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On my way to publishing a Kindle book

By Dave Winer on Friday, July 30, 2010 at 12:52 PM.

A picture named wallyOfficialSpokesperson.gifThis morning I published a book for distribution via Kindle. I took the full content of Scripting News for 2009, formatted it according to their rules. That was the hardest part. You have to render it as simple HTML and all the images have to be included in the zip archive you upload. That meant writing a parser that went through the text, pulls out the images, downloads them locally, and patches the URL in the HTML. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

I couldn't figure out how to price it at $0. The lowest price was $1.99. Hope that isn't a problem. Of that, I will get 35 percent or about 70 cents. I don't expect it to amount to a lot of money. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

I want to write a book, and I have some people I'm brainstorming with. By starting to publish to the Kindle, even in a rough format, I start to get my feet wet. For me, a veteran bootstrapper, this may be a necessary first step. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Anyway, it may take a few days for it to make it through their approval process. When it's available for purchase I'll post a pointer here.  Permanent link to this item in the archive.

A picture named inreview.gif Permanent link to this item in the archive.

If you want to download it now, here's the archive. Permanent link to this item in the archive.

http://static.scripting.com/misc/2009.zip Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Let me know what you think (and please think before you comment).  Permanent link to this item in the archive.

A picture named twodudes.gif Permanent link to this item in the archive.

PS: Wonder if I'm going to have to pay $1.99 to see what my stuff looks like on a Kindle? That would totally suck.  Permanent link to this item in the archive.
About the author

A picture named dw.jpgDave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Contact me

scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

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