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Atari Inc. - Business Is Fun Now Available!


Albert

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Congratulations Marty and Curt. Just reading your book Forwards makes me remember the magic of Oct 1977 and the anticipation of every new cart release .. and the new arcade experiences .. I will buy your book. (As an aside I still wish for someone to make a true to the time 1976 Death Race for the Vectrex.)

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I had thought about trying to get Alan Alda if we can get the money together and if he's willing to read a book that size at his age. Regardless, right now we're working with trying to get the Kindle book format working right. Amazon's online converter, which promised automatic conversion, isn't handling the conversion right. Turning the layout/theme and imagery into swiss cheese. Not having any luck with the inDesign plugin of Amazon's either, since the inDesign file is too large (620MB Kindle file size limit). So I might have to go back and work a completely new version just for Kindle if Amazon can't work with us to straighten this out.

Can you go google books? do they have the same size limit, might be a larger market

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You'd think there would be pages out there by now from random authors who tell you the best and easiest way to convert a book from whatever format you are using to the Kindle format. Almost every problem I have ever had was solved thanks to Google.

Convert the book to PDF (most universal book format out there), then submit the entire file to Amazon Kindle.
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Convert the book to PDF (most universal book format out there), then submit the entire file to Amazon Kindle.

 

That's what we did, doesn't work right. The PDF has to then be converted to mobi/kindle format, which completely screws up the layout. Things that were supposed to be on a single page/screen are cut on to different ones, images that were overlaid (such as our chapter pictures) are instead laid out separately, captions for the images are thrown on after all the images completely unrelated, etc. A complete mess.

 

It basically means I have to go through the entire 800 page book and reformat/redo everything for Kindle, which also means it won't look the same as the print book.

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Man, I got to the end and joy plus disappointment filled my head. First I went "Yay! A second book!" followed by "Damn, now I have to wait to read all the dirty Tramiel Atari downhill slide into hell stories". Same happened to me with the redone Commodore book that got split in two (not even sure the second has a release date yet). Is the second book a definite and is there a ballpark release date for it? Please don't say 2015 or something like that.

 

Honestly, overall, it was a great read. LOTS of pics I've never seen before. I still wonder how Steve Ross because the head of anything much less Warners because everything I read about him makes him out to be a buffoon.

 

EDIT: Curt, did as you requested and did an Amazon review under my name there "OldToonFan". 5 stars wholeheartedly deserved.

Edited by H.E.R.O.
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It basically means I have to go through the entire 800 page book and reformat/redo everything for Kindle, which also means it won't look the same as the print book.

 

There has to be a better, faster way. Are you sure you've squeezed every drop of juice out of Google?

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We are starting our work on Book #2 in January/February and are already lining up our first trip out in CA to begin a week or so of interviews again. You'd be surprised, its not all "dirty" as you'd think during the Tramiel era. Before really getting an inside look at things myself I had a very negative view of the Tramiel era as well, some really good things happened, but yes, some other things happened that we all wish didn't. If we can stick to the same schedule as we did with book#1 and now knowing all of the pitfalls we hit and problems faced, lets just tentatively say sometime this time next year - Atari Corp. Business is War will be released for sale.

 

Curt

 

Man, I got to the end and joy plus disappointment filled my head. First I went "Yay! A second book!" followed by "Damn, now I have to wait to read all the dirty Tramiel Atari downhill slide into hell stories". Same happened to me with the redone Commodore book that got split in two (not even sure the second has a release date yet). Is the second book a definite and is there a ballpark release date for it? Please don't say 2015 or something like that.

 

Honestly, overall, it was a great read. LOTS of pics I've never seen before. I still wonder how Steve Ross because the head of anything much less Warners because everything I read about him makes him out to be a buffoon.

 

EDIT: Curt, did as you requested and did an Amazon review under my name there "OldToonFan". 5 stars wholeheartedly deserved.

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There has to be a better, faster way. Are you sure you've squeezed every drop of juice out of Google?

 

 

We've tried just about all of the tools available for creating kindle/ebooks. They all screw up the layout, text, etc. At this point we're probably going to have to work with a pay service to do it. We haven't seen a dime from anything yet, so at this point it's all coming out of pocket - including the review copies I've been mailing out (yes, we have to pay for copies since this is self published).

 

If we can stick to the same schedule as we did with book#1 and now knowing all of the pitfalls we hit and problems faced, lets just tentatively say sometime this time next year - Atari Corp. Business is War will be released for sale.

 

Target would be around Thanksgiving again assuming the same schedule.

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I'm guessing you guys already looked at http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Formatting-Complete-Guide-Amazon/dp/1440488886

and folowed the gudelines in http://www.amazon.com/Building-Your-Book-Kindle-ebook/dp/B007URVZJ6/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354477189&sr=1-1&keywords=building+your+book+for+kindle

and looked at sites like http://epubconversions.com/about-kindle-conversions-and-other-ebook-services/hire-me/

 

Here's something that you might consider.

Since the formatting of your book is pretty consistent from chapter to chapter, pay a service to convert a single chapter and send it to you in HTML or Word or some other format.

Then look at the resulting HTML etc. to see what they did to get it to look right and follow that same pattern for the rest of the book.

 

I've been dreading trying to convert my book to Kindle format since I've read so many horror stories about how hard it is (from what I've read, it seems that many are saying you have to edit the raw HTML yourself to get it to look right).

 

As a test I took the first two chapters of my book (plus the TOC and the other front matter) and converted it to Kindle format. I was shocked when everything came out looking pretty darn good.

I have headings, a table of contents, indented quotes, footnotes, text with shaded background, a numbered list etc. and just about all of it looked quite acceptable. The footnote links even worked (thought the TOC ones didn't).

 

Of course, I didn't have any pictures or captions so maybe that's the difference (or maybe I just have less exacting standards??)

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Well, I couldn't take it any longer.. I just ordered a Prime copy of the book so I can read it while I wait for my pre-order to ship. Holiday gift for someone else perhaps. :)

Unfortunately, I don't have a use for two copies.

Yeah, this is frustrating. Still no e-mail from Amazon about my pre-order shipping, and it's been 7 days. :mad:

Apparently, the people who sat of their butts and ordered direct from Amazon several days ago get theirs first, followed by the people who pre-ordered months ago, followed by the original kickstarter backers from a long time back. No offense, but your doing it backwards. I probably won't be preordering the second book but will buy it direct as soon as it releases.

 

That's wierd. Used copies are apparently worth more than new?

http://www.amazon.co...uct/0985597402/

http://www.amazon.co...id=&seller=&sr=

Edited by stardust4ever
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This is our first time doing this stuff, we had no idea Amazon would in a sense end up doing things backwards, I've ordered a bulk of books tonight to come in and I'm going to actually use them across the board to ship out to kickstarter backers and to the earliest pre-order placers and then deal with the issues, I don't like people not getting their books so I'm going to try to help a bit on my end as well...

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This is our first time doing this stuff, we had no idea Amazon would in a sense end up doing things backwards, I've ordered a bulk of books tonight to come in and I'm going to actually use them across the board to ship out to kickstarter backers and to the earliest pre-order placers and then deal with the issues, I don't like people not getting their books so I'm going to try to help a bit on my end as well...

 

Thank you Curt, please keep us informed. I know that you didn't plan for this and are trying your best. Lesson learned on my end also, don't pre-order from Amazon.

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Of course, I didn't have any pictures or captions so maybe that's the difference (or maybe I just have less exacting standards??)

 

I had tried to convert Phoenix to the Kindle and had no luck. All of my photos came out as mirror-image of the originals, and the formatting was attrocious.

 

My publisher plans to put Phoenix 4 into an electronic format but I was told that the large number of photos may not make it possible.

Edited by rolenta
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if you PM me i can give you his number, then you can ask yourself

not sure he will answer you personal questions though

 

If you actually have Bob's number, please do not give it out unless he has given you permission to do so. I seriously doubt he wants to get phone calls from random people on AtariAge.

 

..Al

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