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Amazon Kindle Touch

The times, they are a changing. Amazon is the world's largest book seller, and they now sell more e-books than traditional print (paperback and hardback combined.) About two weeks ago I purchased an Amazon Kindle Touch e-book reader. My immediate reason in doing so was that I sensed the Spirit of Christ directing me to get all of my books in electronic format for distribution at this time. I wanted a Kindle so I could test the formatting of my books before I listed them on Amazon's website for download.

I had thought that I might be pursuing prison ministry to a greater degree at this time. That became impossible when a car ran into me as I was riding my motorcycle. That event set me down for a while. I told a brother yesterday that I sense that I am in a time, like Joseph of old, where I am preparing grain to be distributed to the masses in a time of famine. The coming famine will be for the word of God. I have been storing up grain for years as the Father has been teaching me many things. Now I sense that I am to get those teachings in order where they can be easily, and widely, shared with others.

This past week I have been focused on the work of converting a book into e-book format for the Kindle. Amazon has its own proprietary book format (.azw), so I have been educating myself on the nuances of designing and formatting books for their devices.

I have had to learn some HTML programming. I have completely reformatted the book God's Plan of the Ages. What may look good on a printed 8-1/2 x 11 inch sheet of paper will not display well on the screen of a 6 inch e-book reader. I downloaded Mobipocket Creator to put the various elements of the Kindle books together. I also downloaded an HTML editor program (Notepad ++). Both of these programs are free software. It has taken me some time to learn how to get everything to work to produce the quality of book that I desired.

After a week of work, I have the system pretty well figured out. I uploaded my first e-book to Amazon today. I put the lowest price on it that the upload utility would allow ($1.00). Amazon's website does offer free books for the Kindle, but evidently you cannot upload them without specifying a price somewhere in a range between $0.99 and $200.00. I always thought prices ending in 99 cents were deceitful. They give a person an impression of getting a lower price. For example $9.99 sounds considerably lower than $10.00, but the difference is actually negligible. I think Christ would have His saints to practice honesty and integrity in all things. A world under the rule of Christ would certainly operate much differently than this present world system.

I am offering the books free to any who want them. Just send me an e-mail and I will send you the books free as an attachment in an e-mail. If you acquire any of my e-books through Amazon they will cost you one dollar as they become available. It seems fair that Amazon should get some return for their services.

I like the new e-book reader format. As a full-time RVer, I have limited space for storing books. I am an avid reader, and my present bookshelf is overflowing. I can store up to 3,000 books on my Kindle Touch, and Amazon will let me store as many more as I desire at no cost on their cloud services. One really nice feature of the Kindle is that it uses e-ink technology for the display. E-ink does not require continuous power to display. It only requires power to change the screen to a new image. The image stays there indefinitely, without power, until it is refreshed. A typical computer display is backlit and has to be powered constantly. This is why battery life is typically so limited on cellphones, touch pads, and laptop computers. With e-ink, the Kindle can be used for up to 2 months before it has to be re-charged.

While I was formatting God's Plan of the Ages for Kindle, I re-designed the cover.

You can find the book on Amazon at the following link:

http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Plan-Ages-ebook/dp/B006H6Y4GC/

If you don't own a Kindle, you can download the free Kindle Reader and read Amazon e-books on your computer.

Download Kindle Reader

Another benefit of e-books is that they are generally less expensive than printed books. There are thousands of free e-books, and hundreds of thousands more that can be purchased for a fraction of the cost of paperback and hardback books.

As a Bible teacher, I desire to get material into the hands of as many people as possible. I spent some time this past week converting God's Plan of the Ages into newsletter format so that I can mail this teaching to men and women in prison. The entire book is spread across six newsletters.

Parables Bookshelf Newsletter

I have not had time to update the newsletters online. I replaced the newsletters that contained the old versions of Laying Down the Law and God's Plan of the Ages with new editions. If any readers wish to receive these books in newsletter format for personal use, or mailing to others, just send me an e-mail and I will attach the PDF files of the newsletters to an e-mail and send them to you. The newsletters are a great way to share these teachings with others. You can find instructions for printing, folding, and mailing the newsletters at the following web page:

http://www.heart4god.ws/bookshelf/instructions.html

If you prefer, I also have God's Plan of the Ages available as a single PDF file in book form. It appears very similar to how it would in the Kindle Reader, but the newer Kindles offer some advantages. The Kindle Touch has an x-ray feature where you can find information on different words, characters, or topics in a book. You can also hold your finger on a word and it will pop-up a dictionary definition for the word. Hold your finger down longer and it will pop-up a utility for making notes that can be saved with the text of the book. You can also make your notes public, and other users who activate the feature to read public notes will be able to see your comments on a book.

One feature I like on the Kindle Touch is that you can easily enlarge or shrink the text with a two fingered movement on the screen. The text will automatically flow as the text size is changed as there are no concrete page numbers or page breaks on an e-reader such as this. With a PDF file, you can also enlarge or shrink the text, but the text always remains on the same page layout, making it necessary to scroll up and down, or side to side, to see everything.

I anticipate being busy revising, designing, and formatting more books for the Kindle and in PDF format in coming days. Eventually, I hope to also convert the books for availability in the Nook reader offered by Barnes and Noble, and perhaps in Apple's iBook format as well. I will keep you posted as new material becomes available.

I hope to post the books in all of the various formats on the Heart4God website sometime in the future. I have hesitated to update the Heart4God website as I will have to learn some new software. The program I used to create the original Heart4God site no longer works, and I have not found a replacement. So it looks like I will have to bite the bullet, buckle down, and learn some more HTML, or WordPress.


May you be blessed with peace and understanding in these days,

Joseph Herrin


Heart4God Website: http://www.heart4god.ws    

Parables Blog: www.parablesblog.blogspot.com    

Mailing Address:
Joseph Herrin
P.O. Box 804
Montezuma, GA 31063