I spent a good part of the morning today converting my story How to Thwart a Dictator into new and exciting ebook formats. The story has been posted in PDF format on my website for free download the past two months. (You can find it here.)
I made some decent progress and learned a lot, but still have much to do.  I started with ePub format. Using a web browser the story looks good, but the main story is contained in xhtml, so that’s no surprise. I did learn that fancy quotes and apostrophes screw the file up.
I don’t own an ebook reader, so I’m living off software like Stanza. Stanza was able to read the file but displayed it differently than Firefox did. In Stanza, I get an indent each paragraph and a blank line between paragraphs, and I can’t figure out how to lose the blank line. In Firefox, I only get the indents. One friend with an ebook reader was not able to import the file, so I am at a stand-still for the time being.
One thing Stanza can do (albeit it appears not terribly well) is convert from one ebook format to another. I converted to Kindle format and sent off to a volunteer. The Kindle was able to read the file, but it had a couple of funky side effects that I’m going to try to squash. I understand Amazon has Kindle reading software for PC. I plan to try the file there to see if the results are the same.
I could still use another volunteer to help me test ePub formatted files.
I Have a Sony Reader (Touch edition) and would be happy to help out.