Another go at submitting revised files

My earlier blog about submitting files to Lightning Source prompted a comment from none other than Aaron Shepard, doyen of self publishing authors and the man behind Aiming at Amazon. Aaron has tried just about every alternative when it comes to producing books over the Internet and is a regular contributor to the self-publishing and print on demand discussion groups on Yahoo. If it hadn't been for his book I would still be metaphorically banging the rocks together and going "Ook!" instead of already having the first part of the Soul Trader Trilogy available on Amazon. I was so impressed with Aiming at Amazon that I gave it 5 stars when I reviewed it on Amazon. You don't believe me, click on link.

Aaron must be cruising the Internet, righting wrongs and fighting corrupted files wherever he can find them for he found my blog entry soon after it was published and left a comment.

His advice was to stop messing about with Open Office Writer and to use Adobe Acrobat to generate a PDF for The Horsepower Whisperer.

I didn't do this earlier simply because I haven't loaded Adobe Acrobat on to my new PC. I had used Open Office Writer to successfully upload my textblock files before. On that occasion there had been no problem about the images of my maps, which seem to be causing the problem this time around. Anyway, having used Adobe Acrobat to make a new PDF, I noticed that the file size was much smaller than before. Using Adobe Acrobat has produced a PDF of 1.7 MB, whereas before it was 9.7 MB.

This made me wonder if the file size was too big to upload via the Lightning Source website. The last time I tried this I received an IO failure message and when I queried this with Lightning Source I was told that my files were too big and that I would have to re-submit them on a CD.

So tonight I tried uploading via the Lightning Source website again. Over several goes, the upload got as far as 62% on one attempt at 2% on another. I think there is more to it than just a question of file size. It looks as if I will have to resubmit by posting a CD once again.

On a brighter note, I have been able to order the proof for The Wormton Lamb via my customer area on the Lightning Source website so that's working alright.