Way back in the dark ages of the year 2000 Microsoft released the MS-Reader eBook software. It was the platform on which a new line of Star Trek<\/i> books were being released–SCE<\/b>, or the Starfleet Corps of Engineers for those bad with acronyms–and I downloaded the software, and I downloaded the eBooks.<\/p>\n
A couple of companies released software to produce eBooks for the MS-Reader format. Compulsive tinkerer that I am, I downloaded the software–from a standalone product to a plug-in for Microsoft Word–and I messed around with files to see what I could do.<\/p>\n
My first few eBooks were not that great. I’d pull a file off of, say, Project Gutenberg<\/a>, mark up the file, and run it through the process. It was a learning process, and the tenth eBook was markedly better than the first.<\/p>\n The first eBooks were simple. One of the first was Jean Airey’s Star Trek<\/i>\/Doctor Who<\/i> mash-up, The Doctor and the <\/i>Enterprise<\/a> (and I’ve tinkered with that one from time to time). I made a rather complicated one–as a tech demo–for the Star Trek<\/i> Novel Timeliners (and if anyone<\/i> still has it, please drop me a line–I was rather proud of the work I did on that, only I don’t have it any more). The one I think I did the best job on? The Volsung Saga<\/a>. That one’s quality.<\/p>\n Over the weekend I had some time to spare, and I built an eBook, the first I’d done in, well, maybe six months. All told, a half an hour spent. And it turned out well.<\/p>\n I like Sherlock Holmes. Not really a surprise–some of you readers have my business card. \ud83d\ude09 I went to Project Gutenberg, downloaded a Sherlock Holmes text, and…<\/p>\n Well, it’s not quite<\/i> a Sherlock Holmes text.<\/p>\n American humorist John Kendrick Bangs wrote a short novel in 1906 entitled R. Holmes & Co.<\/i>. Raffles Holmes, son of Sherlock Holmes and grandson of amateur cracksman A.J. Raffles, comes to New York to make his way in the world, commit a little bugglery (in honor of his grandfather) and solve a little crime (in the style of his father). It’s an amusing, if somewhat frivolous little book, and I’ve been fond of it since I first read it roughly fifteen years ago.<\/p>\n So, I made an eBook of R. Holmes & Co.<\/i> for Microsoft Reader.<\/p>\n It went off pretty much without a hitch. I had to tweak one little bit of formatting three times–the formatting is handled as CSS, just like a webpage, and being a Microsoft product Reader isn’t particularly sophisticated<\/i> when it comes to CSS–but eventually it turned out quite well.<\/p>\n Care to see?<\/a> \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Way back in the dark ages of the year 2000 Microsoft released the MS-Reader eBook software. It was the platform on which a new line of Star Trek books were being released–SCE, or the Starfleet Corps of Engineers for those bad with acronyms–and I downloaded the software, and I downloaded the eBooks. A couple ofContinue reading “On eBooks”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[1158],"class_list":["post-1166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","tag-ebooks","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}