Thumbnails

Yesterday someone had asked me for help, but they did not show up to get it.

That missed appointment freed me to work on turning my 22 print books into E-BOOKS to add to my online book catalog in addition to my hardcopy, real book print editions.

Same book text but in different formats.

Because I was not spending the time I’d expected to in helping, I’ve been able to expand my E-BOOK editions by another nine volumes.

I’ve never read an E-BOOK myself, but I’m told that people buy these things to read on their little machines, and I want to have them ready for the Christmas shopping season which starts next Friday… So I’ve really felt pressed for time. Problem is…

In my on-line book catalog, an e-book thumbnail looks to me exactly like a real-book thumbnail. How can buyers tell them apart?

I know.

I’ll make a different thumbnail. One with a little gold seal on the book cover saying, this is not a real book but an E-BOOK.

I’m proud to announce that John Cowart, King Of The Geriatric Computer Geeks, solved this knotty problem with my usual hi-tech skills.

All I needed were Ginny’s nail scissors, a paper oval, tweezers, something with my Bluefish Books logo, a glue stick, a post-it note, 22 books covers, and a pack of cigarettes.

So, I printed out a smallified Bluefish Books logo. Using Ginny’s nail scissors, the kind with a curved blade, I cut it into a perfect oval. I unraveled a pack of Ginny’s cigarettes so I could take out the gold-foil lining. I glued the little paper oval to the foil from the back, then traced a bigger oval around the little oval. Then I—am I boring you with all this hi-tech computer jargon?

All I needed to make was 22 of these shiny seals for my book covers…

Problem is I can’t cut ovals.

Can’t cut along the traced lines.

I remember back when I was in the first grade, my teacher, Miss. Ink… midway through my first grade something happened to Miss. Ink and her name changed to Mrs. Skeleton. That was a shame because Ink was so much easier to spell than Skeleton… Anyhow, Miss. Ink whacked my fingers with a ruler because I could not cut out the mimeographed figure of this purple pumpkin. I could not stay on the lines and she checked the scraps to see if there was any purple showing and to hide my scraps I turned them face down on the desk but she turned them over, saw the purple where I cut outside the line and she whacked my fingers and fussed at me and I cried.

Anyhow, yesterday I needed to cut out 22 oval shapes and I couldn’t.

Damn, Miss Ink/Skeleton anyhow!!! She was supposed to teach me not whack my fingers. If I had ever learned to cut pumpkins, then ovals would be a snap.

Being a hi-tech genesis, albeit a clumsy one, I figured out a way to transfer the one seal I did manage to cut into a mostly oval shape from one book cover to another.

What I did was I folded a post-it note into eight little folds, sticky-side out and stuck it to the back of the one foil oval. Then I could use the tweezers to peel it off and move it to another book cover.

Damn but I’m cleaver.

So I stuck my shiny oval Bluefish Books seal onto the front cover of a book and scanned the whole cover in anew. Because of the bright light of the scanner, the gold foil reflects down and comes out scanned looking gray… but people who buy E-BOOKS should be computer literate enough to see that this is an E-BOOK not a real book that they are buying.

When they buy an E-BOOK, they get it in-hand immediately. Since production costs are lower the price is cheaper. And there are no shipping and handling fees to pay, so you save more money that way.

Here is a scanned copy of one of my book covers with a shiny seal to prove that it is an E-Book, not a real book:

I still have a bunch of these thumbnail thingies to make, but I think I can have all 22 E-BOOKS available on line in my catalog at www.bluefishbooks.info by tomorrow night.

The 22 E-BOOKs are added at the tail end of my catalog. The same book in print editions, I put at the top of the catalogue listings.

Oh, by the way, the person who had asked my help, said she wanted “to pick my brain about preparing her books for publication”. Alas, She could have learned so much about writing and publishing from me. Always glad to share my expertise with young writers.

I’m proud of my technical ability in preparing these E-BOOKS for publication. I keep abreast of the latest technological developments. Stephen King must be able to cut out ovals quicker than I can because he has a lot of such E-BOOKS available on line. I’m trying to catch up with him as America’s best-selling author, so if you see him—hide his nail scissors.