dispatch tumblreview

On the Art of Figuring Out Digital Publishing

So after some months struggling with eCub, I’ve finally unearthed and put to work a much better program called Sigil.

I know I too often sing the praises of the open source software community, but Sigil does happen to be open source (as does nearly every other program I’ve used so far in the publishing and perfecting of dispatch). Now compare the picture to the left to the picture below and tell me there isn’t a major difference.

The first improvement is the quality of the cover art—that’s because Sigil, unlike eCub, doesn’t force me to create the cover inside of it (if I want to make a half-decent cover anyways). The second is in the singularity of the covers—it used to be that by the time I’d converted the original epub to LRF and MOBI, some of the files had as many as three covers in them, all of which were shoddy! Here’s what dispatch nine’s (current) epub looks like, viewed on screen (to be fair):

It doesn’t have to be this way. It just so happens that eCub has but one developer while Sigil has the limitless power of community—and so the product shows it. Even in its earliest stages it outdoes eCub in more ways than one—from interface to product. As you can see in the next photo, however, I haven’t quite mastered the art of making absolutely perfect ebooks with Sigil yet (but at least now I feel equipped, whereas before I was doing them as an afterthought.)

Now, let’s examine it—even though it’s not perfect, there’s far too much space in there—it still is much easier to read, much smoother and faster-loading than the things I formerly produced with eCub. And using italics in the text doesn’t crash my eBook, either.

To be entirely fair, I did once share an e-mail exchange with the author of eCub. He said there was some sort of complex licensing issue holding him back from opening his source, but now I think it’s held him back to the point where he is behind the curve. If anything he could join up with the Sigil team and they togther could continue to improve the landscape for independent publishers (I figure certain people will stop “stealing” software once they realize how much better the free stuff is).

So, for now and probably forever, goodbye eCub:

Once I’m better versed and outputting with Sigil, I’ll of course go back and fix the old archives as well.

Still much to come from this wing of the literary world. Do stay tuned.

-PHM