I published Clever Kindle promo for ‘Oz Chronicles’: Answer Oz question and qualify for contest to win free K machine, at 10 a.m. on Wednesday. At the same time I downloaded the PDF and sent it off to Amazon for free conversion to Kindle format. I didn’t get any response, which was strange as it usually takes only two or three minutes to get the book back. Tried again twice more and still no response. Then I decided to become a big spender and at about 10:30 a.m. submitted it to the “fee” version for conversion and forked over my $0.10. Well it’s now about 11:25 p.m. on Wednesday night and still no response. When I go to my Amazon bookshelf, I see it sitting there and listed as “Pending.” I wonder what’s going on.

Follow up:  9:15am the next morning.  Still “pending”

Follow follow up:  Posted a comment on the author’s website and he says there is nothing special about the PDF.  He’s looking into posting the work in another format.

4 COMMENTS

  1. I tried to convert it here using MobiCreator and it fails conversion. I tried using both the save to text (which “works”, at least as far as creating a file) and cut and paste – both yield just a file of dots or graphic boxes, rather than text. Perhaps it’s due to the use of the embedded fonts or that each letter was saved as a graphic picture of the letter, rather than having actual text. Regardless, there is no “text” there to be converted, so I too will have to wait until I can stand to read it on screen (or a new version is released by the author), as I already stare at the monitor for too many hours a day and my eyes don’t need the extra strain of reading there as well.

  2. I’ve been reading ebooks since 2002—over 120 books and 300 short stories, but not even one PDF was among them all. I started with a Compaq and Dell PDAs, then a Kindle. The PDAs could kind of sort of read PDF files natively, but advancing to the next page was often like scrolling through quadrants. Many PDF files can be converted to a mobipocket for the Kindle, but the formating is usually dodgy and unpleasant to look at. With all the books available for purchase or for free with excellent ready to read formating for the Kindle and other handheld devices the PDF should be moot. If I see that Author A only publishes in PDF, I’ll read something else from Author B who publishes in true ebook formats. Just say no to PDF files.

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