Didn't get much e-work done last weekend. I took it off to do a little fishing. I belong to a local fishing club, Central Ohio Muskies Inc chapter 41. We had a tournament at Clear Fork Reservoir and it was a chilly experience. I've never fished in below freezing temps and I was surprised at how warm I stayed most of the day. The only time I felt really cold was when I got out at lunch time. Must have been the life jacket that kept me comfy. We had a sleet storm about 9:00 in the morning which was another thing I've never experienced fishing. Muddy water and 20 mph winds made for a less than successful day for all the guys but it was still something I wouldn't have missed. One fish was caught the two days of fishing to win it by the son of the tourney's namesake. It seemed entirely fitting. Congrats Ron Fisher! 
I am hoping that spring will start to act like it and soon I can be wearing shorts and tank tops out on the water looking for those elusive muskies!
-Dan

I started out as a cartoonist. Naturally, being a cartoonist I wanted everyone in the world to see my funny little drawings and laugh and pat me on the head and then give me a treat. It was a trick I must have learned quite early on and found to be effective in treat procurement. 

I practiced this trick until I became good enough at it to get pats and treats sufficient to live on. At age 23 I began what eventually would turn into a 36 year career of unemployment at least in the eyes of those who have to work at a "real job" everyday. 

But that wasn't enough for me. I wanted to be my own publisher! 

I wanted to pat my own head and have all the treats from the start. Sadly the world did not work that way. Print publishing, the only publishing there was until just a short time ago was complicated, expensive, labor intensive and the logistics were simply too big a hurdle. There were those who did try to self-publish with mostly limited success and doubtless they worked themselves to exhaustion to achieve it. But remember, I am a cartoonist. I don't like work. It's what I was born to avoid if at all possible. Mind you I work very hard at what I do, but as I am reminded of now and then by folks with those "real jobs" I'm just drawing funny little cartoons. That's not work, that's fun! 

They are right. It is fun. It is also fun to make books. The most fun of all is making your own books and being able to sell them to readers all over the world without the obstacles of print publishing. Granted it is easier these days to publish your own print book with digital print on demand and services like Smashwords and Create Space among others. That's the next step for me; doing a print book of my cartoons.

For now though I am studying this amazing new artform they call epub. The multi-discipline art of creating a digital file that looks and acts like a real book but with added functionality a book could only dream about. It can go with you in your smartphone or tablet and you can carry an entire library of them. It shows movies, plays music, reads aloud to you, connects you to the world on the web but most importantly it does what every book does. Tells you stories, takes you on adventures, makes you laugh and makes you cry. 

This is where it begins. This is when the dream finally becomes a book and it couldn't have happened at a better time with print on the decline and publications cutting back drastically on the amount of cartoons they purchase. There are other cartoonists like me out there who desperately want to stay "unemployed" or start their own careers of staying at home to work at what you love, being able to watch their little baby cartoonists grow up and living a life with less stress and more laughter. Cartoon e-books are the future. Paper is better left in the trees.

I can add a tubevid so let's show you what I do to relieve stress after a hard day in the e-mines.

Okaaay! I tried to set up a direct account to upload e-books to Kobo. I used an aggregator with my first e-book and Kobo was among the sellers that they supply. You can link to it from my landing page on the Dan Collins page. Book's there for sale on their site. No problemo!
I cannot get The Writing Life portal to accept the upload of the second book in the Straight To Heck series so I write to Support to fix it. Several of the staff there (and they seem to have no idea who's working on what problem so I am talking to three different people) tell me that my book is image heavy and when they preview it in ADE the images are "layered".  So it must be a fixed layout e-book which they don't support.  (No it's not) 
I find this especially surprising that their staff has no idea of the differences between FXL and reflowable books! I do not see how Kobo can survive in this business with this lack of a general knowledge of the field in which they hope to build a business. It is absolutely amazing. I have not heard yet from the supervisor who took on the case as well but I forwarded the last email telling me an image e-book is therefore a fixed layout book. It will be interesting to see what she says. I think some support staff members are going to be due for a few lessons on Lynda.com so they get up to snuff on the jobs which they apparently got with no knowledge of EPUB.
I'm not all that concerned with getting my e-books up on Kobo as they only payout royalties twice a year which gives you some indication of how many books they will sell for you. 
I know EPUB is a still somewhat new concept to a lot of folks but when you are a seller it would seem to be common sense to know what exactly it is you're doing. I am still learning new things every day in this artform, and it is an artform and I am far from being an expert though I have had some measure of success but heck, I know way more than these people! 
So long Kobo, you just weren't meant to be.  

The wait is over. Now you can get FEB apparel and assorted goods at the Cafe Press shop. No profits for me are added to the price. If you buy 'em and wear 'em, that's good enough for me. Aren't you glad you waited (for an hour) to get this cool stuff?! Don't answer that. Go here!  http://www.cafepress.com/collinstoons

I am adding sample cartoon slideshows to the author pages. Don't take my word for it that these ebooks are uproariously funny, see for yourself. Of course I could be picking out the only funny ones there are in the books but I'm not; take my word for it.

A sample cartoon from the Bad Cats ebook. Get Rick's e-book for all your devices. Your desktops and laptops can get free ereader software for reading e-publications. Firefox browser has a free one as a plugin called Epubreader.