Liber Writer for Making Kindle files

veinglory · Sep 17, 2013

I wanted to put one of my out-of-print novellas on Kindle, and decided to use Liber Writer to do it. I have to say I am pretty happy with them.

Basically you dump the word file into their site. They run some basic clean up on it and start the table of contents. Then you finish the Table of Contents and download the Kindle ready file.

There is also beta capacity to download as epub and word. The file stays on the site so you can make any necessary edits and generate a new file in perpetuity (or as long as the stay in business).

For a one time $40 fee I thought that was pretty good -- but I have only really started in the self-pub arena so I would be interested if there are any even better alternatives?

thothguard51 · Sep 17, 2013

I store a lot of my files in Dropbox and can send them to my Kindle or the Kindle of my Beta reader via my or their Kindle address. I don't need to pay a subscription and Kindle does all the formatting before sending it on...

Not sure I see the advantage of paying a subscription fee to do the same thing I can do for free...

veinglory · Sep 17, 2013

It is not a subscription fee, it is a one time payment per book.

My experience was that submitting it as Word had unedifying results.

Deleted member 42 · Sep 17, 2013

Just HTML the damn thing. It looks better and you have complete control.

veinglory · Sep 17, 2013

I chose to pay the 40 to have it done. I found this service did what I was looking for. What I was wondering is whether there is a better service doing same.

If I was another person (with more skills and/or time and /or I gave damn about how my book becomes correctly formatted mobi) I would be doing something else and asking something else, but I'm not. And it looks how I want it to as done by this method -- while it did not via direct conversion.

davidw · Sep 17, 2013

veinglory said:
I wanted to put one of my out-of-print novellas on Kindle, and decided to use Liber Writer to do it. I have to say I am pretty happy with them.

Basically you dump the word file into their site. They run some basic clean up on it and start the table of contents. Then you finish the Table of Contents and download the Kindle ready file.

There is also beta capacity to download as epub and word. The file stays on the site so you can make any necessary edits and generate a new file in perpetuity (or as long as the stay in business).

For a one time $40 fee I thought that was pretty good -- but I have only really started in the self-pub arena so I would be interested if there are any even better alternatives?

Glad you are happy with our service!

As other people are bound to say, this is all stuff you can do yourself if you put in the time to learn it. One thing we do at LiberWriter to help you along that path, should you so choose, is provide the entire HTML and XML source code files that we feed to Kindlegen to create your .mobi file, so you can see what's happening "behind the scenes".

Thanks,
Dave

stranger · Sep 18, 2013

veinglory said:
I chose to pay the 40 to have it done. I found this service did what I was looking for. What I was wondering is whether there is a better service doing same.

If I was another person (with more skills and/or time and /or I gave damn about how my book becomes correctly formatted mobi) I would be doing something else and asking something else, but I'm not. And it looks how I want it to as done by this method -- while it did not via direct conversion.

An option, I think, is to sign up to draft 2 digital. As part of their service, they convert from Word to mobi/epub. I believe you could then take the mobi and upload it to Amazon.

Deleted member 42 · Sep 18, 2013

davidw said:
One thing we do at LiberWriter to help you along that path, should you so choose, is provide the entire HTML and XML source code files that we feed to Kindlegen to create your .mobi file, so you can see what's happening "behind the scenes".

Thanks,
Dave

That alone strikes me as worth the $40.00.

bearilou · Sep 22, 2013

Medievalist said:
That alone strikes me as worth the $40.00.

That's what I was thinking.

slhuang · Sep 22, 2013

How clean is the HTML, can you tell?

Did it insert anything you didn't want it to?

veinglory · Sep 22, 2013

If anyone wants to see mine as an example they are welcome to. Just PM.

davidw · Nov 15, 2013

slhuang said:
How clean is the HTML, can you tell?

Did it insert anything you didn't want it to?

Generally, the answer is "as clean as it needs to be". We clean it up to a point where it works, but not to a point where it's the cleanest, most beautiful HTML out there. We're trying to optimize for "a good book at a good price", rather than 100% perfection. Clearly, if there are any issues that make your book look bad, we're going to fix those up for you.

Liber Writer for Making Kindle files

veinglory

volitare nequeo

thothguard51

A Gentleman of a refined age...

veinglory

volitare nequeo

Deleted member 42

veinglory

volitare nequeo

davidw

stranger

practical experience, FTW

Deleted member 42

bearilou

DenturePunk writer

slhuang

Inappropriately math-oriented.

veinglory

volitare nequeo

davidw