A couple of years ago I wrote in this space about not understanding Linked In. It’s a networking website where people link to other people for professional reasons. They could be in a similar line of work, the same city, or simply want to hook into the other person’s contacts in hopes of expanding their contacts. I used to be skeptical of the website until a young, smart guy who’s dating a young, smart colleague of mine said that turning down an invitation to “link” is like turning your back to someone who says Hi at a networking function.
So I started linking like mad. I didn’t approach many people but I approved requests from others. And this week all of that linking finally paid off when I tried to convert my manuscript into the formats required by the ebook websites. Oh it seems so simple. There are guides aplenty online and you just follow along, right? Wrong! It requires a lot more knowledge and understanding than what a person would typically know to work with regular documents. I did about half a dozen conversions and they all looked wrong, in different ways. Headlines danced onto pages where they didn’t belong. Paragraphs broke up in the middle. It was infuriating so I began to troll online for help.
Let’s see. Professional. Specific ability. I googled a bit and communicated with one woman in BC who wasn’t able to be timely. Linked In to the rescue! I logged in and looked for someone who did ebook conversions and voila, one of my links had written a recommendation for a man named Allen at a company called eB Format. I emailed him, he quoted me very reasonable terms and in less than 2 days he sent me the finished files. He also confirmed my suspicion that there is no reason why someone who isn’t going to do these conversions professionally should learn how to do them. It is a very precious process and designed specifically for geeks and against regular people just tossing up anything they think of online. It takes effort.
So The Naked Truth is now on Kobo and Kindle – where I forgot to list myself as its author. Rookie mistake! I’ll fix it. Next, iBooks for Apple products and after that, I rest.
PDFs ordered through this website are going out and I have several review copies out in publications that say they will do them including the London Free Press and Beat Magazine. The games are underway!
This is the first time I’ve ever heard of something useful from Linked In. Good to know… thanks!