Thanks to Amazon and the Kindle, you can have a very special peek into the life of Mrs. Wizard. I have recently published My Family Cookbook, a first edition collection of favorite recipes I grew up with, along with a few I have made my own over the years. And you thought Mrs. Wizard was a GEEK!
Learn to make terrific bread dough in a food processor, how to make the best tapioca pudding in the microwave, my favorite one pot meals, and lots more for only $3.50, and you don't have to have a Kindle (although it would be nice). You can download and install (for FREE) special Kindle software for your PC, Mac, iPhone, or Android. There is no reason you can't have these wonderful recipes at your fingertips any time you want.
If you are reading this on your Kindle already, you can do a search of the Kindle store for mrs wizard cookbook or my family cookbook. How's that for specific search words? Have a free sample sent to your Kindle.
It's so new they don't even have the description up for it yet.
This project began as something I could physically do while teaching my readers how to put a document together relatively easily, then format it properly for the Kindle for personal use. I could flesh out the detailed instructions while working on something for real. One thing led to another and the more I looked at it, the more it seemed to take on a life of its own. Might as well go for the whole experience.
Aside from actually putting something like this together, writing, proofreading, tweaking, and agonizing, the actual publishing part on Amazon was relatively easy. I hope those of you who get it enjoy it as much as I did putting it together. My next project is going to be gathering and organizing the best, and my personal favorite tips and tricks since beginning this blog into a separate book for the Kindle. Like the cookbook, it will have an actual table of contents to use to quickly access the information you want. I believe it is going to be a great resource. And while it is being put together, I will be sure to share the nuts and bolts and special software recommendations to make the job as easy as possible.
The software used (and one way to do it):
- AZZ Cardfile - great little utility to organize lots of things, but I made a special file just for the recipes. AZZ automatically organized them alphabetically, with the list to the left of everything and available at all times. Once done in AZZ, I could use it to export the file to a .rtf format with each recipe card a separate page.
- Word Processor - took the rtf file and converted it to a pdf file, making sure each title was designated as H1
- Exported the word processor file to a pdf file
- Used Mobipocket Creator to put it all together, do final tweaking, and create the final .prc file, which is what went up to Amazon to be converted to the final Kindle file.
I did several versions using the above method, but ended up settling in with an html file as my working file. Since I am a web designer and very comfortable with web and html tools, I found exporting to an html file from AZZ gave me something more natural (for me) to work with. I used Dreamweaver for my main tweaking, then imported it into Mobipocket Creator for the final bit. I will be breaking this down for you and going into it in bits and pieces over the next several weeks... You can use these skills you will learn to put your own personal files on your Kindle to have close to you at all times (without lugging a laptop around).
Most of the software you will need is free, or in the case of AZZ cardfile, very reasonably priced. If you decide you want to give AZZ a try, you will probably find yourself using it daily, for lots of things. You'll wonder what you ever did without it!
Most of the software you will need is free, or in the case of AZZ cardfile, very reasonably priced. If you decide you want to give AZZ a try, you will probably find yourself using it daily, for lots of things. You'll wonder what you ever did without it!
