It was the...well, you know the kind of times

An interesting experience, this pulling a book together and sending it on its way into the world. And rewarding too.

The raw material existed and a certain art and a certain craft went into the creation thereof. But that was, by no means, where art and craft ended.

Sixty-some photographs and their attendent haiku. Created over a couple of years. Now we can begin.

First was the task of pulling these photographs into one location and getting them all, in no order that god nor man could discern, into Scrivener - the tool chosen for book production. Four different phone cameras had been involved, each with its own quirks, including the 12MP variant that was my Nokia N8.

So, one of the tasks was to turn the photos into something resembling similar size and shape. Apart from the panorama shot, which was at least four shots stitched together, I believe I succeeded.

Then attach the haiku that had accompanied the photograph when initially uploaded to the Web, and sit back and think, "How on earth am I going to pull these into something coherent?"

"In the doing," as the Spanish might say. In truth, it took a day of thought before some "organizing principle" revealed itself. After that, it was a matter of drag and drop, rearrange, attempt a balance between the three sections, drag and drop some more.

So, art and craft needed here too. And what of the cover image? The title, "Haiku - Through a Lens", suggested itself, and by extension suggested the image. One dozen photographs of a camera lens later, I had the shot I wanted. A little cleanup in Photoshop got rid of the reflection of the phone camera in the camera's lens. I, briefly, considered the meta point this represented, infinite reflections of camera to lens to camera...but good sense prevailed.

Scrivener made the book creation, generation that is, fairly straightforward. Mobi, ePub, PDF - all possible with just a few setting changes. There are tools to preview the results and to examine the internal structure to ensure the ePub format is valid. I hardly doubted Scrivener's ability to create valid output - but it was reassuring to have it check out OK.

Then off to Amazon (.com, .co.uk and .de) and Barnes & Noble - with some frustration with Smashwords (Scrivener providing the Word output as well). A book laden with so many photographs runs over Smashwords 5MB limit for input to their Meatgrinder.

Another time perhaps...

There is a certain level of wry amusement for me in the fact that I was unable to give 17 copies of the book away. But there is art and craft in book promotion too.

And I must learn it.

Thanks to all for the support given so freely.