31–40 of 64 posts
I'm running into error with "softcover server" not sure if it's my set up or if it's something in softcover. I'm on os x, using ruby 193
I remember meeting Michael Hartl in the airport prior to RailsConf a couple years ago. Great guy & I recall he mentioned this idea. Nice to see it launch–best of luck!
This is very interesting and well done. I have a few questions. 1. Am I allowed to sell the files elsewhere? For example, sell the .mobi file on Amazon Kindle and publish a printed version via CreateSpace. 2. Are the files watermarked at all with Softcover's branding? 3. Is this open to authors everywhere or are there restrictions? 4. Will this handle sale taxes for authors? I'm a Canadian author with a PST/GST accou…
Great questions, Antonio. I've just deployed an update to the front page at http://www.softcover.io/ answering some of them, but for convenience I'll answer them below as well. 1. Am I allowed to sell the files elsewhere? For example, sell the .mobi file on Amazon Kindle and publish a printed version via CreateSpace. Yes, you retain copyright on everything you make and can do anything you want with the files. They ge…
I'll also look into using the sales / hosting platform too. I'm a little hesitant to put that in someone else's hands, but you guys have done such a great job that I'll probably end up giving in.
Can't wait to start working with this!
Seems like an alternative to https://leanpub.com/ with much better design. I'm very impressed.
Thanks, I manage the front-end design and development so hearing that warms my heart!
I'm so excited about this! I'm currently drafting the last few chapters for Explore Flask (web development book funded via Kickstarter) and the whole self-publishing process is a mess when it comes to formatting. It looks like the Markdown + Latex solution with things like boxes, code blocks and tables pre-configured is an awesome way to do things. I'm almost certainly going to switch to this toolchain from pandoc. I…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, I manage the front-end design and development so hearing that warms my heart!
As the frontend dev, any insight as to why you didn't go responsive with this? It's a nice looking site and you did a great job, but I'm surprised - since this is a publishing platform that obviously caters to multiple devices - to not see a device-agnostic approach to the site.
Long answer: Over the course of development there had been some thought as to whether or not the Softcover site would just be an informational site for the Softcover gem and a place for authors to get their sales stats, and then each book page would be its own separate thing that would be more or less fully-customizable by the author. Point is that most people would have had to be interacting with the site on a desktop because that's where they'd need to do things like install gems and run the server.
We've kind of moved away from the idea of having a Myspace free-for-all, towards something that is more of a designed garden, planning on allowing a good deal of customization on the book side – each book page loads a completely separate stylesheet from what is used on the rest of the site for that reason.
With that I'm going to be focusing on redoing a lot of the presentation side to meet what we'll need, and a part of that will be responsive styling.