One Way to Do It
By Gus Kilthau
@Ceerios (4698)
Goodfellow, Texas
September 28, 2016 9:11pm CST
One Way to Do It -
One of the nice MyLotters asked me about some ebooks on which I was currently working. It is going to be a while before any of the new ebooks is ready to roll, but one that I put together in earlier times under the banner of the "Free E-book Project (FEBP) has been out there for a while. Its title was "101 Dumb Poems."
The illustrations in that ebook were all pen and ink sketches by the late Al Kaeppel, a good friend and an old doggerel-loving dog like me. The way he went about his work of sketching for each of the "dumb poems" was to read the poem and imagine a good illustration to go along with it. He did better at his imagining than I did with the dumb poem writing.
Anyway, the texts and Al's illustrations were all assembled using a readily available and low-cost publishing program - call it a word processor if you like - and put in order. Then the pages were all converted into "PDF" format as the finished ebook. The publishing program is named "PagePlus Version X5 (newer versions now available) that I bought from SerifUK, Ltd at low cost. Another way of doing what I did with the Serif program would have been to do the word processing using the open source program, "Open Office" (Windows) or "Libre" (Linux) and converted that text to PDF using the conversion facilities in either of those programs. Quick, easy, and low cost.
I have not decided to publish ready to read versions in any format other than "PDF," but those are easy enough to produce using a multi-conversion program, named "Calibre." That way you can make your ebook readable on many of the ebook readers, tablets, and other hand-held portables right at your own computer.
The image used here as the header is a screen shot of one of the black-and-white pages from the "101 Dumb Poems" ebook and is an example of what you can do at your own computer. 100 pages like that one, and you have an ebook that you can produce with a week or maybe a few more weeks of keyboarding.
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Image source: Screenshot by Gus Kilthau
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6 people like this
7 responses
@teresatrotter (4073)
• Jacksonville, Florida
29 Sep 16
I write poems. But hopefully none of mine are dumb. LOL I really like the sketch. Are ebooks hard to publish?
1 person likes this
@teresatrotter (4073)
• Jacksonville, Florida
29 Sep 16
@Ceerios - Mill Otter Place?
2 people like this
@Ceerios (4698)
• Goodfellow, Texas
29 Sep 16
@teresatrotter - Ms Teresa - Just my silly way of saying "MyLotter" place. 
-Gus-
-Gus-1 person likes this
@teresatrotter (4073)
• Jacksonville, Florida
29 Sep 16
@Ceerios - Well... If you do a search, you will find some of my poems. I have some sort of from the beginning, until recent. I am an aspiring writer, but for now I just want to get my work out there, so I am entering poetry contests, because I am good at writing poems. Do you know of some good contests?
@Ceerios (4698)
• Goodfellow, Texas
29 Sep 16
@jaboUK - Ms Janet - Sometimes a bit of a hassle can be both fun and useful. Witness this comment about that subject from one of our nice MyLot commenters...
"@Ceerios - Well... If you do a search, you will find some of my poems. I have some sort of from the beginning, until recent. I am an aspiring writer, but for now I just want to get my work out there, so I am entering poetry contests, because I am good at writing poems. Do you know of some good contests?"
Family, friends, associates of one sort or another - even flat-out strangers - students, teachers, would-be writers, and even enemies - those are some who might have an interest in a person authoring and producing an ebook.
It is not for everyone, true, but it surely is for "someone" - especially those who "just feel like doing it."
So, there you have it. I both totally agree with you as to the hassle part of it, but, at the same time, I'd like to see a collection of your MyLot poems in one place such that I can read through them the same way I might read through any other good reading collection.
For you, collecting your many poems into your own MyLot collection would be like collecting pennies into a big pile and seeing that pile turn into real treasure.
"That's just the way things really are." (quoted from Ted Poe)
Have fun today. -Gus-
2 people like this
@Ceerios (4698)
• Goodfellow, Texas
4 Oct 16
@MarshaMusselman - Ms Marsha - Serif gives away a demo PagePlus program for free that you could try at your convenience. I do not know if the freebie contains the PDF conversion business. Open Office and the Linux version, Libre, both contain PDF conversion features and both of those programs are open sourced and free of cost. Another conversion program is "Calibre" and it is also open sourced. -Gus-
1 person likes this
@MarshaMusselman (38659)
• Midland, Michigan
4 Oct 16
@Ceerios I do have a convert to pdf thingy on my computer, but I've not heard of the one you mention here. I may have to check that out further.
1 person likes this
@LadyDuck (458230)
• Switzerland
29 Sep 16
I have installed Calibre and I use "Open Office" in Windows and "Libre Office" in Linux. I have many personal recipes that I am converting in small booklets that I am saving in pdf format. For the moment they are only for my use, but may be I will consider sharing them using a personal blog site.
1 person likes this
@shivamani10 (11038)
• Hyderabad, India
29 Sep 16
What is there, you can convert the format afterwards.It is easy also. I write stories which no one on earth can read. People will come and beat me and collect their medical reimbursement after reading my stories.
1 person likes this
@Ceerios (4698)
• Goodfellow, Texas
29 Sep 16
@shivamani10 - Oh, if only I could figure out what it is that you are telling to me here. 
- Gus-
- Gus-
@responsiveme (22926)
• India
7 Oct 16
I loved that poem ...or doggerel (why is it called that?)
Keep me postd on the E-book news
1 person likes this
@Ceerios (4698)
• Goodfellow, Texas
7 Oct 16
@responsiveme - Friend ARM - It might be that doggerel is poetry worthy only of reading by a dog. ( ). It is used to describe poems lacking in good rhythm, with rhyme that comes in the form of words that may or may not make a lot of sense, and be of the style that I personally refer to as "dumb" poems. Let's put it this way, doggerel is not such hot poetry. -Gus-
). It is used to describe poems lacking in good rhythm, with rhyme that comes in the form of words that may or may not make a lot of sense, and be of the style that I personally refer to as "dumb" poems. Let's put it this way, doggerel is not such hot poetry. -Gus-1 person likes this
@Ceerios (4698)
• Goodfellow, Texas
29 Sep 16
@paigea - On any given day after I have had my mandatory bowl of Cheerios and sliced bananas, I try to do something that may possibly be helpful to someone - like the nice MyLotter who commented about her plan to create some of her own ebooks.
Have some fun today. -Gus-
1 person likes this
