Monday, April 04, 2011

A Service For Writers


No, this is not the Emperor Ming

My friend Dan Moran, as in "Daniel Keys Moran," aside from being a writer of some excellence, is also one of those computer-savvy and literate fellows who knows about bits and bytes and oddball OSs and all that stuff which might as well be Greek when I hear it: Hi, yes, I have a blah-blah-blah system that runs blah-blah-blah megahertz ...


But because of this skill, Dan can do things like take a rough book manuscript and turn it into a file that can be put up on in an ebook store and look like it was done by somebody who knew what the hell he was doing. 


There are, believe it or not, writers with even less technical skill than I have, and an impediment to creating something they can put up as an ebook is the sheer terror of trying to figure out how to do it and not screw it up. Like a boulder in the road, with more rumbling down the hill, it tends to cause writers who might go down that path to slam on their brakes. 


So, even though he doesn't need the work, but is a workaholic who seems to think that idle hands are the devil's workshop, Dan will, for select folks, offer a service in which he will take a book file in .doc format and turn it into a whole bunch of others, including .mobi, epub, HTML, and PDF, blah-blah-blah, and then all you have to do is send it to the ebook store you like. Or, even, a POD place.


Since he owns an ebook site, he's doing some of this himself, and he knows what's what.


Now, here the caveats: While light editing is part of such a process, catching the odd typo or garbled character, he is not offering to be your book editor; nor to teach you how to write; nor to be your agent. This is aimed at people who are already professional writers who are looking to make the transition as painlessly as possible.


Let me emphasize that: This is aimed at people who are already professional writers who are looking to make the transition as painlessly as possible.

So, if you are one of those folks, and if you are looking at the whole ebook thing as if it is a vampire and you are scrambling to find a cross to hold up in front of it, you might want to drop him a note.  His rates are most reasonable. 


Here: danmoran909@yahoo.com.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks, Steve. As to the Emperor Ming thing, it's only due to lack of breeding, not desire.

    People can reach me at danmoran909@yahoo.com.

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  2. How is it he looks scarier WITHOUT the eyepatch?

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  3. Steve, what is your favorite e reader?

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  4. That would be the iPad2. (Which I don't actually have yet, but will get, soon, I hope.)

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