E Book

#1

Does anyone have experience or knowledge specific to using Corona to create a ‘novel’ length ebook? Particularly, how the 300-500 pages of text should be stored and retrieved by the code.

I have seen several tutorials/examples on interactive ‘shorter length’ ebooks on the corona site. In those examples all the pages of the book were images. That code simply indexes through each of those images as user turns the pages. Each image(page) just displays small amounts of text and some textures. On a smaller scale that seems logical and efficient, but with a pure text ebook of novel length, what would be the normal method to store and retrieve pages of text? Maybe an occasional sketch shown at the start of a chapter?

pdf?,
html?,
plain text files?
I know Corona is good for those interactive smaller scale ebooks, but is it good for the larger scale novel size ebooks? I would prefer to use Corona, but could consider one of the E-Pub type tools out there, if Corona is not suited for such a large scale ebook.
Thanks!

[import]uid: 148857 topic_id: 37112 reply_id: 67112[/import]

#2

I’ve published things for myself using straight HTML w/ large jpgs using the amazon KDP. I’m pretty sure I used this site to get me started with a framework. It works fine. As for using corona, I do not know.

http://www.bagley123.wanadoo.co.uk/kindle-book-format-publish-template-example-html.htm [import]uid: 132937 topic_id: 37112 reply_id: 145360[/import]

#3

ElectricDisk,

Thanks for that info. Very good to know. The link above seems to make it easy and straight forward to get it out on the kindle. Thanks!

Anyone else having experience doing an ebook for apple market, especially using Corona, any experience or knowledge you care to share I am thankful for.

[import]uid: 148857 topic_id: 37112 reply_id: 145365[/import]

#4

Anything you make with Corona will need to be sold on the App store, not the iBook store. Quite different markets.

Personally, I wouldn’t use Corona for a mostly text ebook. If it doesn’t have any interactivity, graphics, or animations, you’re not really using any of Corona’s strengths. And while you can coax Corona to display many pages of text you won’t automatically get any of the stuff you get with basic ebook readers, such as tables of contents, word highlighting, search, index, font resizing, fancy page flipping animations, etc. Sure, you could spend days trying to emulate all that by writing custom functions using Corona and maybe get some o.k. results, but… why go through all the trouble reinventing the wheel?

If your book is mostly text with a few illustrations you can just lay it out in Acrobat or Word or something and export it to all the major ebook platforms using one of many cheap/free tools designed for that purpose. I personally have used Vook to make a cross-platform kids chapter book (mostly text with b&w illustrations heading each chapter), but there are many other tool choices out there. [import]uid: 9422 topic_id: 37112 reply_id: 145376[/import]

#5

HBI,

Thanks for that info. That makes good sense, and is very helpful. I will check out Vook, as well as see what other tools are out there.
Thanks much! [import]uid: 148857 topic_id: 37112 reply_id: 145409[/import]

#6

I’ve published things for myself using straight HTML w/ large jpgs using the amazon KDP. I’m pretty sure I used this site to get me started with a framework. It works fine. As for using corona, I do not know.

http://www.bagley123.wanadoo.co.uk/kindle-book-format-publish-template-example-html.htm [import]uid: 132937 topic_id: 37112 reply_id: 145360[/import]

#7

ElectricDisk,

Thanks for that info. Very good to know. The link above seems to make it easy and straight forward to get it out on the kindle. Thanks!

Anyone else having experience doing an ebook for apple market, especially using Corona, any experience or knowledge you care to share I am thankful for.

[import]uid: 148857 topic_id: 37112 reply_id: 145365[/import]

#8

Anything you make with Corona will need to be sold on the App store, not the iBook store. Quite different markets.

Personally, I wouldn’t use Corona for a mostly text ebook. If it doesn’t have any interactivity, graphics, or animations, you’re not really using any of Corona’s strengths. And while you can coax Corona to display many pages of text you won’t automatically get any of the stuff you get with basic ebook readers, such as tables of contents, word highlighting, search, index, font resizing, fancy page flipping animations, etc. Sure, you could spend days trying to emulate all that by writing custom functions using Corona and maybe get some o.k. results, but… why go through all the trouble reinventing the wheel?

If your book is mostly text with a few illustrations you can just lay it out in Acrobat or Word or something and export it to all the major ebook platforms using one of many cheap/free tools designed for that purpose. I personally have used Vook to make a cross-platform kids chapter book (mostly text with b&w illustrations heading each chapter), but there are many other tool choices out there. [import]uid: 9422 topic_id: 37112 reply_id: 145376[/import]

#9

HBI,

Thanks for that info. That makes good sense, and is very helpful. I will check out Vook, as well as see what other tools are out there.
Thanks much! [import]uid: 148857 topic_id: 37112 reply_id: 145409[/import]