It’s been awhile since Lifeliner came out, and I thought it was well past time to update the gift I send those who subscribe to my website using the form in the right sidebar.
I pondered what to give for a few weeks. I wanted to give something unique and attractive, something I hadn’t done before. And then Apple came out with iBooks 2, followed by a special app to create fixed-layout ebooks. Looked good but I didn’t like the terms, and right on cue, Twitter coughed up an alternative app: Book Creator. Looked snazzy. I downloaded it, then played around in my head some ideas. I have written poetry; I have taken and displayed on Flickr thousands of photographs; I have done some readings. I married a select few of the three, and voilá, a poetry and photography fixed-layout ebook: my gift to new subscribers. Free! Because gifts are always free.
Fixed-layout is best for poetry because poetry is about more than the words, it’s also about how they look on the page. It’s about line lengths, indentations, white space. Traditional ebooks that flow according to the device or app they’re read in muck up the way the lines look. But fixed-layout ebooks don’t flow. You can zoom in and see the details in the photos or enlarge the text, but the way the words look remains the same. What I design is what you see. In full colour too. At this moment, the gift is available in ePub format only for viewing in iBooks for the iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. The PDF version is forthcoming — when Book Creator updates its app. But the ePub is glorious and worth subscribing to Compositionally Shireen.
Compositionally Shireen is what I call the weekly digest of my articles and posts, delivered conveniently into your inbox each Tuesday morning (click here for a preview). So what are you waiting for? Fill in the field below with your email and read your exclusive ebook now.
