The Wisdom born of Experience? - and iPad Book Author App wanted

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Today I understand and have sympathy for my late parents. They were it is true given to racist, sexist, homophobic, snobbish religious fundamentalism but nobody's perfect and they probably only wanted a little certainty in their lives.

What has given me this insight? My favourite iPad app has died……
It has passed on! The app is no more! It has ceased to be! It has expired and gone to meet its maker! It's stiff! Bereft of life, It rests in peace! It's metabolic processes are now history! It's off the twig! It has kicked the bucket, It has shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible!! IT IS AN EX-APP!!

ps Any suggestions of a new app for making mobi or ePub books on my iPad?

Comments

Pages - the Apple word processor app...

Hope Eternal Reigns's picture

It allows me to save files as ePub on my iMac. (Though I have NOT tried to do this on my iPad.)

Pages IS available as an app for the iPad, as far as I know.

with love,

Hope

Once in a while I bare my soul, more often my soles bear me.

This Sounds Like the Dead Parrot

Christina H's picture

Rhona

I find My Writing Desk app a lot easier to use - and you know me and an iPad!
You have to pay - it's £2.99 but is good to work with and it's on my iPad - I hope you haven't lost much??

Christina

Aspose should work for you

I use Aspose.Words Express. It's free and converts DOC, DOCX, RTF, HTML, and ODT files to EPUB. Three or four clicks and your file is an EPUB. Then I email them to my iPad and iPhone. I also have a Kindle (I'm only on Amazon now; the sales at other outlets paled in comparison to Amazon), and used to make MOBI files with a variety of software.

My practice is to write in Word, use Aspose.Words to EPUB it, and then I do all my editing on my iPad. Let me rephrase that -- I actually read it on my iPad because it's the closest to a finished Kindle page, it's clear bright black and white (unlike the gray of my Kindle 'Paperwhite') and in addition to the text itself being much easier to read, errant punctuation is much more visible than on my laptop screen.

My working setup is my iPad is to the immediate right of my laptop. Comfy chair, of course! When I stumble across something I want to edit, I move my eyes from my iPad to the master file on my laptop to make the changes. If I'm away from my laptop and continuing to read, I highlight the area to be edited, make a Note, and then at home call up the Notes and edit away. I don't go near MOBI anymore; I've formatted so things work quite smoothly when Amazon converts my DOCX files for Kindle.

Here's the Aspose.Words link; it's been around for awhile and who knows if they will continue to support it--but it's working fine right now, and it is free!:

Aspose.Words Express

Thank you Karin for sharing…

Rhona McCloud's picture

… advice, which from such a prolific author gives me confidence. I know you are prolific because I have all of your Amazon books which I now thank you for sharing with us.

I live in a 12 volt world these days, travelling light and very rarely using a laptop (the hard drives hate working on the move in any case). I'm surprised by your comment about 'the gray of my Kindle 'Paperwhite' - I love to read on my 2nd generation one and wonder If you still have the first Paperwhite which had a mottled light.

If I ever settle in one place again I will be sure to try 'Aspose'

Rhona

Rhona McCloud

Thank you everyone for your suggestions

Rhona McCloud's picture

Thank you for your suggestions. My first piece was called 'I'm not a writer but I couldn't resist. Dammit!' which has remained true for the few months I've been posting on BC doing everything on my iPad mini from making title page pictures to all of my writing done with the middle finger of my right hand!

Since losing my BookAuthor app I have now reached the stage where I can make make text documents and send them to my Kindle although they have no title and no author let alone a cover picture or illustrations - to improve further I need apps wth ios 7 or better which I haven't got good enough broadband to update to (I'm using 6.1.3).

It has been an object lesson in the misconception that things remain the same or improve technically - in real life it seems my pet app belonged to that part of history where Beta Max tapes lost to VHS which lost to DVDs which have lost to…

Maybe this is excuse to get a new iPad Air 2 with bells and whistles and perfect apps that will work for ever… and then I'll buy the Brooklyn Bridge!

Rhona McCloud