Was there any particular technology you found useful in writing your book?

We have been experimenting with producing E -books for a long time. We have switched away from Microsoft to Apple because ( in our opinion ) Word formatting leaves (or did leave ) hidden markers which mess about with the final E-book product.

We now use Pages.

As you are  aware we have made use of my website. You have seen how effective it can be when communicating across the globe.

The section of the website you have used could be offered to any author at a cost of below 100 pounds Stirling per annum. Publishers, editors or anyone else who is interested could see a “close to the final product” just by logging on.

There is however a reluctance to use it by many people in the publishing industry. I have been told many times that it is of little interest and I should submit my first chapter as a word document, double spaced and properly formatted.

In fact you are the first person outside of my close associates and readers to have used the web  constructively. I am absolutely delighted with the outcome.

Some people we talked to, and indeed, the style manual from my writing course stipulated that paragraph formatting should not have any spaces between paragraphs. The first  paragraph in every chapter should have no first line indent, but that the first line in every other paragraph should be indented.

This is easy to achieve in a word processor but not on a web site which has different conventions. I was told that this was preferable to the alternative  (double spaces between paragraphs with no indents) as it achieved significant savings in space.

My son therefore embedded some code in our website which allows the edit page to be written without indents and with double spaces but the reading page has the required formatting.

As we have now abandoned the idea of hard copy publishing all this may be no longer necessary.

Another feature which is non standard is the table of contents on the reading page, again this is made possible by my sons code. Without this it would be difficult/ frustrating  to use.

The alternative drop down menu on the edit page is also non standard though in this case it is achieved by use of a word press “plug in”.