Okay, I have to admit: I’m surprised. I had no idea the new diet and cookery book, 30 Pounds / 4 Months, would go over the way it has, right out of the box. The other evening I sold $100 worth of print copies in less than 15 minutes.

Here it is again, not to belabor its spectacular cover:

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The print copy came out looking very good. I’m pleased with the cover, whose image was created by Foxy Forest Manufacture. And the interior design, facilitated by Joel Friedlander’s book design group, looks clear, readable, and professional.

However, I’m less than thrilled with the Kindle version. There, we uploaded to Amazon’s .mobi platform, and the book appeared to go up without a hitch. Proofreading in Amazon’s downloadable “Kindle Previewer” — the one you install on your computer, never the online version in Amazon’s cloud — showed an e-book that looked similarly clean and crisp.

We thought it was perfect.

Then in the course of posting “preview” links so prospective buyers and the merely curious could read a hefty chunk of the book’s contents, I noticed the interior content was all wonky! B-level heads appeared larger than the chapter titles, and paragraphs intended to be set first line flush left showed first-line indent…including all the lines on the copyright page.

Downloading the .mobi file to my iPad — a trick, since it has to be opened from an e-mail — showed the same corrupted formatting in the iPad’s Kindle reader.

I do not know when I’ve ever been so furious! At least, not since the last time I was that mad.

So my e-book designer, who does not come cheap, now has the manuscript and is trying to wrestle it into something that will look halfway decent on Kindle. I’ve asked him to produce it as an ePub, a format that can look very handsome, indeed, as an iBook, so we can market it at Barnes and Noble as well as at Plain & Simple Press.

Until then the print version is available here: email us from our “Contact” page with a request for the book, your name, and your address (will not be shared with anyone, ever!). The price is currently discounted to $10. Shipping and handling within the United States is $7.95, for a total cost to US customers of $17.95.

If you would like the book shipped outside the US, let us know and we’ll provide the cost for international shipping for your approval, before sending it to you.