The Kindle version of Between Migdol and the Sea is complete! Book readers who prefer electronic viewing to print can now learn all about Crossing the Red Sea with Faith and Science on their Kindle readers.
Alert followers of Funmurphys: the Blog will note that almost two months have passed since the print version of Migdol was published. You may correctly infer that preparing the Kindle version of Migdol was challenging. There are several reasons for this. A technical book is not a romance novel. It was not a problem to include my numbered citations in the text, and place a list of published references at the end of the e-book. But three scientific aspects of Between Migdol and the Sea gave me some trouble:
- Figures
- Tables
- Formulas
Figures
Between Migdol and the Sea: Chapter 11 Figure 1. Traditional route of the Exodus from Egypt into Canaan. Copyright 2014 by Carl Drews.
I included a number of illustrations in my book, some in color and some in black and white. These figures help the reader to understand the science and geography of the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt. The problem is that the various Kindle readers have different displays. Some are high resolution (lots of pixels per inch), and some are in black-and-white. The reader can also select a huge font or a tiny font.
I want readers of Between Migdol and the Sea to have a good reader experience, no matter what device they are using. Amazon provides a preview application that simulates what the book draft will look like on various Kindle models. After a lot of fiddling, I decided to set the width of images to 800 pixels and let the Kindle determine how to lay out the page based on its internal algorithms.
Tables
There are various online forums discussing e-book formats, and some of the comments state that certain formats don’t even support tables. Ugh! Scientific writing sometimes requires the presentation of a group of numbers. Do you really want to read a long series of declarative sentences? No, and I don’t want to write repetitive prose either. Fortunately the Kindle models really do support tables. There is a five-column table in Chapter 7 (Following the Trail) that looks best if you rotate your device into landscape orientation.
Formulas
In Chapter 8 (Counting the Israelites) I present a revised estimate for the number of men, women, and children who crossed the Red Sea with Moses: 35,750. I really wanted to nail down the number of escaping Hebrews and refute the long-standing canard that there were “millions of Israelites” departing from Egypt during the reign of Rameses II. That huge number was simply messing up everything else, especially archaeology. I included a set of calculations to explain and support my estimate. Here is an example:
Between Migdol and the Sea: Chapter 8, formula 4.
If you don’t like to read all these numbers, you can get the idea just from the plots. Formulas don’t flow and re-size as well as plain text does in an electronic book. I converted my formulas to images, and the result is satisfactory.
Flames of Desire
Flames of Desire represents the archetypal romance novel. I just made up that title, but there is an actual romance novel by that name if you care to search for it. As a scientific writer I have this idea that the most difficult part of formatting and printing a romance novel is to get a good photo of Fabio and Megan Fox for the front cover. Famous models are expensive, and so are long wispy evening gowns; plus you have to put some Medieval castle into the background. Maybe they just green-screen those looming thunderclouds. But the text of the book interior is just text; it flows from page to page when the reader changes the font size or uses a larger device. There are no figures, no tables, and no formulas in Flames of Desire. The Kindle version should be easier to produce than the print version.
But I could be wrong. For all you romance novelists out there, please feel free to let us know in the comments section below what challenges you encounter in preparing Flames of Desire for print and electronic readers. Tell us about your craft! Here at funmurphys we are happy to hear and learn from your different perspective.
Boulder Book Store
For book buyers who prefer to shop locally, Between Migdol and the Sea is now available at the Boulder Book Store on Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado.
Exodus: Gods and Kings
The new movie by director Ridley Scott will be released to U.S. audiences on December 12, 2014. I am posting a humorous series of blogs that evaluate the movie with respect to science and history. To read more about Exodus, please visit Carl Drews at Google Plus.
