Busy E-days

The prospect of some extra months or years added to my life expectancy has prompted a fairly busy time over recent few weeks.  One of the things I did while on holiday in Canberra was explore e-publishing work done by Smashwords.com for independent ("indie") publishers like myself.

Coming home, I first worked on my book of short stories. It was print-published just last year so should have been in good shape to convert for reading on an iPad, tablet or phone. But it was quite a long journey getting it prepared for digital publication. With some coaching I finally got it uploaded and it's had a couple of hundred downloads in three or so weeks. The book on the century of Russell Methodist Church went up next. It was a little easier to manage and has also been downloaded a remarkable number of times.

After that I uploaded my two main books on church and ministry: Ecclesion - The Small Church with a Vision and The Cavalry Won't be Coming. These are also being opened up by quite a few readers. Of course, I am not looking for any payment for any of my books at this stage and everyone is on the lookout for free books. But it's still a surprise that so many copies of the ministry books are going out so quickly.

It's been a fascinating experience to attempt something quite different. I've been negotiating a very steep learning curve. And from time to time it's taken two of us to sort paragraphs into proper order. But there's a rare sense of achievement in solving a range of new problems and devising ways of dealing with the written word for an unfamiliar new medium.

We all need a new challenge now and then. Without the intellectual stimulus and the physical activity that may go along with it, life could easily become just ordinary. Not around here at the moment, anyway!

Dave Mullan - The Interview

Smashwords, who are distributing my e-book of short stories, have an interesting feature in their system. They publish interviews with their authors and mine has just gone up on their site. Anyone who knows me is invited to have a look at the interview and make a comment or a suggestion for another question.

And, of course, please by all means download the book. It is completely free and comes in the e-format of your choice. It's off the front page by now but if you search "Dave Mullan" as author at Smashwords it will pop up.

With it will be the book that David Pratt and I published last year on the century of Russell Methodist Church. This was given free to people who attended the closing service in 2013 so is also free from Smashwords. Well, for the time being anyway.

Moving on

Since my last PSA test and the reprieve it has suggested to me I have been flat out climbing another steep learning curve. I have been attempting to create E-books from some of my previously printed books. While on holiday in Canberra I devoured a couple of guides on the theory. Now back home I am making an intensive effort to put the theory into practice.

The good people at Smashwords have been a huge help. But it has nonetheless been a challenge to reformat a very old Ventura Publisher file into something that will convert smoothly into a form that can be read on a computer, iPad, phone or tablet.

First I have had to clean up the old file and manually strip out all the original formatting instructions. And I have to wipe out accumulated rubbish ("garble" they call it) at the beginning and end of an original file. Sometimes this goes on for forty or more pages. And then I have to put back in some formats that will work in the new environment. Only if these are done in exactly the right way will they transform the bare characters into a pleasing and useful text. If I get everything right it will have "links" to take the reader from, for instance, the Table of Contents, directly to individual chapters. It's all a big step forward from the fixed format of a book, no matter how beautifully prepared.

I think there's a parable in here someplace. As I am thinking about my life being extended thanks to timely intervention with some fairly nasty radiotherapy I have to re-think some of my old ways of being. Some clutter has to be removed and some accustomed habits broken up. And there has to be some re-shaping of priorities. What are the most important things I can do with this extended life that I appear to be gaining? How will these reflect upon other people and the world in which I live?

At the most banal, it means doing things I thought I mightn't need before checking out, like buying new glasses and getting my teeth fixed! At its most sublime it means exploring how my personal beliefs and faith can be conveyed most faithfully in the first worship service I've been invited to lead since arriving in our local church a year ago. In between there is a whole range of issues about the contribution I can make as a member of this community.

Yes, there are challenges, but there's also a whole new world out there! And I am relishing the opportunities it presents.