Yesterday, Amazon launched three new Kindle products. All very exciting, and all very much a continuation of the ideas that have made the Kindle so successful to date. They're cheap - really cheap. The Kindle Fire tablet, at $199, is less than half the price of an iPad, and there's also a no-frills Kindle for $79, which will be the cheapest on the market. (It's hard to see how another company can squeeze in around them, because if you want the real thing, you buy a Kindle, and if you want a cheap knock off that does the job, you can buy a Kindle too.) These are prices that will tempt people into buying devices they'd never considered owning before.
I'm going to focus on the Kindle Fire tablet now because it's the most exciting in terms of new features, some of which bring me back to issues I've discussed on here before.
It's the same size as your old kindle, (7.5" x 4.7" x 0.45"), except the keyboard at the bottom has vanished, (presumably replaced by a touchscreen equivalent), making the screen a little bigger. Since tablets are strictly a 'greed-not-need' item, (lets be honest now!), it makes sense to buy one that fits in a small space.
It does music, film & tv, apps, and glossy magazines as well as books. All of which are, of course, conveniently sold by Amazon.
Just like with Kindle, you can buy on the go, using Amazon's Whispernet. Convenient for you, because it means you'll never have to connect your Kindle to a PC, convenient for Amazon because it means you'll almost certainly buy all your content from them. This may be a factor in the ultra-low price: Amazon don't have to make a huge profit from you buying a device, because they'll take a percentage every time you buy content.
Kindle Fire has a relatively small memory (8GB), but you can store your content in Amazon's "cloud". Whilst this has it's advantages, it does sound a lot more like streaming than actually owning. I've discussed the issue of whether you truly own ebooks you buy from Amazon before, (executive summary = you don't), and Kindle Fire takes this problem to another level. If you buy content from other online retailers, and transfer it manually to the device, I assume it will have to fit within the 8GB memory because Amazon won't store it on their cloud, giving you another incentive not to stray.
More possibilities for eBook publishers. The addition of colour means that more eBooks will be published in genres that previously didn't work very well on the kindle, such as children's books, comics, graphic novels and art books. The glossy magazines advertised as being available look to be PDF's, which is interesting, because Kindles haven't handled them particularly well in the past, and Amazon have been keen to stress the benefits of re-flowing rather than fixed text and images. If Kindle Fire is better able to display PDFs, it may tempt on board publishers who prefer the greater degree of control they offer.
E Ink is gone. I will shed a tear for it. Say all you like about the ugliness of the old Kindle's E Ink display, at least it didn't give you a headache.
Overall, Kindle Fire look like a fantastic device, but one that re-raises some moral questions. Most notably, the frighteningly intangible nature of ebooks, and Amazon's uncompetitive dominance of the ebook retail market, and now potentially the MP3 retail market as well.
Buy my book, 'Anatomically Incorrect Sketches Of Marine Animals'
Thursday, 29 September 2011
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Salt Publishing 86p eBook Sale
It's the sort of news I started this blog for: Salt Publishing have reduced all of their Kindle titles down to just 86p. Currently, this represents only a small portion of their full catologue - a mere nine poetry titles are included. However, there's still plenty to get excited about, and if this offer gets an enthusiastic response then perhaps they'll consider uploading more titles, *cough* John McCullough *cough*.
I spent my 86p on Simon Barraclough's Los Alamos Mon Amour, which has so far proved to be a fruitful decision. I'd considered buying it at full price, but the combination of the cover, which is styled like a poster for a war film, and the first poem, which describes a nuclear explosion, gave me a one dimensional first impression of the book, which wasn't borne out when I read it in full. The book does have a cinematic thread running through it, but the battles documented are smaller and more personal. Although the intensity is, if anything, magnified by this contraction.
Barraclough's focus zooms in and out, from distant planets to the drink about to meet his lips. He portrays an over-willingness to paint his own life in broad, cinematic brushstrokes; 'I'm crass enough to picture you/ fleeing Hannibal Lecter/ across the Piazza del Duomo'. The allusions to well-known plots make situations feel inescapable, more urgent. Other than this, the juxtapositions aren't too easy to slap an analogous meaning on, which is refreshing.
Highlights come largely from Barraclough's generosity in sharing genuinely jolting incidents, most notably, shutting a friend inside an abandoned fridge, (Frigidaire), a rumor about a boy whose guts were eaten by a pike, (Pike), and retrieving a contact lens from the back of an eyeball, (Contacts). I was less keen on the poems that existed entirely in the figurative, such as 'Unleashed', which describes an unnamed beast chained to a stake in the yard. Generally, I'm not as adverse to this almost mythic style of writing as I think we're all supposed to be these days, but Barraclough can't quite manage to make the abstract weirder than the real. An exception would be Celestial Navigation, in which, 'bloated macaroni and risotto/ sloshed out to sea with my spices, herbs/ freeze-dried coffee and tea until there spread/ from the stern a salty paella/ of foamy food,' a description I'll always remember.
Formally, Barraclough gently arranges his ideas into roughly symmetrical stanzas, but has no desire to squeeze his words into tight structures. He has a fondness for inappropriate end-rhymes; 'He's never known them so dried on/ must be the wine, the parching sun/ unless he's nudged them round the back:/ two jellyfish in the lightless black', but is smart enough to restrict his use so as to strengthen the effect.
If you're really that precious about spending 86p, why not read some poems here first? It should be pointed out that Simon Barraclough has since written other books, which I'm sure are equally worthwhile. But I would get moving on that 86p offer now!
I spent my 86p on Simon Barraclough's Los Alamos Mon Amour, which has so far proved to be a fruitful decision. I'd considered buying it at full price, but the combination of the cover, which is styled like a poster for a war film, and the first poem, which describes a nuclear explosion, gave me a one dimensional first impression of the book, which wasn't borne out when I read it in full. The book does have a cinematic thread running through it, but the battles documented are smaller and more personal. Although the intensity is, if anything, magnified by this contraction.
Barraclough's focus zooms in and out, from distant planets to the drink about to meet his lips. He portrays an over-willingness to paint his own life in broad, cinematic brushstrokes; 'I'm crass enough to picture you/ fleeing Hannibal Lecter/ across the Piazza del Duomo'. The allusions to well-known plots make situations feel inescapable, more urgent. Other than this, the juxtapositions aren't too easy to slap an analogous meaning on, which is refreshing.
Highlights come largely from Barraclough's generosity in sharing genuinely jolting incidents, most notably, shutting a friend inside an abandoned fridge, (Frigidaire), a rumor about a boy whose guts were eaten by a pike, (Pike), and retrieving a contact lens from the back of an eyeball, (Contacts). I was less keen on the poems that existed entirely in the figurative, such as 'Unleashed', which describes an unnamed beast chained to a stake in the yard. Generally, I'm not as adverse to this almost mythic style of writing as I think we're all supposed to be these days, but Barraclough can't quite manage to make the abstract weirder than the real. An exception would be Celestial Navigation, in which, 'bloated macaroni and risotto/ sloshed out to sea with my spices, herbs/ freeze-dried coffee and tea until there spread/ from the stern a salty paella/ of foamy food,' a description I'll always remember.
Formally, Barraclough gently arranges his ideas into roughly symmetrical stanzas, but has no desire to squeeze his words into tight structures. He has a fondness for inappropriate end-rhymes; 'He's never known them so dried on/ must be the wine, the parching sun/ unless he's nudged them round the back:/ two jellyfish in the lightless black', but is smart enough to restrict his use so as to strengthen the effect.
If you're really that precious about spending 86p, why not read some poems here first? It should be pointed out that Simon Barraclough has since written other books, which I'm sure are equally worthwhile. But I would get moving on that 86p offer now!
Monday, 19 September 2011
Formatting Poetry for Kindle
In my last post, I promised I'd talk a bit about the process of uploading work to Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing service, and in particular having control over how the text is presented on the screen. What follows is not a lesson or a tutorial, merely a 'this is what I did, I thought it worked okay', so please treat it as such.
Despite not having shut up about my impending ebook release for at least the last six months, the day I finally found myself looking at a completed manuscript, I realised I didn't know what to do with it. I can now tell you that the process looks as follows...
1. You start with an HTML document, either created manually, or automatically generated from a Word file saved as Web Page, Filtered.
2. You then use Mobipocket Creator to convert this into a .prc file.
3. After you have checked your book using the Kindle Previewer, you can upload the .prc file to Amazon KDP.
This FAQ explains the process in slightly more detail. Before you start working, you'll obviously need to download Mobipocket Creator and the Kindle Previewer. And back up your work before you start fiddling around with it!
For many people, converting a simply formatted word file using Mobipocket Creator will produce a perfectly readable ebook. (Here is a good website that explains how to format your book simply in Word to survive the conversion process). However, poetry is different. I will illustrate the problem below...
What's that? Oh, it's just a great big indent where you didn't want one, ruining the layout of your poem. Now, of course you could accept this, but poetry readers are used to any non standard typography meaning something. Also, you'll want to minimize the problem of long lines wrapping round and creating line breaks you didn't intend, so it's important that your lines utilize the full width of the page.
At this point, you'll probably start searching for information on how you can format your word doc so that your intended paragraph styles survive the conversion process. You might even try starting a thread on the KDP forums. I spent a day trying every magic fix listed there, and whilst you're obviously free to try them yourself, my advice would be to forget it. No matter how many times I told Word that my 'Normal' paragraph style shouldn't have an indent, I would open my converted book up in Kindle Previewer to find that conversion had stuck one in anyway.
In any case, working with html made me feel much more empowered than trying to exert my control over the fallible word to html conversion.
There are now two ways you can go; you can copy the plain text of your poems into Notepad and rebuild all your formatting from scratch with html, or you can edit the html generated when you save your word file as Web page, filtered. Open it using Notepad, (by the way, Notepad or Notepad +++ will do perfectly fine for editing your html - you don't need any fancy software).
You may well think that second option sounds more sensible, as in retrospect do I. If you fancy getting this out of the way as quickly as possible, cast your eyes down to bullet point one below, implement it, then move straight on to converting, previewing and uploading your book. Unfortunately, I'm one of those people who likes to break things down so I can understand them better, so I decided to start from scratch.
Up until this point, I had never really written in html. KDP forum users had recommended specific bits of code, but they weren't much use to me without a framework within which to place them.
If you're as dim about html as me, I would recommend starting out with the tutorials over at w3schools.com. These have a nifty Try It Yourself feature, which allows you to alter some html in a text box, then press a button and see how the resulting web page would change. Although the tutorials are not specifically aimed at formatting ebooks, they are relevent because your html ebook will essentially need to describe one very long, boring webpage.
The following steps describe the process of putting the teeny tiniest bit of formatting onto plain text poems in Notepad to build a simple ebook. Please note that in all the following examples, I've removed the <> brackets around the html, and replaced them with normal brackets (), to stop blogger trying to interpret the tags. You'll need to replace () with <> to get them to work.
1. Removing the indent, and basic text formatting
The Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines, (bizarrely not linked on the KDP FAQ), discusses the issue with indents.
This seems to me to say that you cannot dictate a default non-indented paragraph style for your document, hence why all my efforts to do this failed. However, the document goes on to list tags that you can apply to each paragraph to override the automatic indent. The one you want is (p style="text-indent:0"). I found it easiest to treat each line as a new paragraph, opening with the aforementioned tag and closed with (/p). I then manually inserted a line break; (/ br), at the end of each stanza. Below, you can see the html, and how it appears in the Kindle Previewer after conversion.
The indents have disappeared. You may now breathe. If you wish, you can edit the html document created by word to reflect the above, and not worry about what any of the other html means. If you're building up from scratch, read on.
2. Page Breaks
Once you've amended your html document so that every poem is formatted as above, (it will take you a while to insert that paragraph tag at the start of every line, but once you get copying and pasting it's not too onerous, I swear!), you'll probably want each of your poems to start on a new page.
This is done using a simple CSS tag, which you'll put at the top of your document, before the body starts. You're going to use this tag to say that there should always be a page break after or before a certain feature. There's a W3Schools tutorial that explains it. I decided to tag all of my poem titles as being Heading 3, by putting the (h3) and (/h3) tags around them, and have a page break before each Heading 3.
The top of my html document now looked like this...
(html)
(head)
(style)
h3{
page-break-before: always;
}
(/style)
(/head)
(body)
Book begins...
And the title of each poem looks like this...
(h3)Barceloneta, May 2010(/h3)(br /)
If you convert your html document in mobipocket creator, and then preview it, you should see each of your poems plainly formatted on a separate page.
3. Cover Image
The image that appears on the first page of your ebook should be of the highest possible quality. You'll refer to it in the html document, and the jpg image needs to be saved in the right place. For instance, you could create a folder called Bookname, which would contain your html document Bookname.html, and a sub folder called Bookname_files, which would contain your image.
The image then needs to be inserted at the beginning of the (body) of your book, as follows...
(p style="text-indent:0")(a name=cover)(img src="Bookname_files/Mycoverimage.jpg")(/a)(/p)
When you use Mobipocket Creator to convert your book, after selecting your html file, you'll need to click on 'Cover Image' on the right, and find the correct file, before building your book.
4. Table of Contents
It's very easy to create an html table of contents at the start of your book, so readers can jump to later poems. First, you'll need to make each place that you'll want to link to an anchor, which will probably mean all of your poem titles.
(a name="eroding")(h3)Our Eroding Coastline(/h3)(/a)
I have now tagged this title as an anchor, and given it a one word name that corresponds with the poem title. Now I can link to it from my TOC.
(h3)Table Of Contents(/h3)(br /)
(a href="#eroding")Our Eroding Coastline(/a)(br /)
Now my reader can click on the link with the kindle cursor and jump to the relevant poem. Note that it isn't possible to check whether links work using the Kindle Previewer, so the best way to check you haven't made a stupid error is to open your html document in your web browser and click on each link.
5. Title Page
You are now terrifyingly close to having formatted your first eBook! The title page goes after the cover image and before the TOC, and what you include on it beyond your title and author name is up to you. All I included was a link to my blog, so that readers know where to keep track of my work, but you might have a dedication, or copyright info. Here's mine, in html, and then in Kindle Previewer...
(h2)Anatomically Incorrect Sketches of Marine Animals(/h2)(br /)
(h2)By Sarah Dawson(/h2)(br /)
(br /)
(p style="text-indent:0")Author of (a href="http://poetryafterink.blogspot.com/")Poetry After Ink(/a)(/p)(br /)
(hr /)
(a name="TOC")(h3)Table Of Contents(/h3)(br /)
I ought to have centered it, I know. Use the (p class=Centered) tag around text the center it. Note that I have tagged the text as h2, so that it won't be affected by the page break command I inserted at the top of the document. However, the title for the TOC is tagged as H3, so a page break will appear before it.
5. Be more creative
If you want make further improvements to your eBook, the best starting point is to read Amazon's (very short) table of supported html tags, which is included in their Publishing Guidelines, (ctrl + f "appendix a" to jump to the right place), and use it as a toolbox.
The only thing I haven't talked about here is creating a Navigation Control File; I have to admit to not understanding them at all. If you're determined to make your eBook 100% pefect, you'll need to investigate them: I recommend this blog post as a good starting point.
Congratulations - you're done! The KDP FAQ explains very clearly how to upload your book from here. If you have any niggles, or any helpful information to add, please do comment.
Despite not having shut up about my impending ebook release for at least the last six months, the day I finally found myself looking at a completed manuscript, I realised I didn't know what to do with it. I can now tell you that the process looks as follows...
1. You start with an HTML document, either created manually, or automatically generated from a Word file saved as Web Page, Filtered.
2. You then use Mobipocket Creator to convert this into a .prc file.
3. After you have checked your book using the Kindle Previewer, you can upload the .prc file to Amazon KDP.
This FAQ explains the process in slightly more detail. Before you start working, you'll obviously need to download Mobipocket Creator and the Kindle Previewer. And back up your work before you start fiddling around with it!
For many people, converting a simply formatted word file using Mobipocket Creator will produce a perfectly readable ebook. (Here is a good website that explains how to format your book simply in Word to survive the conversion process). However, poetry is different. I will illustrate the problem below...
What's that? Oh, it's just a great big indent where you didn't want one, ruining the layout of your poem. Now, of course you could accept this, but poetry readers are used to any non standard typography meaning something. Also, you'll want to minimize the problem of long lines wrapping round and creating line breaks you didn't intend, so it's important that your lines utilize the full width of the page.
At this point, you'll probably start searching for information on how you can format your word doc so that your intended paragraph styles survive the conversion process. You might even try starting a thread on the KDP forums. I spent a day trying every magic fix listed there, and whilst you're obviously free to try them yourself, my advice would be to forget it. No matter how many times I told Word that my 'Normal' paragraph style shouldn't have an indent, I would open my converted book up in Kindle Previewer to find that conversion had stuck one in anyway.
In any case, working with html made me feel much more empowered than trying to exert my control over the fallible word to html conversion.
There are now two ways you can go; you can copy the plain text of your poems into Notepad and rebuild all your formatting from scratch with html, or you can edit the html generated when you save your word file as Web page, filtered. Open it using Notepad, (by the way, Notepad or Notepad +++ will do perfectly fine for editing your html - you don't need any fancy software).
You may well think that second option sounds more sensible, as in retrospect do I. If you fancy getting this out of the way as quickly as possible, cast your eyes down to bullet point one below, implement it, then move straight on to converting, previewing and uploading your book. Unfortunately, I'm one of those people who likes to break things down so I can understand them better, so I decided to start from scratch.
Up until this point, I had never really written in html. KDP forum users had recommended specific bits of code, but they weren't much use to me without a framework within which to place them.
If you're as dim about html as me, I would recommend starting out with the tutorials over at w3schools.com. These have a nifty Try It Yourself feature, which allows you to alter some html in a text box, then press a button and see how the resulting web page would change. Although the tutorials are not specifically aimed at formatting ebooks, they are relevent because your html ebook will essentially need to describe one very long, boring webpage.
The following steps describe the process of putting the teeny tiniest bit of formatting onto plain text poems in Notepad to build a simple ebook. Please note that in all the following examples, I've removed the <> brackets around the html, and replaced them with normal brackets (), to stop blogger trying to interpret the tags. You'll need to replace () with <> to get them to work.
1. Removing the indent, and basic text formatting
The Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines, (bizarrely not linked on the KDP FAQ), discusses the issue with indents.
The “normal” text in a Kindle book must be “all defaults.”... “Normal” text must not have a forced alignment (left-aligned or justified).
This seems to me to say that you cannot dictate a default non-indented paragraph style for your document, hence why all my efforts to do this failed. However, the document goes on to list tags that you can apply to each paragraph to override the automatic indent. The one you want is (p style="text-indent:0"). I found it easiest to treat each line as a new paragraph, opening with the aforementioned tag and closed with (/p). I then manually inserted a line break; (/ br), at the end of each stanza. Below, you can see the html, and how it appears in the Kindle Previewer after conversion.
The indents have disappeared. You may now breathe. If you wish, you can edit the html document created by word to reflect the above, and not worry about what any of the other html means. If you're building up from scratch, read on.
2. Page Breaks
Once you've amended your html document so that every poem is formatted as above, (it will take you a while to insert that paragraph tag at the start of every line, but once you get copying and pasting it's not too onerous, I swear!), you'll probably want each of your poems to start on a new page.
This is done using a simple CSS tag, which you'll put at the top of your document, before the body starts. You're going to use this tag to say that there should always be a page break after or before a certain feature. There's a W3Schools tutorial that explains it. I decided to tag all of my poem titles as being Heading 3, by putting the (h3) and (/h3) tags around them, and have a page break before each Heading 3.
The top of my html document now looked like this...
(html)
(head)
(style)
h3{
page-break-before: always;
}
(/style)
(/head)
(body)
Book begins...
And the title of each poem looks like this...
(h3)Barceloneta, May 2010(/h3)(br /)
If you convert your html document in mobipocket creator, and then preview it, you should see each of your poems plainly formatted on a separate page.
3. Cover Image
The image that appears on the first page of your ebook should be of the highest possible quality. You'll refer to it in the html document, and the jpg image needs to be saved in the right place. For instance, you could create a folder called Bookname, which would contain your html document Bookname.html, and a sub folder called Bookname_files, which would contain your image.
The image then needs to be inserted at the beginning of the (body) of your book, as follows...
(p style="text-indent:0")(a name=cover)(img src="Bookname_files/Mycoverimage.jpg")(/a)(/p)
When you use Mobipocket Creator to convert your book, after selecting your html file, you'll need to click on 'Cover Image' on the right, and find the correct file, before building your book.
4. Table of Contents
It's very easy to create an html table of contents at the start of your book, so readers can jump to later poems. First, you'll need to make each place that you'll want to link to an anchor, which will probably mean all of your poem titles.
(a name="eroding")(h3)Our Eroding Coastline(/h3)(/a)
I have now tagged this title as an anchor, and given it a one word name that corresponds with the poem title. Now I can link to it from my TOC.
(h3)Table Of Contents(/h3)(br /)
(a href="#eroding")Our Eroding Coastline(/a)(br /)
Now my reader can click on the link with the kindle cursor and jump to the relevant poem. Note that it isn't possible to check whether links work using the Kindle Previewer, so the best way to check you haven't made a stupid error is to open your html document in your web browser and click on each link.
5. Title Page
You are now terrifyingly close to having formatted your first eBook! The title page goes after the cover image and before the TOC, and what you include on it beyond your title and author name is up to you. All I included was a link to my blog, so that readers know where to keep track of my work, but you might have a dedication, or copyright info. Here's mine, in html, and then in Kindle Previewer...
(h2)Anatomically Incorrect Sketches of Marine Animals(/h2)(br /)
(h2)By Sarah Dawson(/h2)(br /)
(br /)
(p style="text-indent:0")Author of (a href="http://poetryafterink.blogspot.com/")Poetry After Ink(/a)(/p)(br /)
(hr /)
(a name="TOC")(h3)Table Of Contents(/h3)(br /)
I ought to have centered it, I know. Use the (p class=Centered) tag around text the center it. Note that I have tagged the text as h2, so that it won't be affected by the page break command I inserted at the top of the document. However, the title for the TOC is tagged as H3, so a page break will appear before it.
5. Be more creative
If you want make further improvements to your eBook, the best starting point is to read Amazon's (very short) table of supported html tags, which is included in their Publishing Guidelines, (ctrl + f "appendix a" to jump to the right place), and use it as a toolbox.
The only thing I haven't talked about here is creating a Navigation Control File; I have to admit to not understanding them at all. If you're determined to make your eBook 100% pefect, you'll need to investigate them: I recommend this blog post as a good starting point.
Congratulations - you're done! The KDP FAQ explains very clearly how to upload your book from here. If you have any niggles, or any helpful information to add, please do comment.
Sunday, 18 September 2011
Reflections on publishing my first poetry eBook
Back in March, I had the idea that I was going to collect together some of my poems and format them as an ebook. I didn't know how I would go about doing this, but it seemed like a perfect way to release some work I was proud of without incurring huge costs, or losing years of my life trying to attract a traditional publisher. I was aware of the stigma around so called 'vanity publishing', but didn't get it, I suppose because there's no such stigma in music and I didn't see why literature should be any different. How come self-published music is associated with what The Wire would refer to as 'outer limits', and self published fiction gets John Locke? The ideas that digital formats cheapen poetry, and that all self published writers are terrible are self perpetuating. Also, I kept reading that formatting poetry for Kindle was close to impossible, and I wanted to prove it wasn't.
I was right; formatting my work did involve a few days of faffing around and cursing, but compared to the process of writing and editing my manuscript, it was very easy. I ended up writing the html document myself, which is something I'll elaborate on in the near future. For now, all I'll say is that if you can write poetry, you can definitely write html - it really is nothing to be scared of. And yes, with a few small exceptions, you can make a poem look how you want it to on a kindle screen.
All of which is a round about way of saying that my book is now finished and available for you to buy! I really hope you enjoy reading it. If you do like it, would you be so kind as to give it a nice review on Amazon, or even share the link via twitter or facebook? I would be forever in your debt.
For the benefit of anyone who might be reading this because they know me, but has never brought an ebook before, you don't have to own a kindle to read my book. You can get the free Kindle App for your iPad, iPhone or any other smartphone, or download Kindle for PC. If you want to read my book in another electronic format, such as epub, please let me know, and I will look into making it available.
If you're wondering why on earth I would price my book at £1.71, it's the minimum price to qualify for Amazon's 70% royalty rate, (£1.49), plus VAT. I decided Amazon didn't deserve the 70% cut they'd get if I priced it any cheaper.
I will end this by saying again how grateful I am to Fiona Bratherton for designing the cover, which has translated beautifully into Kindle grayscale.
Have another poem...
Observed on a Zante beach, 2002
1.
Where vessels branch, the delta of my left foot’s swollen -
skin’s a membrane just enclosing liquid; cells stretched
to accommodate my warm blood. Unlike pastel hued
line drawings, showing cross sections of skin – a corner
turned up to reveal the dermis – flesh seems rich
in colour, more in flux. I press the swollen veins
which flatten, dark blood backing up, until released.
This pool of me won’t stagnate, stranded halfway
up the beach; I run down through the grains, like tidal
water drawn to sea.
2.
Plastic bit between my teeth; I concentrate on holding
my head vertical, and parallel to temperamental
waves. My mind drifts, water slips – the salt that lights a pathway
through me – does it burn the gills of fish? And do their tightly sewn
blue sequins chafe with sweat? How do they rub sharp particles
from eye ducts, clear their throats? The sea is thick with needling
phytoplankton, stirring shoal momentum, force made up
of flickers.
Thursday, 15 September 2011
A poem. By me.
I was really hoping I'd be able to give you some guidance on preparing your word doc for upload to Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing today. Unfortunately, I've been stalled by the conversion process sticking indents in everywhere, EVEN THOUGH I SPECIFICALLY DEFINED MY PARAGRAPH STYLE AS HAVING A TRAILING SPACE AND NOT AN INDENT. The issue is not exactly helped by Amazon's paltry formatting guidelines. They seem to think that having a forum where people can help each other is better than a detailed FAQ, but I beg to differ. Whilst everyone on there really is trying very, very hard to help, and I do appreciate it, it is all a little bit; 'try smothering it in coconut oil''no, not coconut oil! use butter!''have you tried putting a leech on it??' I have a feeling this could all end in HTML, which is brilliant, because I've never used it before. When I find the solution, you'll be first to know. Meanwhile, here's a poem from my book...
Our Eroding Coastline
You read the rocks with crystals in were spherical, and lighter,
so, a sorry sandstone, shrunken by the tide in each hand,
judge. And hurl the lighter at a stack of granite, though
your poor throw makes it seem to have it’s own trajectory
- to split in segments – new faces to wear down – crystals
absent. Think the sea is seeking something in the rocks too –
massing back sand grains to blast the skree and slate. Too young
a sculptor, scratching at the essence of his subject
‘til a stub remains. I loved to skirt the sea’s thin lip,
slate ridge pressing the centre of my soles, testing handholds,
each bay we’d pick apart the remnants, sea still in retreat
irrevocably creeping back before you’ve weighed and smashed
each likely rock. We’d have to climb the scree slope, digging nails
into the dirt and clutching half set in slate pieces, holdings
in the process of eroding. Clutch the crops of grass that mark
the cliff’s edge, lined with pale pink thrift, pendulous roots
Our Eroding Coastline
You read the rocks with crystals in were spherical, and lighter,
so, a sorry sandstone, shrunken by the tide in each hand,
judge. And hurl the lighter at a stack of granite, though
your poor throw makes it seem to have it’s own trajectory
- to split in segments – new faces to wear down – crystals
absent. Think the sea is seeking something in the rocks too –
massing back sand grains to blast the skree and slate. Too young
a sculptor, scratching at the essence of his subject
‘til a stub remains. I loved to skirt the sea’s thin lip,
slate ridge pressing the centre of my soles, testing handholds,
each bay we’d pick apart the remnants, sea still in retreat
irrevocably creeping back before you’ve weighed and smashed
each likely rock. We’d have to climb the scree slope, digging nails
into the dirt and clutching half set in slate pieces, holdings
in the process of eroding. Clutch the crops of grass that mark
the cliff’s edge, lined with pale pink thrift, pendulous roots
Wednesday, 7 September 2011
I have a cover!
I think it's customary to apologise for a period of absence; I figured that if I was going to keep talking about this supposed ebook I'm putting out, I had better finish the thing, and I *almost* have. I'm looking at having it out within the next two weeks, which means my next few posts are likely to deal with online retailers, file conversions, and all that dreaded self-promotion.
Meanwhile, Fiona Bratherton has kindly created the image you see above, which is hopefully going to arouse the interest of people browsing the kindle store. Fiona has previously done a flyer for my boyfriend's clubnight, fanzines, murals, some cutouts that I particularly admire, tattoos, (people wanting to display your artwork permanently on their skin = always a good sign) and she's done spoken word, meaning she's much braver than me. She's also pleasant to deal with and listens to what you want, no matter how muddled your description, so if you need any artwork doing, why not get in touch?
I'm so glad I went down this road, rather than commissioning a stranger to create something bland. All the advice I've read about covers for self published books has been about making your book indistinguishable from a traditionally published book. But doesn't that give the impression that you're embarrassed about being self-published?
I have strong feelings about what makes poetry look attractive to potential readers; in short, I love the simple, fun illustrations featured on covers of the Poetry Foundation magazine, and the old monogrammed Faber covers, (though I would never dream of impersonating the latter). I don't like drab images of waves coming in on deserted beaches. I wanted to present my book as something you'll hopefully enjoy reading, rather than trying to declare it's emotional significance, and I think this cover is just right for that.
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