A project to publish a Kindle book is work in progress -- Mt. Whitney guide book

Kindle book can be read on a smart phone

   I posted some articles to my Japanese Blog page about publishing a kindle book.  Since I hiked to Mt. Whitney a several times in past years and I wrote my experience into a book.  Finally, although the book is in Japanese, the first draft is getting ready.  It is under reviewing now.

I also plan to translate the book to English soon.  As soon as the Japanese version is completed, I will work on the English version.

About publishing a Kindle book project 2016:

   I wrote many articles in my blog, especially the Japanese page.  However, they are not really organized well and some of early posts are out of date.   Therefore, I decided to review the past articles and organized as a book.  Nowadays, it is very easy to publish such book through “Kindle Direct Publishing”.   One of my New Year resolution this year is to publish a Kindle book this year.

Originally, I focused on “Pacing with heart rate for hiking” is one of topics I plan to publish.   After I started drafting, I realized I would need to spend more time to analyze the past data and review the overall story.  Eventually, the time to publish the first book can be pushed out.  On the other hand, I was thinking to go through the process once before the book is ready.   So that I decided to write a guide book for Mt. Whitney hiking first.  This topics does not have to have a lot of data analysis and just reorganize the past records and my experience with some photos.  Also, this topics, my blog access is relatively higher than the other topics, so I thought this could be a good topics for the book.

The book will consist:

·         Model plan based on my experience

·         Overall process / flow to get the permit for Mt. Whitney hiking

·         Preparing the hiking

·         Introduction of Mt. Whitney trail section by section with photos

I think it is a good book for people who will visit Mt. Whitney for the first time.

About the process / flow to publish a Kindle book

   I already posted this in my Japanese page, however, I am posting this to this English site again.

Overall process is easy, we just need to have the contents.   First of all, people who try to publish a Kindle book need an account on “Kindle Direct Publishing”.

   Then, we just need to have a contents (draft).  It can be write on Microsoft Word.  Once finish the draft, we need to save it as an HTML file.  Then upload the contents on Kindle Direct Publishing account.  The flow is well explained in a document on Kindle Direct Publishing site.

   There are some tips, they are already explained in the document ….

   First of all, the cover page photo, there is a requirement for the resolution.   They provide a design tool online, however, somehow it does not work very well in my environment.  So that I used Adobe Photo Shop to design the cover page.

   Second, if there are some photos in the draft, all the photos are saved in a holder independent of the main HTML file.   When people upload the draft, people need to create a “ZIP” file with the main HTML file and the folder for photos.  Then the ZIP file needs to be uploaded instead of just the HTML file.   First time I uploaded the draft, I had a problem to show the photos in the preview utility.  Originally, I thought it was a resolution problem. 

The current status is under reviewing the Japanese version and the translation is work in progress.  I hope I can publish English version right after the Japanese version.