PUBLISHING DIARY: Why editing in the Kindle application is effective… (Status: editing ch 7…) I was purposely very exact in my title for this post. I did NOT say editing on the Kindle platform is effective. That is because, to date, I’ve not been able to get a Kindle Fire to display my draft Kindle files AND play MP3s at the same time. So, right now, my best platform is the iPad Mini running the Kindle Application. The details of how and why are found below…
First, since I convert my books to MP3s (www.naturalreaders.com) so I can “listen” to them as I edit them, being able to import a bunch of MP3s I just made and control their playback while I have the Kindle application up makes good sense, and the iPad version of Kindle doesn’t throw as many barriers in front of me when I try to do this. If you just want a good platform to quietly read, I suppose the Fire makes sense, but it would seem elementary to be able to do both operations at one time. (If you’ve cracked the code on this, please message me on FB.)
Second, the Kindle application allows me to use several different colors to highlight text. On the e-Ink Kindles, I really only had one color of highlight, but both the Kindle Fire and the Kindle application offer me four different colors to use. Now, what I used to do was highlight text and then add a note, but adding a note means stopping the audio playback and keying something, so it takes time. Therefore, I have assigned each color its own “meaning” if you will.
Red Highlight – If text is highlighted in this color, delete it. It’s crud and doesn’t need to be there.
Orange Highlight – Serious break/syntax problem. Should be obvious. If it’s not, I’ll still include a note, but most times I don’t have to. For example, if I highlight across two words, then that usually means there is a comma missing in the middle. If I have the wrong word, orange services, as well.
Yellow Highlight – This means the wording is awkward. Perhaps the sentence sounded brilliant in my head as I was writing it, but now upon a re-reading, it’s just baffling or over-complex. Yellow highlight is the same as circling text and marking “AK” over it.
Blue Highlight – What’s here isn’t complete and may need a little fleshing out. This can happen sometimes and will usually carry a supportive note. Thankfully, I don’t have many of these that crop up, at least in my readings, so I’m not inclined to worry too much about blue requiring me to stop for a moment.
Now, I don’t mean to inordinately ping the Kindle Fire for it’s lack of suitability to my particular use. I could supplement the KF with another MP3 player and achieve the same result. It may be possible to achieve the same result another way, as well. However, I very much prefer to have only one device to work with, and not two.
Editing progress for me is going pretty well, although one of my editors is having a little trouble that I’m going to try to clear up this weekend. Until then…
See you in the future,
JTL