Learning Things

It's been a learning morning, this morning. I had previously assumed that access for the blind in regards to my works. And, in full ignorance, I claimed that such access was financially impossible.

Turns out that I was a liar.

Blind readers only need a plain text version of my works, and it turns out that italics are completely irrelevant to the blind. Which is something of a bonus because making a special text version of all my older stuff honestly promised to be a thorough pain in my anatomy.

I would have done it if I had to, though. Make no mistake about that.

As an extra bonus, Smashwords, where I publish all of my ebooks, does plain text for free. In the unlikely event that I get professionally published, I can also easily strip my works of Markdown encoding and extra line feeds to supply a version to my agent/publisher and save everyone else a job of work.

That is, when I actually do go pro. I still have hopes out for Adapting, but if it fails the gauntlet, it'll go out anyway via Lulu and Smashwords.

The really nice thing about ebooks is you can adjust the text size for ease of reading, so the vision-impaired would have no trouble and less expense with the ebooks. Bonus for them.

The only downside is that blind readers have to get the full version of my works without being able to download a sample. Though I suppose there is the online reader and assorted read-it-for-you apps for that hurdle.

I love being proved wrong. It gives me an opportunity to learn about stuff and discover things. For instance: There's book sharing facilities for the blind. I need to get in contact with those nice people and find out how an indie author can get their books on their site. It might be an affiliation thing. It might require hoops.

But then, I'm getting better at jumping through hoops. Just as long as it doesn't require money, or I'm kind'a screwed.