Having a Useful ReadMeFirst in Your eBooks

I’ve just recently updated my "ReadMeFirst" file that I zip into every Alliteration Ink archive and updated the "how to sideload" page on the Alliteration Ink website with more accurate (and complete) information about publisher defaults and Android devices.

You’ll note that it has a couple of key points:

1.  Stay in touch with me as a publisher
2.  Don’t override my formatting, please
3.  What kinds of eBooks are there?
4.  How do I get them on my device or get to read them?

I also realized I didn’t have it as part of the eBook utilities repository on GitHub (but it is there now) as a markdown-formatted document.  You can then use that as a template to make a very nice and professional looking PDF or HTML page using the wonderful tool pandoc (and with LaTeX on the backend).

It’s also on GitHub so you can fork, comment, and do all that fun stuff – but you’re also welcome to comment here too with any suggestions, additions, or tweaks.

Regardless, you’re welcome to use it as a starting point for your own.  The moment we cannot sell our books – digitally or print – ourselves is the moment that both authors and publishers lose.

One note:  I found that I had to edit the default LaTeX template and include this code:

usepackage{xcolor}
definecolor{dark-red}{rgb}{0.4,0.15,0.15}
definecolor{dark-blue}{rgb}{0.15,0.15,0.4}
definecolor{medium-blue}{rgb}{0,0,0.5}
hypersetup{
    colorlinks, linkcolor={dark-red},
    citecolor={dark-blue}, urlcolor={medium-blue}
}

That still formats the links so that they’re visible and obvious, but eliminates the colored box around them (via stackoverflow).