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| The El Tovar Project can be read here: https://issuu.com/arizonahistorystories/docs/the_el_tovar |
We immediately thought of the ebook format. And we kept thinking of the ebook format to the point of not bothering to think of anything else. We spent ridiculous amounts of time beginning to learn about ebook publishing. Then it became apparent we needed a "dummy" project to take all the way through the ebook publishing process.
That's how the El Tovar Project came about. George Wharton James was a prolific producer of untold 1000's of words about The Grand Canyon. He just spewed out words like Niagara Falls spews out water. All of his works are in public domain.
So, we went to one of his books titled "Grand Canyon, How To See It" and looked around for some suitable text to lift out of the book. We quickly found it in The El Tovar. James provided a relatively concise (for James, anyway) description of The El Tovar and its features. It was just the right length with which to conduct the experiment or "proof of concept," if you will.
Of course, the next challenge lay in how to convert James narratives to editable text. Luckily, we had already discovered the Google Drive/Docs OCR functionality. Once we downloaded the free Google ebook on Grand Canyon, we then printed the appropriate pages as an image rather than a PDF. We uploaded this to Google Drive and then used Google Docs to convert the image of text to real text.
And that when the not-so-fun-stuff began. We started wrestling with Amazon's Kindle ebook publishing tools. Gosh, what a frustrating, inscrutable, annoying process. We've been working with computers since the early 1980's and the Kindle process easily qualifies as one of the most disgusting functionalities we've worked with. UGH!
Anyway, we finally forced our way through the process of formatting an experimental publication. Then we began the equally inscrutable process of attempting to actually publish the project. HAHAHA! That's when Amazon said, "YOU MUST CHARGE $$$!" Well, we don't want to charge money. We want all our stuff to be free. No exceptions. No matter what we did, we couldn't get around that roadblock.
OH! How disappointed we were. But on the other hand, we were grateful that we used a short experimental project to get to the point of realizing there is NO WAY Amazon will allow a free ebook on the Kindle platform.
Meanwhile, Dear Friend Randy Lloyd reminded us of the Old School, tried-and-true PDF process. Heck, we've been using PDFs since the Pleistocene and creating PDFs is a no brainer as far as we're concerned. We used Apache Open Office to create an ODT file that we then exported as a PDF.
Then we uploaded the PDF to Google Drive and created a shareable link. So far, so good but that's still not quite the equivalent of actual publishing. At least we were able to wave BYE BYE to Amazon ebooks!
This morning (01/26/20) Dear Friend Br'er Lar helped us remember Issuu. Ironically, we had already used Issuu seven years ago to publish my Dad's book. (For a recap of that process see: http://www.livesimplecaremuch.com/2013/01/dads-book-is-online.html ).
Anyway, we established a new Issuu account and uploaded the PDF from Google Drive and, POOF, The El Tovar Project was officially published...for FREE..and in a format that works on any device anywhere.
So, in any event, it's been a long, tedious and finally rewarding process. The El Tovar Project served its purpose well. And besides serving its purpose, it's a fun read in its own right. Win-win situation!
Just in case you want to read or download the original PDF, it is here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ld5Yv9Lq2IDb0Ugx_FgnCcwu9CzFqfaw/view
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