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Thank you very much!
A bit confusing, since the review only mentions positives and no negatives (Cons). For instance, is hosting your ebook on their cloud required or can you publish to, say, epub, and host it yourself? If the former, that’s an added expense. After creating the ebook, will we find out more is required to actually publish it, at further expense? Seems like a neat piece of software; just want the whole story. Thanks.
Very good soft
I do not have a website. How do I register?
I entered the serial code, but it says it only lasts 30 days?
Subscriptions > Renewal date = Basic License (shareware on sale) – 1 month from now (Sun, 19 Feb 2017)
I thought this would say something like “1 user – lifetime”I am having a tough time trying to register this. I copied and PASTED THE KEY WELL ENOUGH, but each time I try, it says, “Timed Out” after just a couple of seconds. I connected to the website thru my browsers, but that didn’t help at all. I rebooted when it asked me to during installation. I guess I need some guidance, please.
Grateful4U
[@neme]
That license will allow you to create EPUB files independent of our platform. So you can host if yourself anywhere, or open it using any ebook reader (which is EPUB3 compliant).
You can also create web and desktop apps that will run independently. This is independent of our cloud platform. To see the list of export formats that can be made in Kotobee Author, see this: kotobee.com/products/author/exportOur (paid) cloud platform basically will be useful for you if you want to add extra security and user access control to your ebook web apps, even if they’re hosted on your own server.
From our side, a website is not required for registration. But I’m unaware of the information that sharewareonsale is asking from you. I’m sure a website would be an optional field, and not strictly required.
[@Jez Jones]
Yes, in a near update we’re going to have our subscription panel more descriptive. The license is a lifetime license, but the free upgrades are only for 30 days. After 30 days you won’t be able to make new updates, but may continue using the software license for life.Sorry to hear about the difficulty you’re facing. Can you double-check to make sure you’re not copying the period at the end of the serial number accidentally?
If that isn’t the problem, please select Test Connection from under the Help menu, and let me know what you get. Hopefully you’re not behind a proxy.[ @Ashraf]
Is it possible to download this directly to my iPad and/or iPhone?
Thanks[@Gregg]
The software only runs on Windows and Mac. You use it to design and publish your ebook. You can publish it to a format that runs on your iPad and iPhone. For example, you can publish an EPUB file format, that can run on Apple iBooks (on your iOS) or on the Kotobee Reader app, available on the app store.Some feedback for the developer and anyone else considering this. In no particular order:
You have to be “logged in” to be able to export to an ebook format. You can create and edit your ebook without being “logged in” but you can’t save it to a ebook format. “logging in” requires that you enter your serial number. But if you “log out” then you need to enter your serial number again when you want to save to ebook format. I’m not sure why you have to be “logged in” to an account to use a piece of software installed on your PC. Also I’m not sure what would happen if you didn’t have internet connection when you wanted to use it.
It will import from Word .docx files but not .doc files. You can copy and paste from Word files but when I copied from a .doc Word file, and pasted into the software, it double-spaced the lines.
The program connects to a website: lowpricessmith.net No idea what that is
Every time you open the program you get a popup asking whether you want reflowable or fixed layout, import from pdf or open a saved file. While this may be functional, I initially only saw the ‘reflowable or fixed layout’ options as they are large and take up most of the popup screen – it took me a while to realise there was an option there to open a previously saved file. I prefer a program to open up without popups – maybe consider that as an option in settings.
The program sets itself as the default program to open .epub files (without asking). I have another program I use to open epub files so I had to reset that.
The “Author” of the book defaults to “Kotobee”. There is no setting where you can set up a default Author, so you have to type this in for each book you create.
The default book title and chapter are filled is as ‘Untitled book’ and ‘untitled chapter’, but to overwrite those you have to delete those default words. It would be a lot easier if the text was a ‘hint’ rather than actual text. In the book manager screen the ‘publisher’ ‘description’ and ‘ISBN’ fields are ‘hints’ rather than actual text, so I can’t see why all the fields can’t be ‘hints’
I resized the window of the program. When I closed and re-opened the program it was back to the default window size. It would be good if it remembered the window size from when it was last open. Also it opened up partly off the screen rather than being centered or in the last location it was in when I closed it.
I inserted an image into my book. I couldn’t find any info in the online support on how to resize an image after you insert it. I accidentally found out how when I double-clicked on the image. I would find it useful to have ‘edit’ in the right click menu for the image (along with the cut, paste, copy menu items)
I added some reflowable layout chapters to my book and then a fixed layout chapter. I couldn’t enter any text in the fixed layout chapter. You couldn’t click in the edit area. If I went to ‘source mode’ I could put in text, but still couldn’t edit it in ‘edit mode’
I couldn’t see any way of changing the layout of a chapter once you’d created it
It does correctly remember the folder location of the last file that you saved, when you choose ‘open’.
When I tried to export to pdf it said it needed a plugin to be able to do that and did I want to download it. Why not just include that plugin in the install? Same for creating a windows desktop app – it needed a plugin.
When I exported to a word doc, the images were missing. Also the font was times new roman instead of the Arial that I had set. Internal links didn’t work in the word doc.
I have not used any other ebook authoring software before so can’t comment on how it stacks up to the competition.
I’m using Windows 7 Professional 64bit
The above comments are meant as constructive feedback on the use of the program and not as a criticism of it. The ebook I created in epub format worked well and as expected on my android smartphone using fBreader.
Thanks for giving us the opportunity to try this program
[@njwsos]
Thank you very much for the constructive feedback. All notes taken. It’s good to hear from users, because some features would never cross our mind. For example, having the window open in the lastly saved dimensions sounds convenient for the user, and easy to actually implement.Just a few points:
1) lowpricessmith.net : I have absolutely no idea what that is, nor how you are reaching it. Can you tell me more? Probably it’s something by Sharewareonsale? Or maybe a virus on your machine :-)
2) In fixed layout, since items are positioned in certain x,y position, you enter text by first inserting a Text Container. You will find this among the tools on the right.
3) Once a chapter layout is set, you can’t convert it to another layout. Both have different ways of implementing the code behind them, and so you can’t just convert from one to the other. You can create a new chapter with the new layout instead.
Thanks again, and feel free to email us for any further suggestions at [email protected]
