AFTER GOYA EBOOK

I'm pleased and proud to announce that my novel, After Goya , is now available as an ebook in several formats. The global price is $2.99 and at Euro and Pound equivalents, but with VAT added.

If you have a Kindle, or a Kindle app for PC or i-Pad, etc you can sample a few free chapters and buy a copy at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de. I've already sold a few copies at both the U.S. and U.K. Amazon sites.

If you have any other type of reader, or want to read a sample on your laptop or desktop before buying a copy then I suggest you go to Smashwords. ISBN: 978-1-4581-2596-5.

The book has already shipped to Barnes & Noble and the Apple i-Tunes store - and will be appearing in their catalogues next week.

In a few weeks readers in Australia and New Zealand will also be able to purchase and download the ebook at Borders, Australia; Angus & Robertson and at Whitcoulls in New Zealand.

And, again all being well, you will soon be able to buy a very special EPUB edition from this blog. I say very special because Ester, indefatigable formatter-in-chief at ebookation, has done an outstanding job of not only converting the text but also the ornaments which separate sections and chapters, replaced missing and mis-placed accents, and included a table of contents and additional material in the end papers. The result is very impressive for an ebook.

Converting a word processor document into an ebook format, though not difficult, is not straightforward. The conversion process often strips out  common punctuation marks and accents and replaces them with less common marks and symbols; line spacing, justification and section breaks can go walkabout all over the page.

Smashwords' conversion engine, known to writers and publishers as the Meatgrinder, converts basic Word docs into eleven different ebook formats. And, it does a pretty good job of it. However, because, by default, it is designed to produce texts that can be read in all formats the result is a compromise.

And so, after successfully formatting the Smashwords version -- and ensuring it was good enough to get into what they call their Premium Catalog --  Ester, at ebookation, spent more time refining and embellishing the text as an EPub file. In effect, Ester has produced a limited edition of an ebook.