I just bought a kindle, not because I wanted one (though it is of course very nice), but because it’s time to migrate the Guerilla Film Makers Handbooks onto digital platforms.

This has been in the planning for some time now and I have just needed time to breathe to actually take steps to make it happen. We are also planning on migrating the books to iPad / iPhone in due course too, but the Kindle is the first step.

If you have not seen a kindle in the flesh, I can tell you it’s a wow moment.

Everyone who has come into my office and seen it has literally made a double take at the screen. Electronic paper is REALLY amazing. It’s pretty much as sharp and contrasty as real paper, the screen is a great size and matt coated, and the device, while not an Apple miracle of engineering, is suitably functional. Overall, it’s a big thumbs up at when first handling the Kindle.

I have already loaded Jon Reiss’ excellent ‘Think Outside The Box Office’ as a PDF – and while PDF’s work fine (as do scripts in PDF format), the fonts tend to reduce in size making the experience a little less pleasant.

And so I am looking into native eBook and kindle formats, which on the face of it, look pretty simple to create. They appear to be basic HTML files (like this blog is a basic HTML file), which means conversion for my master book format to a Kindle files will be pretty straight forward. And hopefully, they will look and read beautifully on the Kindle too.

Best of all, distributing electronically means we can offer incremental updates to the books, adding new information and interviews when relevant.

Watch this space.

What is your experience with eBooks? Have you got a reader and how do you find it? Have you published a book on Kindle, and if so, how was your experience?

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

www.livingspiritgroup.com 
www.ProductionOffice.org
e: mail@livingspirit.com