Getting hold of the book
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At the beginning of this year, my sister sent me a Kobo e-book reader. It was at my request – I had seen her Kindle last year in the UK, and I was quite impressed by the screen and the ease of reading. However, buying from Amazon here in Japan quite often inflate the price of the books by $2, and I believe that the Kindle is not capable of reading the EPUB format, although it is possible to change non-DRM files from one format to another. The Barnes & Noble e-book reader is not that bad from the look of things, but Barnes and Noble will not sell e-books outside the USA, which makes the Nook useless for anything other than Smashwords or the Gutenberg Project books, etc.
In addition, since Rakuten of Japan has recently bought the company making the Kobo (which also acts as a distributor of e-books), it seemed to me that there was a possibility of future support in this country, which would not necessarily be the case with any other choice. In addition, the Kobo Touch device seemed to come out top in the rankings of various magazines, and in any case it was on sale in British stores.
When it arrived, it turned out to be incredibly easy to set up and use. A very intuitive interface, and a very good display which appears to be at least comparable to the Kindle. Small and lightweight (it fits neatly into a jacket pocket without making a bulge), and almost instant on – at least as fast as pulling a paper book out of your pocket and opening it at the right place.
Something seemed to be missing while I was reading it though. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but something felt a little wrong, and it was extremely difficult to put my finger on it. It was only when I bought myself a cover for the device through eBay that I discovered what I have been missing. It was the feel of a book in my hand, with two pages and a hinge in the middle. Even though I’m only reading on the right-hand side of the device, and never look at the left-hand “page”, it still feels more like a book than the naked device does. Strange. I have no idea why that should be the case.
Having said which, I now have several books on there which I have to read, as soon as I have finished War and Peace (which I am enjoying despite myself). I think this gadget is going to change my reading habits, and although there are things that I cannot do so easily with e-books that I can do with printed books (like lending them to friends), I feel that this was a gadget worth purchasing.
Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson MD is now at the stage where the proof copy is in process of production and will make its way to Inknbeans in the next few days. When that’s happened and the proof has been approved, you will be able to see this in the bookstores very soon (click to enlarge):
And when that’s done, you can turn the book over and read the back:
The inside also looks pretty cool:
More interior pages on my Facebook page for the book.
The Kindle version is already out there and selling pretty well, by the way.
Written in haste on my phone, but delighted to see that “Deed Box” has made it into the top 100 in the British Detective category in the US and UK Amazon stores.
We are now coming to the time when Sherlock Holmes comes to life again! The manuscript has been checked and edited several times by me and by professional editors, and we are now satisfied with the result. The book now has its own website giving details of the book and the stories. Click here for details.
The next stage in the production process is for the raw text to be formatted in such a way that it can be turned into an electronic book in the different formats that are needed for the different e-readers around the world. Once this has been done, the editors and I will both check the formatting and the text to make sure that everything is in the right place, that the table of contents works as it should, and that the book generally looks and feels like a “proper e-book”.
I have recently been reading many more e-books on my Kobo reader, which I find much more handy than my iPad when it comes to reading books – it is lighter, for a start, and though the shiny screen of the iPad has never been much of a hindrance, the screen of this little gadget is infinitely preferable when it comes to extended reading. I have read several full-length books on this already, and enjoyed them a lot. I now have a reasonable expectation of what an e-book should look like, and how it should behave, which I do not think I possessed before this.
Anyway, exciting times for Sherlock and Watson as they start three new adventures.
 Click to enlarge Sherlock Holmes continues his progress towards publication. I have been discussing with InknBeans Press what kind of cover we should be using. I wanted to avoid the pipe and deerstalker, because, even though the pipe is mentioned in several stories, and a traveling cap with ear flaps (basically a deerstalker) is mentioned in another, these are far too close to being clichés to be acceptable.
So, given the title of the work, it makes sense for the deed box mentioned in the title to form the centerpiece of the cover design. Such a deed box would naturally have Dr Watson’s name stenciled on it, so that it could easily be recognized in the bank vault in which it was being stored. We also felt that the three stories contained in this collection should be represented somehow, and so we picked stylized drawings which represent key elements of the plots: a dagger for “Odessa”; a matchbox for “ Matchbox”; and a cormorant for “Cormorant”.
We also needed to have a reasonable amount of text on there, because, unlike the Arthur Conan Doyle collections of stories, this particular title does not include Sherlock Holmes as part of the title itself. We therefore needed some sort of subtitle which would immediately make the book recognizable as a Sherlock Holmes book. We also wanted to convey the idea that we portray throughout the book that these stories have actually existed in a physical form in the deed box which has been discovered and that they have been transcribed and made available for publication. I think that the attached cover does the job pretty well.
The next job in the process is to make sure that the text is absolutely free of any errors, and that it reads well, and, of course, that there are no stupid mistakes in the story, incongruities in the plot; and that Sherlock speaks to Watson, and Watson speaks to Sherlock, in the way that we have come to expect, without any jarring anachronisms.
If everything goes well (and there really is no reason to believe otherwise), Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson MD will be appearing in e-book format first of all, followed very closely by the print format. Both should be available within the next few weeks at the very most.
I am, to coin a phrase, gobsmacked. This is something that I never really believed would happen to me, at least not at the speed at which it actually has happened. My nephew, Oliver, told me that the BBC was putting out a new “Sherlock” series, set in contemporary London, and it inspired me to write a Sherlock Holmes story. On 2 January, I had dinner with friends, and we were been talking about the idea of “Sherlock Holmes’ smarter younger sister”. So that’s what I wrote the story about.
It came to about 7,000 words, which I wrote in course of about a day, and since I’m a great fan of Conan Doyle and of his style, it is relatively easy for me to churn out this sort of thing. The plot also wrote itself very easily. I really had very little idea of where Sherlock Holmes and Watson were going to end up. I had a very vague idea of his sister, and what she did for a living, and that was about it. After that, Holmes and Watson together with Inspector Lestrade, wrote the plot for me.
For those of you who do not write fiction, the idea of your characters writing your story may seem a little strange, especially when it is a detective story needing a plot which is fairly detailed and intricate, where different parts of the story have to link to each other as the clues are planted and later explained by the detective. In fact, I found it not nearly as difficult as you might imagine. At one point I found myself writing the explanation at the end of the story and then going back and planting the clue in the middle of the plot, but for the most part, Holmes and Watson spoke for themselves through me and their actions were the result of their speech.
So, having written this, I converted it to an e-book and put it through the Meatgrinder at Smashwords. The cover was relatively easy to do, of course, and it attracted a fair number of hits, and even sold one or 2 (or even more) at the princely sum of $.99. The second story followed the next day–slightly longer, and in my opinion even more true to the originals. Instead of being all from my own imagination, this one, Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Matchbox, was based on a hint by Dr Watson of a story which involved “a remarkable worm, said to be unknown to science”. It was fun to write, and it involved several very interesting characters.
At this point, it seemed that Inknbeans, a small publisher based in Los Angeles, was interested (I’d sent copies to the editor there, a Facebook friend), especially if I could finish the third story, which I had already started. I hasten to add that this is not a vanity operation–this publisher is a small independent publisher, using print on demand technology to produce paper books, as well as producing e-book electronic versions of their publications. The result was that within the week, I had written just under 30,000 words of Sherlock Homes stories, and agreed on the terms and conditions of the contract with a commercial publisher on the other side of the world. Is this a record? I ask myself.
Our aim is to produce this book before the end of the month, which should make it attractive to those who are discovering Sherlock Holmes for the first time as the result of the movies that have recently been released, as well as the BBC series entitled “Sherlock”, set in the 21st century. I sincerely hope that fans of the original Conan Doyle stories will also find something to enjoy in these–I have tried to make them as true to the original as I possibly could; my Sherlock Holmes is no Superman, and while he has ample opportunity to display his gifts, he possesses his flaws, which Watson does not ignore in the telling of the tales. Watson himself, I hope, is no mere cipher, but has a personality and character which is distinctively his.
So, I want you all to watch out for the paper and the e-book editions of this book, which we have provisionally entitled (though this is subject to change) Tales from the Deed Box of John Watson MD. As soon as we have a working design for the cover, you will see it here.
Many thanks to the Boss Bean at Inknbeans, and to all who have supported my writing efforts in different ways. Oh, and just to put the icing on the cake, the offer of a contract came on the day before my birthday!
I have now had my Kobo for a few days, and I like it very much indeed. I have read my way through a couple of Edgar Wallace novels (now out of copyright and available for free from the Kobo store as part of the Gutenberg Project), and am working my way slowly through War and Peace, which is something that I would hardly wish to carry around with me all the time, but takes up no extra space in my pocket when I carry the gadget loaded with many other books.
I have also loaded a couple of manuals for my cameras and camera equipment in PDF format. Though the type size on these is fairly small when I view them on the screen, it is still possible to read them, and the reader even includes a zoom feature which allows me to zoom in on diagrams or on really small captions.
The device is pretty responsive, and there is almost no lag when loading new chapters within a long book, or turning pages etc. It’s attractive and nice to hold (although the black surround does seem to be a fingerprint trap, but it is easy to wipe the grease from my fingers from off the black surround–maybe it would have been better if I had bought the white version, but I don’t think the pink or the baby blue would have suited me so well!).
Basically, the whole thing works better than I expected in many ways, and it’s smaller and lighter and easier to carry around than I anticipated.
So what’s the problem? In a word, the problem is “variety”. One of the joys of real paper books is the fact that every book is subtly different from the next. Books are printed on different grades of paper; both the thickness and the texture of different papers vary between publications The color also may vary subtly. Some books are almost pure white, some are more of a cream color. Moving from book to book, one notices these things.
Maybe more obvious is the way in which books are laid out. Different typefaces mean that individual editions of the book acquire their own identity and even a personality. One example of this is the “SPQR” series, concerning a Roman senator who solves murder mysteries. These books are set in a rather distinctive typeface, whose name escapes me for the moment, but I instantly know that I am reading one of the series when I open the paperback copy. The e-reader allows me to change font size and font style, and in this particular implementation I can even load my own typefaces from the computer into the reader to mimic the look of the printed books. The page size remains the same, of course (even though I can change the margins at the left and right side) but the overall effect, especially as the global never changes its physical configuration depending on what I am reading, provides a feeling of sameness, no matter what the subject matter.
Allied to this of course, is the fact that no matter how far I get through a book when I’m reading it, there is no physical sensation of how far I have reached in the story. There is a subtle, but unmistakable signal sent to a human being who is reading a physical book, by the relative thickness of the pilot pages held in the left-hand and those held in the right.This signal is missing when reading an e-book.
Will I continue to use this reader? Almost certainly I will, maybe I will not buy very many new books with it, since the price of the e-books is almost the same as that of paper copies, but there are many books in the public domain which are fun to read using this technology, and which are available free as downloads, either from Kobo, or from other sources, as well as the host of cheap (or should I say low cost?) stories from independent publishers.
The feeling of an e-book versus a physical book seems to me to be very similar to the difference between a physical LP and its 12 inch square sleeve (or for those of you youngsters who don’t remember LPs, a CD) and an MP3 download. The feeling of leafing through the sleeve notes and admiring the cover art of the new recording was one of the pleasures of buying the physical medium containing the music. This is missing from the digital downloads, in the same way that some of the physical pleasure of reading a book is missing from reading an e-book. E books? Definitely a yes, but with some qualifications.
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Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson MD
A collection of three Sherlock Holmes stories, in the style of the originals by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published by Inknbeans Press of Los Angeles. Red Wheels Turning Now released and available from fine bookstores everywhere - Red Wheels Turning - in the same timeline as Beneath Gray Skies, but set earlier, and introducing Brian Finch-Malloy, along with the massive Netopyr and the mighty Zaamurets. What are these? Click the book cover below to find out.
 At the Sharpe End My second published novel, set in Tokyo in 2008, against a backdrop of the Wall Street collapse. Hi-tech, high finance and low living! Click the cover for more information, including ordering signed copies:
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