Kindle eBook Design Resources for CodeMonkeys

A few helpful links for those of you designing an eBook for Kindle. This is geared for those of you who want to work with the source code (as opposed to those who are looking to simply convert from InDesign or Word to .mobi without caring for geekish specifics)

A great introduction for techie people already familiar with web-design

http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/kindle-formatting-for-web-geeks

Site for Kindle Formatting Tips

http://kindleformatting.com/index.php

Kindle's Publishing Program Page with goodies like

• KindleGen - a tool for generating .mobe (kindle) files from HTML, ePub, etc files
• KindlePreviewer - a desktop virtual Kindle for testing your code in a 'live' kindle display

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000234621

The not-remotely-useful Kindle Publishing Guidelines Document from Amazon

s3.amazonaws.com/kindlegen/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf

A couple of nice web pages for cheatsheets on HTML and CSS compatibility:

http://www.ebookconversion.com/kindle-publishing-guidelines.htm

New Developer Hub & Upgrades

We are excited to announce the New Developer Hub for those who are interested in seeing how we developed and are developing the BlueHead site, Author's Dashboard, and Fan Club Site. We use Github (of course) to manage it all and have chosen to make the repository a public repository so anyone can participate as a developer and contribute (we will credit them in the "CONTRIBUTORS" file of the source code).

New Dev Updates:

• Upgraded system to Rails 3.0.1
• Moved hosting to Heroku
• Created sandbox branch for new feature adds

BlueHead switches to Highrise

After spending a little time working in Highrise, a Customer Relationship Management tool by 37Signals, it was clear that their "Goodbye to bloat" tagline was inherently obvious.

Our initial concerns in dropping SugarCRM (our current CRM tool):

• Would we miss all of the cool feature sets: detailed tracking for the entire customer pipeline from target to contact/deal, and crazy detailed reporting?
• Frankly, we never used any of the functionality. In point of fact we found ourselves constantly going back and forth about how to enter a contact... "Are they a target...or a lead...oh wait!...do we enter them here...or here...what's our procedure again?...oh crap! where did I put that note about my phone call yesterday?...wait, what's the contact's name again?"
• Would we miss the cool looking eye-candy of charts?
• NEVER USED THEM ONCE
• Sugar has been around forever and Highrise is relatively new
• Translation: Highrise is built for today's web without complicated retrofits
• Sugar charges an arm and a leg for all the web 2.0 stuff (that's right I said 2.0 as in 2.yesterday)

Anywho...

So it came down to one word: simplicity. As an independent, constantly-morphing publishing house living in a wonderfully evolving market, keeping it simple matters and we avoid the word "procedure" like the plague. If you need to wrap a procedure around complicated administrivia, it is just too complicated. At least, we try to keep that in mind.

AND, for all you tech-head types out there, they are a Ruby/onRails shop, so you know they are relevant!

BlueHead Aligns with Media Liaison, Jenée Arthur

BlueHead Publishing is excited to announce its alignment with Relihann-Satterlee's Jenée Arthur for the promotion of its author, D.a. Thompson and his work, "Over Coffee: A Conversation For Gay Partnership & Conservative Faith."

"Over Coffee" is a narrative piece couched in a coffee-house conversation between the author and a small-town pastor concerning a gay church member who desires to be partnered in the church. D.a. warmly introduces the reader to a conservative, faith-based dialogue for providing room on the pew in today's most conservative churches for gay partnered persons.

Jenée Arthur, Rellihan-Satterlee

Jenée Arthur, with Rellihan-Satterlee, is a media liaison representing clients through a strong introductory voice to publishers, niche markets and the overall media.

The author, "D.a." Thompson, a Seattle Washington based writer, speaker, and musician is tackling some of the front burner issues of today through a unique and diverse world view. Raised in the conservative church and having studied to be a conservative minister, D.a. brings a discerning understanding of the conservative mind, faith, and framework. His full-spectrum engagement lends a trifecta of consideration and reflection even now igniting controversy. D.a. is expanding restrained horizons by mind, mouth, and music.

More information please contact BlueHead Publishing.

blueheadpublishing.com goes live!

We are excited to launch our new website. Feel free to poke around and see what's new.

For those of you hackers out there... all of the source code for the site is available on github.com and open to the public. Yup! Completely open. You can check out the code and have fun with it (or even help us out by contributing back - we'll give ya props!!)

Click here for our source code repository.

We also have a ticket management site that is open to the public. Yup! Again, completely open. You see what we see...even our embarrassing mistakes (it's what happens at 2am).  You can help us by letting us know what to fix, and seeing what is to come down the road!

Click here for our issue tracking.