The outdoor season, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, is upon us. It can be a time for rejuvenation from school, work and the other countless responsibilities. Some of us will make pilgrimages to cottage country, while others will find peace on their patio.

However, if you are facing 24/7 parenting and a possible long trek to the wilderness, you may find yourself dreading the coming summer months. Here then is a tip to the wise: many a mother gained a few hours of tranquility as their children silently listened to a story coming from the car radio. These days, you can now download an audio version of The Railway Children for your child's iPod. They will be entranced for hours!

If your children have excess energy, why not download the new poem by Jennifer Poulter so they can sing and dance outdoors? Back decks are the perfect place for budding actors intent on creating an amateur theatre production. For your young artists, Dandi Palmer's beautiful illustration is an example of the many wonderful colouring pages available to download from the site.

We'd love to hear how Sharing Books has been part of your summer so drop us a line or two and fill us in. All of us at Sharing Books wish you a wonderful summer experience filled with lots of reading, and plenty of fun!

Labels: children's books, coloring page, colouring page, ebooks, kid's songs, Railway Children, summer fun

In the publishing world there are three main types of book layouts: square, landscape, and portrait.

Square is pretty straight forward: the width and height of your book are the same. It is when you get into rectangular layouts that things start to get a bit tricky, and you have to pay attention to the way you lay your book out and how you place your images and text in your book. Depending on where your long axis lays determines whether your book is Landscape or Portrait.

Landscape Layouts
A landscape layout has the longest edge ( axis ) of your book along the horizontal, and the shortest edge ( axis ) along the vertical. In the image below I have shown an example of a standard US Letter sized page in Landscape Layout. Any time the width of your book is greater then the height of your book you are working in a Landscape Layout. In all of your layouts for Sharing Books ensure that your binding edge ( the edge where your book is bound ) faces to the left.



Portrait Layouts
A portrait layout has the longest edge ( axis ) of your book along the vertical, and the shortest edge ( axis ) along the horizontal. In the image below I have shown an example of a standard US Letter sized page in Portrait Layout. Any time the height of your book is greater then the width of your book you are working in a Portrait Layout. In all of your layouts for Sharing Books ensure that your binding edge ( the edge where your book is bound ) faces to the left.


Hopefully this helps you out when you are trying to do the layout for your book. In most PDF and image editing software you are able to set your document size to landscape or portrait. If it does not just remember you can just change the width and height to suit what you need for your book.

Labels: advice, help, publishing, support, tips n tricks

Now that the final entries for the Simone Wood Children's eBook Contest have been received, we are pleased to announce that there are five works for our readers to choose from:

• Whop Bop Menagerie is a series of three short stories, inviting readers to join in the rhythm of JR Poulter's rhyme as they whop-bop-about.
• August RoDent is another rhyming story about a sculptor of abundant talent, who finds love in the arms of a witty and dancing fan.
• Timothy Schenk creates a story about the magic each aspiring ballerina experiences when they see their first pair of satin covered pointe shoes in My Pretty Pointe Shoes.
• No Matter is a delightful poem that depicts the magic of a free spirit as it bursts through civilized conventions.
• Zoo Dance offers young readers an insider's look at the funky and fresh moves of the animal kingdom.

Each story adds depth to Sharing Books and we look forward to awarding three prizes to those with the most downloads. Be sure to log on and vote for your favourites!

Just a word of caution: don't be surprised if you find you and your young readers grooving and bopping, or as Simone Wood used to say, jiggering and pokering, on your front yard, in the kitchen or in the water. Indeed, wherever the moment strikes. Check out what these dancers did at the Antwerp Belgium train station. After all, dance is one of the most moving experiences you will ever have!

Labels: children's books, dance, ebooks, Simone Wood

Sharing Books is all about being creative, we really do not put any limits on the size, shape, or general nature of your kids book that you wish to publish with us. But there are some general tips that you should know before you go and upload a book to our site. These are industry standard practices that will help you get your book printed, maximize your work efforts, and increase your potential revenue as your work and our site develop.

Book sizing is going to become increasingly important for ebooks and for books published for both print and screen display. There are certain sizes that a print shop is best equipped to deal with, and when you go outside those sizes your books cost a lot more to print. For Sharing Books this is going to become an important issue when we bring on stream print on demand features and book ordering.

The dimensions of your book
You can make your book any size and shape that you wish. But there are some sizes and shapes that are standard in the publishing and printing industry. On Sharing Books, what we consider 'Standard Sizing' is as follows:

1. Standard US Letter - 216mm × 279mm ( 8.5" by 11" ) in landscape ( wide on the horizontal ) or portrait ( wide on the vertical ) layouts.
2. Standard A4 Size - 210mm × 297mm ( 8.3" × 11.7" ) in landscape or portrait layouts.
3. Standard US Half Letter - 140mm × 216mm ( 5.5" × 8.5" ) in landscape or portrait layouts.
4. Square - 203mm x 203mm ( 8" x 8" ) layouts.
5. Small Square - 101mm x 101mm ( 4" x 4" ) layouts.

The resolution of your book
The resolution of your book is the magic number that will determine the quality of your book when it is displayed on a screen and goes to print. Resolution is measured in Dots Per Inch ( DPI ) or Pixels Per Inch ( PPI ), they are effectively the same. In general the 'screen' on your computer has a resolution of 72 DPI. When it comes to print the sky is the limit when it comes to resolution, but 300 DPI is industry standard for high quality printing, anything higher moves into art and specialty printing.

There is one very important thing to keep in mind with resolution: the higher the resolution the larger the file size, and this relation ship is geometric in nature. For example a 4" by 4" image at 100 DPI, uncompressed, has a file size of 156kb, a 4" by 4" image at 200 DPI has a file size of 625kb.

You can set the resolution of your book to any size you wish, for print or screen, but we recommend that you split the difference between the highest quality and small file sizes. The ideal file size for publishing through Sharing Books is 150 DPI. You can go to a higher resolution, but keep in mind that books over 25MB in file size take a long time for many users to download ( 3 to 15 minutes on high speed ).

Why you would want to standardize your file size
There is a good reason to standardize the shape and resolution of your book: it means it is easy to print. As Sharing Books starts bringing on stream print-on-demand services, and as your books spread to teachers and families, printing will become increasingly important. Making sure that your book is an easy to print size, and an easy to download file will help you maximize your downloads and sales.

Labels: advice, tips n tricks

So right as the final sprint for the Simone Wood Award, 2009 was underway a series of major failures occurred with our server. We are still trying to piece together what happened, and we will try to keep you informed. It involves multiple systems having multiple problems, and is proving a Gordian knot to untangle. So much like Alexander the great we took a knife to the knot, and the site is back to accepting books for publication.

We know that some people have not had their books properly upload over the last few days, so we are asking that they re-upload their books. We are going to give a grace window for the affected users over the weekend, allowing them to upload during this week until Friday, and accept them into the contest.

Further details on how this is going to affect the contest will be posted by Wednesday. We apologize for the inconvenience this is causing.

Labels: awards, contest, news, Simone Wood, site outages