model such as print houses, shippers etc. Next up I'll be teaming with Jerry King to do a series of books using his sizable volume of content. Then the FL kid's book. I don't mind telling you folks that there were several hurdles I had to cross and problems I had to work out to get to the finish line with this first new book format. It was stressful at times but in the end they made it that much more satisfying to have created this thing on my own. Here are a few screenshots of the title page, intro, TOC and there's even a foto of me holding a fish at the end of the book in the About chapter. I'll let you know when it's live on the e-bookstores of course.

Newt's Place

Newt tends to suck the oxygen out of a room so this is to be expected. I think it would be a tremendously beneficial use of NASA dollars if we sent Newt to the moon permanently. It's a win/win. For a few extra dollars we can throw Callista in  for the ride. She would make a great waitress and I would definitely give her a tip.

Cherry baby

Hot and juicy strip!

Mmmmmm, you can smell the ammonia from here!

Trashy Encounters

One of the cartoons from my next ebook 'More Cartoons That Will Send Me Straight To Hell'. Granted, this one by itself would probably not cause me as much grief in the afterlife as would others.

Contraceptions

NCS Chapter ad

I put together the chapter ad again this year. It's like a puzzle trying to see how you can fit all these examples together into some kind of cohesive whole. It's fun and it gives us all a little publicity. Enjoy. Dan

Indie Aisle

A new selling channel I found with some interesting twists. Read online and an instant conversion to epub mobi and pdf. However the pdfs are not very good: they're all dithering like crazy. The free sample is squashed and the read online was that way too. Hopefully they will fix that. indieaisle.com/cartoons-that-will-send-me-straight-to-hell ebook

Final cover art

Here's the final version of the cover for book two. Looks lots better I think. The first chapter is laid out, styled and ready to assemble the other chapters with the same stylesheet. Won't be long now fans! This book will be a quantum leap in design and production from the first and will be the model for many future books by me and other cartoonists who contract with me for ebooks. I'm very excited about this new avenue for cartoonists who will gain the ability to publish their work and bring it to market without the barriers of the old model for publishing. It's a new dawn guys and girls and in it the publishers are screwed and we artists and illustrators are "golden". So says Stephen Roxburgh in the March/April 2012 issue of the Horn Book.

The Affair

America is warming back up to the Prez again. Could be that the GOP noms are just too icky for all but the dead-enders, which of course they are but maybe it's also because the effects of his term are finally starting to produce good results. Perhaps not momentous gains but at least the free fall has stopped which he inherited from the previous bunch of losers. It's nice to find some love after getting screwed for so long. Oh wait, now they want to rape us with ultra-sound wands. What the hell is their fucking problem?

My new Ebook store

My new Kagi store for digital downloads opened today! No middleman sellers taking at least 30% and more from the fruits of my labors. This is Indie publishing at it's most independent. Please show your support for the Indie arts by buying my book here.

It's a DRM free Epub file which you can also convert to a Kindle format with one of many free softwares out there like Calibre or Sigil for your Kindle tablets. The Epub file is read on iPads and all other ereaders.

Fun-E-Books Publishing Store

Fun-E-Books new logo

New Ebook Cover

Here is the tentative cover for the sequel to my first ebook. Coming out soon if all goes well.

Cartoons for Canadians

Another course completed.

Dan Collins

Is it real or is it Painter 12?

Is it real watercolor or is it PXII? Only my stylus knows for sure.

My Certificate (better button)

Dan Collins

I'm a Grad!

Happy Valentines Dog