For your consideration, my book, "No Good Deed"

[MaryMcDonald]

Thank you so much for the very kind words! I very much appreciate it. I shopped this book to over 100 agents, and barely had a nibble. I studied the art of querying, bought books on it, had critiques, etc, but nothing worked, so here I am as an indie author. I actually kind of like the freedom it gives me, but if they wanted to offer me a deal, I would definitely consider one. lol

As far as mac goes, I know! I don't know why Pubit books don't work with it. I have a Blackberry and it won't work with that either.I know this is a B&N site, but the book is on iBooks and Amazon (which has an iPad/iTouch app.) However, at Smashwords and iBooks, it's more expensive. Smashwords is great, but pricing it lower there means when they distribute it out to places like Sony, it takes them forever to change prices. Since I have so few sales there, I opted to just keep it the same there. If someone would rather buy through Smashwords, I can issue them a coupon so they can get it at the same sale price as here. Just let me know. :-)

[lkmiller]

FYI,  I believe the BN Reader apps for Mac and Blackberry use PDB files instead of EPUB.  Hopefully they will get those apps updated to read epub files soon.

[Globaltech]

I'm not an author but I wannabe! 

I really should take a writing class or read up on it... I am working on NanoWriMo this year and have a few thousand words already... I need to crack down over the weekend as I'm behind (but I also started on the 4th).   I'm sure my creation will be spastic as I don't really have any idea what I'm doing but it's a start.

It's inspiring to see real people publishing their own works.

I look forward to it.

[MaryMcDonald]

Good luck on NanoMo. I've never done that. I wonder why they picked November? With Thanksgiving, it's just too busy a month for me to be able to commit. January or Feb seem like perfect months for writing. No major holidays, it's cold out, not much else to do. lol.

If you are looking for writing tips, there are tons of sites online. AbsoluteWrite.com is great place to find lots of info.

[mousetater]

Mary, I just bought your book.  It downloaded to my Nook just fine.  But when I added the book to Calibre 9so I can keep a log of all my Books),  I tlists as "Untitled" with Author Unknown.  Makes sense, since it is published through PubIt! But when I "Download Meta Data and Covers", the title changes to "Untitled: A Booklovers Mystery" by Julie Wallin Kaewert.  Any idea what would cause this?  Has this happened to anyone else?  (Maybe my computer is haunted...)

[MaryMcDonald]

Oh wow. I have no idea. I've never used Calibre for anything, so I don't know how it works. Does that mean your copy is gone? If it is, and you can't read it now, just let me know. I'll get you a coupon for Smashwords to replace it for free.

[Doug_Pardee Distinguished Bibliophile]

The book doesn't have a "real" ISBN (it doesn't really need one), so Calibre is searching on the title name. Since the title is showing as "Untitled", it's finding a book called "Untitled".

Why Calibre isn't finding the title and author metadata when NOOK is finding it, I don't know. There's only one place for that information to be stored in an EPUB ebook—in the dc:title and dc:creator tags in the metadata section of the OPF file. The dc:creator tag also has an opf:file-as tag for how to file the author name (usually in last name comma first name order).

Anyway, adding the metadata information by hand shouldn't be any problem. I always have to add description metadata to NOOKbooks, usually have to add the cover, often have to add the ISBN (if there is one), and sometimes have to correct the author information (especially the file-as).

Mary, is your book DRMed on PubIt!? If so, mousetater can e-mail it to me (with your permission) and I can check out the metadata in the EPUB file. If it's not DRMed, that probably wouldn't be appropriate because I'd be getting a free usable copy.

mousetater, how did you get the copy that you loaded into Calibre? Is it from a NOOK wireless download (all-numeric filename EPUB), from a NOOK for PC download, from a Mac eReader download, or from clicking the Download button here on the web site? Is it an EPUB or a PDB? Added: duh, it just occurred to me that it's a PubIt! e-book, so it has to be EPUB and can't be downloaded to a Mac.

[MaryMcDonald]

Yes, my book is DRMed and sure, she can email it. I'm totally lost with all the Calibre stuff so sorry I can't be of any help. :-)  However, on Smashwords, it does have a free ISBN that Smashwords uses to distribute the book, so if getting a Smashwords version would make it easier on mousetater to convert it, my offer for a coupon for a free replacement stands. :-)

[Doug_Pardee Distinguished Bibliophile]

Okay, I PM'ed my email address to mousetater, and I'll let you know what I find.

[mousetater]

I just emailed the file to Doug.

it seems to be only an issue with Calibre. I purchased the ebook from the B&N website using my home computer.  When I Checked for New Content on my Nook, the ebook downloaded as it should.  In the Library listing, it shows as NO GOOD DEED, and the ebook opens with the cover, etc. But I do now see that in the upper left corner of the Nook screen, the title is listed as Untitled, which then makes Doug's explanation of the problem I am seeing in Calibre very likely.

I then used the Download button in My eLibrary on the B&N site to download the file to my hard drive.  This is the file that I brought into Calibre. The name of that file is 2940011809460_NO_GOOD_DEED.epub (the file I sent to Doug).

I can manually change the information in Calbre - I change the tags and series information all the time.  But I think I will wait and see what Doug finds.

Thanks to both Mary and Doug for their help. Let me know if you need anything else from me.

[Doug_Pardee Distinguished Bibliophile]

I got the file. Ick. The metadata isn't filled in, and some of what is filled in is wrong. Here's what it looks like:

  <opf:metadata xmlns:­opf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
    <dc:title>Untitled</dc:title>
    <dc:date opf:event="creation">0001-01-01</dc:date>
    <dc:date opf:event="modification">0001-01-01</dc:date>
    <dc:date opf:event="publication">2010-10-25</dc:date>
    <dc:identifier id="uid">2940011809460</dc:identifier>
    <dc:language>ru-RU</dc:language>
    <opf:meta name="generator" content="Aspose.Words for .NET 9.3.0.0" />
    <meta name="BNContentKind" content="book" xmlns="" />
  </opf:metadata>

The title is literally "Untitled". No author name is provided (it would be a dc:creator line). The language is specified as being Russian.

I tried downloading the free sample using NOOK for PC. I got similar results:

  <opf:metadata xmlns:­opf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
    <dc:title>  <opf:metadata xmlns:&shy;opf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
    <dc:title>Sample of Untitled</dc:title>
    <dc:date opf:event="creation">0001-01-01</dc:date>
    <dc:date opf:event="modification">0001-01-01</dc:date>
    <dc:date opf:event="publication">2010-10-25</dc:date>
    <dc:identifier id="uid">2970011809467</dc:identifier>
    <dc:language>ru-RU</dc:language>
    <opf:meta name="generator" content="Aspose.Words for .NET 9.3.0.0" />
    <dc:identifier id="SourceEAN">2940011809460</dc:identifier>
    <meta name="BNContentKind" content="book" xmlns="" />
  </opf:metadata>

Next I downloaded the sample to my NOOK, wirelessly (3G). It looks the same:

  <opf:metadata xmlns:&shy;opf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
    <dc:title>Sample of Untitled</dc:title>
    <dc:date opf:event="creation">0001-01-01</dc:date>
    <dc:date opf:event="modification">0001-01-01</dc:date>
    <dc:date opf:event="publication">2010-10-25</dc:date>
    <dc:identifier id="uid">2970011809467</dc:identifier>
    <dc:language>ru-RU</dc:language>
    <opf:meta name="generator" content="Aspose.Words for .NET 9.3.0.0" />
    <dc:identifier id="SourceEAN">2940011809460</dc:identifier>
    <meta name="BNContentKind" content="book" xmlns="" />
  </opf:metadata>

Yet, the sample shows up properly labeled on my NOOK and in NOOK for PC.

I'm going to continue investigating how NOOK and NOOK for PC can find the title and author, but in the meantime it looks like the metadata created by PubIt! is pretty much junk.

[Doug_Pardee Distinguished Bibliophile]

I don't see any sign of the correct title or author name in any of the unDRMed parts of the EPUB. NOOK and NOOK for PC must be grabbing that information in a separate exchange with the B&N server. Copying the EPUB to 'my documents' also gives "Untitled" by "Unknown Author".

By the way, PubIt! doesn't seem to be generating a chapter table of contents. The NCX file even on the full e-book is almost empty. The one entry in there is (maybe we shouldn't be surprised) "Untitled". It also claims to be in Russian:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE ncx PUBLIC "-//NISO//DTD ncx 2005-1//EN" "http://www.daisy.org/z3986/2005/ncx-2005-1.dtd"[]>

<ncx xmlns="http://www.daisy.org/z3986/2005/ncx/" version="2005-1" xml:lang="ru-RU">

  <head>

    <meta name="dtb:uid" content="uid" />

    <meta name="dtb:depth" content="1" />

    <meta name="dtb:generator" content="Aspose.Words for .NET 9.3.0.0" />

    <meta name="dtb:totalPageCount" content="0" />

    <meta name="dtb:maxPageNumber" content="0" />

  </head>

  <docTitle><text>Untitled</text></docTitle>

  <navMap>

    <navPoint id="level0" playOrder="1">

      <navLabel><text>Untitled</text></navLabel>

      <content src="7121c9dd9cb2434d974ecef2e23ca008_body.html" />

    </navPoint>

  </navMap>

</ncx>

My recommendation is to complain to PubIt! They're not just picking on you. Here's the metadata from the sample of Gemma Halliday's Spying in High Heels:

  <opf:metadata xmlns:­opf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
    <dc:title>Sample of A</dc:title>
    <dc:creator opf:role="aut">Verna Hargrove</dc:creator>
    <dc:date opf:event="creation">2010-10-15</dc:date>
    <dc:date opf:event="modification">2010-10-22</dc:date>
    <dc:date opf:event="publication">2010-10-24</dc:date>
    <dc:identifier id="uid">2970011888523</dc:identifier>
    <dc:language>en-US</dc:language>
    <opf:meta name="generator" content="Aspose.Words for .NET 9.3.0.0" />
    <dc:identifier id="SourceEAN">2940011888526</dc:identifier>
    <meta name="BNContentKind" content="book" xmlns="" />
  </opf:metadata>

They got the language right, but the title is not even close and what's up with the author name???

[MaryMcDonald]

Russian? That's wild. lol. I would complain to Pubit, but I've heard from other authors that they had emailed questions regarding things like their book processing for days and days, or only part of the book showing up, and they hadn't heard back from anyone. It sounds like their Pubit platform isn't compatible with Calibre.

As far as the table of contents, I actually don't have one. I was having enough trouble with formatting, that I was worried about screwing it up. It seems like many novels don't have a table of contents as dtb, so I just wanted to keep it simple. I am thinking of doing it with the sequel though, as I've heard that readers like to be able to jump to a chapter. At some point, I may attempt to do it with No Good Deed as well, but my limited html knowledge is over 10 years old.

Thanks so much for all your time and effort into this Doug. I will share your findings with some other authors. They may have some ideas on what the problem is as many are much more knowledgable about this kind of thing than I am.

[blkeyesuzi]

Doug, you're so awesome.  B&N should hire you to fix what's broken.  You'd have some great job security man.  Please don't leave this board.  We need you.

[AnnSheridan]

I agree with Suzi...Doug, you are a gem. 

Mary, I started your book yesterday afternoon, and was hooked from the first page.  Stayed up much too late reading, until I reached a place where I could 'safely' leave Mark until today.  I found myself wide awake at 4 a.m., thinking and worrying about Mark.  I know what I'll be doing after work today...finishing No Good Deed!  You've done a great job with your story.  Pacing & tension are perfect.  I look forward to your next book!

Thanks for sharing it here with us...I'm so glad I found it on this thread.

P.S. Maybe Jim is a long-lost cousin of mine?

[Doug_Pardee Distinguished Bibliophile]

Mary, was the document you uploaded to PubIt! a Word document? I'm wondering if you needed to have filled in the Properties on that document. In recent versions of Word, click on the big icon in the upper left corner and select Prepare>Properties. There are boxes for Author, Title, and other stuff. Maybe PubIt! is looking there. Or maybe not.

Where the "Russian" part might've come from, I'm stumped. Word has a language selection for spell-checking and such, in the Review tab, Proofing block, Set Language. Somehow I suspect that's not the source of the "language=ru-RU", because your spell-checking would've had quite the field day.

[MaryMcDonald]

Thanks so much, Ann. I was reading your comment and saw your last name, and was just going to ask if you were  any relation. lol.Maybe he is a long lost cousin.

I actually took the name from Fort Sheridan and Sheridan road that was just a few blocks from my former home. With a former general and fort with the name, I figured it sounded militaryish.

Jim is also in the sequel, which I'm trying to get out at the end of the month, however, I've had a bit of a setback due to sick kids. My son was in the hospital over the weekend and now my daughter is sick--not as bad though, thankfully.

[MaryMcDonald]

It is in Word doc format, but I used Polyedit Lite to upload it.

Edit: Sorry, I had to end the post sooner than I wanted because my oven timer went off. I just noticed that my book does have an ISBN. I'm not sure if B&N assigned it one, or if it's the one from Smashwords. I don't recall putting any numbers in the ISBN box, but I suppose I could have. Would that have something to do with the problems?

[AnnSheridan]

@Mary, I hope your kids are feeling a little better each day. 

I finished No Good Deed last night.  Kudos to you, Mary!  Keep writing...and please let us know here when your next book is ready.  I'm at the front of the 'cyber-line' patiently waiting for more!

[MaryMcDonald]

Thanks, Ann. Glad you enjoyed it, and I will be sure to post when the second book is uploaded. It will be called March Into Hell.