I've now uploaded new Kindle files for both my novels. Let the revels commence!  I worked out the kinks in Scrivener compiling for Kindle without 'sploding the file sizes and having graphics weirdness happen to the "Look Inside" feature. Boy, was that not all the fun ever.Points  I need to remember after this adventure include:

• 1: Export as epub. Period. Make KDP do the grunt work of converting to mobi. But DO use Scrivener's compile to mobi feature to double-check weird image quirks unique to Kindle before committing to final KDP upload.
• 2: Trim images down to no more than 200% of pixel size used in the document. DPI is not a factor as far as I can tell, only size. "Look Inside" evidently digs out original formatting data from deep in the uploaded file, including margins, indents...and original graphic size. So keep the originals in the document near the final size, regardless of resolution used for creation.
• 3: remind myself that I'm obsessing over details my audience  may not even notice, and that changes will not result in increased interest.

Second win. Completing some basic compile templates for the Restoration print books & ebook now (which are not as template-y as I might like, but I'll take 'em.) Soon I will soon be uploading new interiors for Turning the Work & Joining in the Round too. Because I can. And because it beats being frustrated with every other aspect of authoring. (The writing is something else again. I will always enjoy the imagining part.)Third success. Fixing all my damn interior graphics variants and implementing naming conventions I should've been using all along, and making sure all my Scrivener book files have copies of the updated images.  That was a long few days of grinding, but I feel better for having done it--like cleaning the inside of the closet. No one else will ever see it, but I know it's tidy and scrubbed fresh.Final victory: it's difficult to talk one's self out of doing astonishingly stupid things late at night, but I did it!  I finished the Scrivener project on at 4AM, but I did NOT publish a collected ebook edition of my two science-fiction romance novellas right then and there. I could have. I could've uploaded the shiny new ebook file, a cheesy cover and some cribbed-from-other-descriptions blurb I'd already made, and called it done.Could've. Didn't. Tempted. Almost did. But I talked myself into blogging instead. Whew. Picking book categories and search words needed to wait until after I'd taken a swipe at sleep. Spelling and habitual grammar errors ditto. All that nit-picky detail stuff really needed wait until I could think without yawning. So it did.What did I do instead? Well. I wrote this. And scheduled it to post around getting-up time. Ta-dah! Blogging. It keeps me out of worse trouble.

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PS: These improvements will not affect already-purchased copies.  Only new customers will see the changes unless I ask the Kindle Tech Peeps to "update" all my novels on peoples' Kindles. Which I am not ready to do yet, since that is only supposed to be requested for "major errors or problems with the file." And I can't say there were any. Honesty. It's a burden.

cover image by Maskschili (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons